Does LinkedIn have a prostitution problem? | Hacker News Reader

Does LinkedIn have a prostitution problem?

stream.aljazeera.com

50 pointslone-star43 comments

so the real reason why prostitutes use linked in isn't to FIND new clients or to create networks of whores on linked in -- it's to verify that their clients aren't cops.

in a lot of places, prostitution is illegal, and clients and "service providers" alike are worried about the repercussions of getting caught. some are regular people who are trying to make money, or like their side alter ego, but don't particularly want their friends or family to find out.

getting busted is scary for both parties. in order to protect themselves, they resort to ID verifications of sorts and a variety of other practices to help them increase the odds that the person they're spending their time with is not an officer of the law.

a busy linked in profile, business cards, and a drivers license that all point to the same person is a pretty good sign that that person ACTUALLY has the job they claim and they're not a cop.

source: i love hookers.

So there are people who are paid by the government to have sex with hookers and then arrest them?

best job ever. just kidding. obviously, no law enforcement officer has ever engaged in sexual activity with a sex worker. that's just historical fact.

No actual sex has to happen for a crime to be committed.

Solicitation is a crime. just agreeing to submit or receive payment in exchange for sexual activity is the crime.

So law enforcement officers can set up situations where they get sex workers to agree to do things in exchange for payment, then they're busted. Confirmation through linkedin, place of business, business cards, referrals, calling clients' mothers, etc can be used to mitigate the risk that their counterparty is a cop.

http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/solicitation-o...

Sarcasm is difficult to convey over text.

Especially since a quick Google will confirm that police officers often end up taking an unexpected retirement after complaints that they didn't pay for their sex.

For example, http://boston.com/metrodesk/2013/03/29/boston-detective-arre...

Yes it is, there was a great piece in the Sunnyvale Sun (a local paper) about the months and months the Public Safety department spent investigating a local club to determine if there was any illegal activity going on. I thought the reporter perfectly walked the line between 'serious' and 'yeah right.'

> whores

Can we at least call them prostitues if sex worker is too PC for HN?

Funny, I didn't notice the negative connotation here. But maybe that's because of sentences I heard lately:

"Hey, what's the problem with being a fucking whore?" (Street whore¹ in Dexter –forgot which episode.)

"I have a lot of respect for whores." (witness in a radio documentary —quite moving, by the way.)

[1] I swear I mean no disrespect.

thou shalt call things as they are, everything else is political correctness bingo

-- gandhi

I wonder what they call themselves, and what they would be comfortable with if it wasn't used in a derogatory way.

I can imagine if I a few co-workers worked at a horrible oppressing conglomerate, perhaps Veridian Dynamics, and we referred to ourselves as "drones" to denote our feelings, if management said we were no longer allowed to use this term, it would not be uplifting, it would be yet another instance of management oppression by taking away another form of expression.

This example is, of course, extremely contrived, and I can see positives in removing a term from popular use as it may shift attitudes, but I wonder how that compares with the negatives to the group itself.

"a busy linked in profile, business cards, and a drivers license that all point to the same person is a pretty good sign that that person ACTUALLY has the job they claim and they're not a cop."

It would seem almost trivial to create a believable linkedin profile that could fool anybody. I get linkedin requests all the time from people who I don't know who are trolling to build up a profile.

And "business cards"?

i don't think anyone is under the delusion that it is foolproof.

Obviously, cops can fake all that stuff. But if you're just an average sex worker, the law probably doesn't have it out specifically for you, and it's a lot lower hanging fruit to just go for the careless sex workers who don't even verify.

The amount of time/effort they would have to spend (while not necessarily a lot) wouldn't be justified by the probably non-existent increase in the total busts, unless they had an axe to grind against a specific provider for some reason.

source: i moonlight as a male prostitute. and i disappoint a lot of women.

Wait a minute: does the lack of quotes after "source:" mean you are speaking from personal experience? (Genuine question. At first, I though you were citing the title of some book.)

