Slashdot Mirror
Craigslist Removes Its Controversial Adult Section
Cyrus writes "The online classified website Craigslist has removed its controversial Adult Services portion of its website. Technology blog TechCrunch was the first to report the section had been blacked out with the word 'Censored.'"
now all the prostitutes will post in casual encounters
Out of sight, out of mind.
Clearly, Craigslist getting rid of their adult services section removes all such adult services from the rest of the Internet, and in fact, from existence itself.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I mean dude... my dick isn't gonna suck itself!
How are all us slashdotters supposed to find nude modelling gigs now?
*DrugCheese rants*
http://www.backpage.com/classifieds/index. Like prostitution is going to go away. lol
Some politician says ban this section and it will all go away...
Now the personals section is going to get even more polluted.
Casual Encounters will become the new adult section but it will spill over into the normal sections. Strictly platonic will probably become the "normal" area. If this is the intelligence of state attorney generals then we must have a lot of innocent people in jail.
Tell me again who's the victim? I must have missed it. Is it the person getting paid, or the person getting their dick sucked?
Learn about Photography Basics.
Where attorney generals can curse at links to all the unregulated adult services websites outside US jurisdiction.
It works fine for me on the Toronto, Canada Craigslist. Out-call prostitution is legal in Ontario though.
Prostitution control is about as effective as drug control and gun control.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
This is the future of the Internet. Corporate censorship at the demand of the loudest group. One by one, sites are going to filter user areas. Then content. Starting with obvious things that few will care about, like prostitution. Slowly, everything is going to be so pasteurized that sites with no filters will be considered criminal organizations.
Look, whatever you think of it is irrelevant, abused or not, the racier parts of the internet are a necessary part of freedom. Draw the line of allowed hosted content straight through what most people find offensive and leave it there.
It may not happen in our lifetime, but if we don't demand full neutrality (for host and carriers), it's going to happen.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Rent a server in a country where prostitution is legal. Don't specifically target the US. /end
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Now where am I going to hire the local high quality hookers? Looks like I am shit out of luck here.
All right. You want an analysis. Here you go.
First off, morality:
The morality of any point whatsoever depends on the moral code you choose to follow, whether it is founded in some religion, a personal point of view, or merely what your upbringing has led you to find disgusting or praiseworthy. There you are, now you can answer the question for yourself, but don't expect other people to agree regardless of how fervently you happen to believe the validity of your position. Morality is a matter of opinion.
Second, `without foundation':
It is not without foundation to discuss the desire of women to choose prostitution. In areas where prostitution is legal, and well regulated, many women do choose that career path, even women with substantial other prospects. Even when illegal, there are those who find the career path viable. Read the memoirs of real life prostitutes for examples - there are several published. Would the average geek want to be running the servers of some nameless corporation which abuses his time and energy for less money than the prostitute makes and less working flexibility, or rather run the servers of something he finds enjoyable and valuable? And yet you find us slaving away in service of the almighty dollar. The fact is that people make choices. Some good, some less so. Just because you happen to find those choices repugnant largely suggests that you shouldn't make those choices, and is not a useful comment on the choices of others.
Third, the `libertard' thing:
Congratulations on your creative portmanteau word. Very clever. Since you chose to invoke morality, perhaps you will show some understanding for those who think that the libertarian view is the moral one. The same libertarian view as often championed by the libertarian party, which keeps jabbering about morality in its party platform. (Disclaimer: I think they're silly for doing so precisely because morality is a matter of opinion, but it certainly suggests that someone holds such a moral code dear.)
Fourth, false generalisation:
Pretending that just because some cases of prostitution are by some standards less pleasant than others does not condemn the whole idea. Perhaps different regulations are needed. Perhaps certain kinds should be banned. Perhaps there should be more social workers. Perhaps they all need to find Jesus in their hearts.
I could go on, but really, your thesis needs a lot of work, and the defence more yet. Please have a 5,000 word essay on the false appeal to authority on my desk in the morning.
Literally hours of internet comic gold will be lost. Please think of our children. Where will they go to laugh about crazy tyranny hookers?
for /. to take advantage of this huge opportunity.....