I guess a clue is that male prostitute generally have male client, not female.

"wouldn't be justified by the probably non-existent increase in the total busts"

Interesting thought. Almost similar to why cops don't do a better job of trapper speeders. And why they don't even catch speeders they sometimes just lurk in plain site to slow down traffic.

> source: i love hookers.

Describe how you got here!

was being facetious on both "source" entries, though i do know/have known both escorts (female) and people who have seen escorts (male)

Call me old fashioned, but I still don't get these articles that consist of 10 copy-pasted tweets. Where's the content? Other than the press release and some comments from random people, this has 0 information content.

And the tweets aren't even that good. Definite attempted (and failed) humor there. Everyone's a comedian.

It's a lazy version of Man on the Street, which news used to do a lot. The difference being 1) laziness and 2) the ability to cherry pick to a much greater extent.

I had never thought of it before, but LinkedIn is a brilliant place for a escort to market their services. Lots of business travellers, who are often a middle-aged man travelling alone. The marks should have money, are likely to be disease and drug free, and probably these exchanges occur in a low risk environment such as a business traveler's hotel.

The escorts definitely didn't miss the opportunity.

I suspect that they also troll as follows. Friend a business person with a professional looking profile with a picture. Interact a bit. Then go for the sale.

I guess that seems like to much work but in a sense it might yield a completely virgin market (business people traveling who would never think to read an ad or make pro active contact.) Almost like the bar honeypot.

Add: And be able to charge a premium rate because those contacted don't have any clue of the going rate and they have been enticed before they are able to pull back (not having any viable alternatives).

Technically they are professionals connecting to customers.

They're preventing them from getting a normal reputation, which is kinda sad :\

The problem seems to me that sex work is stigmatized and, as a direct result of that, still not legalized and regulated in too many 1st world countries.

The 1st world global cultural gap (between e.g. the US and Europe, or even northern and souther Europe) may seem small when you stroll through your average mall to shop for apparel.

But it is often huge when it comes to views about morale and what is considered ok or not ok.

To someone from northern Europe who is living in a country where sex work is 'ok' in most people's view, legalized anyway and regulated in recent years, this LinkedIn stuff is one of these stories that sound like they're from another, previous century.

Fiction becomes reality:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-still-searching-fo...

As they say, "reality is stranger than fiction"

Aljazeera.com article a case for Betteridge's law of headlines?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

No, just with social media marketing. But the two areas are easy to confuse.

Only one of them provides services for cash in an honest exchange.

In both cases the essence is the exchange of money in return for feigned affection.

I deem this as an indication to the fact that LinkedIn is the de facto online social network for business.

The reason this got talked about in my workplace was that another article covering it claimed that people were even endorsing prostitutes for various skills on LinkedIn.. the mind boggles :)

:) just as the social bookmarking buttons on porn sites, no one thinks they would be clicked yet some do it.

The title of the article raises a good question, though: what is the rationale for clamping down on this?

Have they had a real problem, or is it merely moralistic?

Potential PR problems

ok, in which countries do sex workers identify themselves with their name and actual profession and it is completely ok? likewho would even create a profile like this?

don't other families don't trash her as a bad mother, doesn't it affect their employment prospects, are their kids or parents not harassed etc?

if there is a country like that i want to live there.

Netherlands.

Germany also has legal prostitution. And I think Belgium as well.

Nevada.

I am speculating that the reason LinkedIn did it, is to get distanced from legal problems, not only in relation to prostitution laws (for example, Brazil says prostitution is allowed, but facilitating prostitution is not... LinkedIn was a facilitator? Also, several other countries have equally, or even more confusing laws on the subject), but also to law enforcement efforts against sex slavery and human trafficking.

I guess LinkedIn don't want the ball thrown on their court and be responsible for checking who is a real prostitute and who is a slave or a scammer.

No.

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