Posting categories at adult.slashdot.org
1. Geeks seeking Nerds, post count: 4
2. Nerds seeking Geeks, post count: 12
3. Geeks seeking Geeks, post count: 8
4. Nerds seeking Nerds, post count: 11
5. Geeks and Nerds seeking ANYONE, post count: 267914296
Someone's not thinking outside the box. They should have just spun off that part of the company and run it from another country with sensible attitudes towards sex (eg, The Netherlands or Belgium), where the US can't touch them.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
The State wants to collect a tax on a dowry, meaning the dowry is the reserve capital a husband pays to the woman's pimp to "draw" the equivalent value in potential children to inherit and progress the family heritage; the motivation of the State (feudal lords in America have confederated into a title of nobility known as The State since 1776) is to inject currency into the economy to stimulate the region of its invasive migrant as an invested natural body-politic as well as transfer the privilege of drafting such currencies to an ecclesiastical agency to tamper the event as an elymysonary trust-indenture (U.S. Treasury to the Federal Reserve System as estoppel to the U.S. Mint). A prostitute in-effect abates the re-productive nature of the task to a mere pleasure principle, depriving the State of alleged "necessary" revenue in the still-born birth of the foreign corporate sole/soul body-politic, and then commences a transaction on mere "private" entertainment alone without notice to the public domain. In this modern day, the States give bonus to all administrators if their Hospital-births are registered a Department of the Treasury-Social Security form 5 (if I remember correctly) as well as another bonus for the Registered birth certificate on Security Paper presented to the Depository And Trust Company which is the fractionalized from a Direct Treasury Account into the private markets through Federal Reserve System and publicy through the International Monetary Fund.
Truly, prostitution touches so-many aspects of society in religious and governmental provocitation that it is the only anchor to establish priory in averting from the Home-Rule bastards that reduce entire countries through despotism. The greatest rulers on the planet that conquered oppressive governments all were born of Prostitutes. :-)
There goes my weekend!
Since those ads are no longer easily viewed by the general public, some politicians will now consider it a victory against the evil sex trade. So now, instead of the sex trade of teenagers easily tracked by authorities and gov't officials, it has now gone back underground where it is harder to track and deal with those issues. Prohibition was supposed to improve society, but instead the booze went underground, organized crime developed, and more social problems arose as a result. Just as people like to imbibe, people also like to have sex (gasp! shock!). The allegory continues, just substitute "booze" for "sex trade".
How many fast-food workers get aids? How many people wanting to run for office have to hide their past flipping burgers? How many fast-food workers are killed by customers? How many fast-food workers are dependent on the turnout of the day for their salary? How many fastfood workers do not get sickdays etc etc (in civilized countries).
How many of the conditions you cite are consequences of the act's illegality, and not of the act itself?
The kind who says it is okay his iPod was made with slave labor because else these people would have just starved.
So who made your iPod?
Actually if you look in the house cleaning services section, you will find college girls willing to clean house for $300-$450 an hour.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
Comparing prostitution with a normal job
See, there's your problem. How is sex work not a "normal" job?
I understand of course why CL did this, it's a business after all, and they make their money from the real estate and job ads. It's not worth it to spend their shareholders' money litigating to defend themselves from a pack of rabid ambitious politicians.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Craig's list removes adult section.
AGs declare victory, "war on nookie a complete success, just like the war on drugs."
I was under the impression Craigslist adult ads were safer than other forms of [illegal] prostitution. You could email potential clients for as long as you wanted (and as long as they'd put up with!) before meeting them. And you could even do a webcam session from the safety of your own home. Not getting a good vibe about a potential client? Don't even need to see him in person. The safe filtering possibilities were beyond anything we'd seen before.
I know I read an article/blog by a CL prostitute who basically had a "how-to" on posting ads and meeting clients, but I can't seem to find it now. It was years ago. But basically she had a close call with an iffy client and vowed to play it safer from that point on. She made a guide that made it dead easy to spot clients who were obviously dangerous and how to find out more about them by only exchanging typed words.
Of course there was the potential that a client would work really *really* hard acting like a good guy and then doing something truly evil, but anyone could be a victim to someone like that - whether you're posting an ad online, meeting someone in a bar, or even dating a friend of a friend.
When things are illegal, people are pushed in to them that don't want to be. The activity has to exist at the sidelines and those involved can't get help from the authorities if they need it. The problems, the abuses, happen because it is illegal and thus they have to turn to people like pimps for promotion and protection.
However when it is legal? Not such a problem. Have a look in to the brothels in Nevada some time (you can look at documentaries rather than going there). You find that when it is legal, the problems go away. The girls set their own terms, nobody can force them. Rather than criminals the brothels employ private security like any company, and the police are just a phone call away if anything serious happens. If they wish to quit, like any other job they simply leave. There is no force or threat to keep them there, it is a business as any other.
Please remember that when talking about legalized prostitution people aren't talking in hypothetical here, it is legal in many places. The really difference is known, documented.
Really, if you want to get up on legal jobs that people get in to when they have no other choice look at things like fast food, menial construction work, that kind of thing. Those are what people end up having to do when they have no particular talents or skills that are in demand. That is also why they pay so little, literally anyone can do them.
When a profession is legal, it can be kept safe (because the government regulates it) and it is a choice, since you are free to stop work at any time for any reason. When something is illegal, it is unsafe.
With crime, when you've fallen in to that life, it can be hard to escape. You can, literally, risk your life getting out as people may kill you to keep you from leaving. With a regular job, you've committed to nothing. You can just not show up to work some day and the only consequence is they won't pay you anymore. You are free to leave as it suits you.
Comparing prostitution with a normal job
See, there's your problem. How is sex work not a "normal" job?
Ever looked at the risk assessment on 'prostitution'? Why not produce a reasoned comparison between the risks of fast food work and various categories of prostitution? Whichever way it turns out, it'd probably be illuminating to a lot of people.
Hopefully the people who used CL for that will find another site where the operators are not so easily cowed.
The alternative will be for them to just relocate to other categories on CL where they don't belong (the 'casual encounters' section in the personals seems a likely place), and just post in some sort of code sufficient for them to blend in with the legitimate posts but still ply their trade successfully.
The function of money proves that the matter is NOT considered an equal exchange or fair trade in itself, that the money is used as offset to make it equal.
Nobody gained or lost anything because money serves as an adjustment to make it balance-out as non-profit on the debit/credit relationship.
However in the case of an enterprising man, he donates patented race-seed from his stock of nationality and then the suggestion of money in addition would prove that his is considered worth half as much as the woman's blood egg at most.
You realy need to think about these things, because Internal Revenue code Section 83(a) says that the EXCESS over the GROSS is what is considered income; meaning that the unaccounted money the prostitute holds more than the equal exchange is considered the taxable money. Money + Sperm = BloodyEgg = fair non-profit non-taxable. That's why TIPS are never expected to show-up as part of the transaction because they exist outside the transaction as that actual taxable income over the EXCESS of the gross. Understand why Pro-Statution is a concept of liberty that has nothing to do with sex, because that designation of pro-statution means the jurisprudence is in Statutory Law that all are at liberty when they cite their exemption.
Or how about a lovely chest of drawers?
where prostitution is legal and regulated I have some sympathy for those of you living in less enlightened parts of the world. However do try to remember that while many architects (for example!) use the services of prostitutes, few, if any prostitutes are clients of architects.
If your simplistic model of the sex industry is that of a cosy contract between customer and vendor you probably haven't been to edge of the world and looked over.
Otherwise you would be perfectly happy for your sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers to pursue a glittering career in the opportunity-filled world of the sex industry. Perhaps put in a few shifts yourself, to balance your budget in these straitened times.
Or perhaps there is another reason why clients are called "tricks" or "Gingers" in the industry patois.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
It's still uncensored in Canada
With the implied threat of being sued into oblivion ( or worse ) the Craigslist dude did what he had to. Sad, but its reality.
As the other areas get the influx of the 'bad/evil/immoral/etc people', they will call ( threaten ) for the removal of those sections too. Its all about the slow encroachment idea. Cant take out the enemy in one swipe so you nibble at them until they implode.
My personal feeling is that this is not being driven by the still alive and kicking "temperance crowd", but in fact is being funded by the more traditional 'follow the money' concept ( via old fashion bribes and kickbacks ) and just being masked by the 'its for the children' sort of veil. I bet companies like eBay are really behind this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
At least according to 'sexy wild student Mandy, 22yo, blonde hair, 5'2", 34C, make you scream for $220/hr'.
Still works in Canada. http://montreal.fr.craigslist.ca/search/ers/?query=w4m .. Geeze catch up with the 21 century already will ya ? :)
It's well known we are way more tolerant in canada and dont mind.Oldest job in the world and there's no pretending it dont exist or that it can be eradicated,it cant.it's just human.Hiding it wont make it go away , it will simply find itself somewhere else where it will thrive just as much as it did before cause it's human
a lot cheaper than marriage. what's the big deal?
Sex for sale is now gone and will never come back.
Its not completely gone. Its 'censored' from atlanta.craigslist.com but it is accessible from atlanta.craigslist.org/adg/
I only post when im drunk.
Dude, you are SO high.
If you want an intelligent assessment from someone who knows the facts, you should go to Brooke Magnanti, PhD (who is smarter than most Slashdot readers).
One correction: The term used in the scientific literature is "commercial sex worker." If she went to work for the companies that made organophosphates, and lobbied to keep them selling dangerous products then she would be a prostitute.
(Although you might argue that charging $31.50 to read your paper is prostitution http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.toxlet.2009.06.835)
Belle de Jour: On science and prostitution
17:50 20 November 2009
Rowan Hooper
Under the name Belle de Jour, Brooke Magnanti wrote about her experiences as a prostitute for a London escort agency, and her blog became a bestselling book, The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl, and a television series.
She has a master's degree in genetic epidemiology and a PhD from the University of Sheffield's department of forensic pathology.
She currently works at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health and told her agent: "if New Scientist asks for an interview, I'll do it". We did ask.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2009/11/belle-de-jour-on-science-and-prostitution.html
Churches exists so the wealthy can come up with a reason for the poor to work hard for no reward (see protestant work ethic, divine right of kings, etc). The church and gov't are against prostitution because if a guy can just go out and have sex he won't work 3 job supporting a wife and kids to get it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
you're just mistaken about the purpose. One of the key benefits to drug and prostitution control is segregation. It keeps the wealthy and the poor separate, because if you're poor and you drive up to a wealthy neighborhood to use their (very nice) parks and schools chances are you or one of you're friends has drugs/is a prostitute. Our 'zero tolerance' property seizure laws make you guilty by association.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Start a porn business, hire hot girls to have sex with you (take a few pictures), make a calendar and offer it for sale from your porn business.
What this is doing is blurring the line between casual sex and prostitution. It will make it more difficult legally and personally. Not good.
The prostitution ads have already started to move to "Therapeutic Services" under the guise of massage and bodywork. Adult Services was like a CL trash folder; it kept the other sections relatively free of prostitution ads.
CL had implemented a verification scheme and extra hoop-jumping for ads in Adult Services after the earlier lawsuits. CL has always been willing to comply with law enforcement requests supported by warrants. If the point was fighting prostitution, what the fuck more could CL have done? They gave police departments an up-to-the-minute list of suspect numbers, addresses, and business fronts to investigate. CL's verification efforts gave them even more info on the posters of such ads.
And the uninformed & grandstanding efforts of the 17 AGs who signed onto the August letter to CL have just trashed this. Prostitution ads are *already* be back to where they were when Adult Services was named Erotic Services. What a complete waste of time and money this game of whack-a-mole has been. Regardless of what you think of prostitution, these AGs have demonstrated that they are not able or willing to bother to spend the time to understand how to achieve their purported goals. An election is coming up.
Vote these incompetent AGs out. Their names are:
Kansas: Steve Six
Connecticut: Steven Blumenthal
Massachusetts: Martha Coakley
Arkansas: Dustin MacDaniel
Idaho: Lawrence Wadson
Illinois: Lisa Madigan
Iowa: Tom Miller
Maryland: Douglas F. Gansler
Michigan: Mike Cox
Missouri: Chris Koster
Montana: Steve Bullock
New Hampshire: Michael A. Delaney
Ohio: Richard Cordray
Rhode Island: Patrick C. Lynch
South Carolina: Henry McMaster
Tennessee: Robert E. Cooper, Jr.
Texas: Greg Abbott
Virginia: Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II
"How many fast-food workers are dependent on the turnout of the day for their salary?" This one was my favourite one. Hookers make tons more in a given week than burger flippers. They are only reliant on money in a given day if they spend all the money they get within hours of hooking.
Up until yesterday, Craigslist had two separate sections for prostitution-related ads: "Adult Services," where advertisers paid a fee to post, CL staff monitored and approved all content, and there were no flagging options; and "Adult Gigs," which required telephone verification to post but was free and otherwise worked exactly like the rest of the site. "Adult Services" tended to be for professional, working prostitutes, while "Adult Gigs" tended to be for both girls and johns who were looking for more amateur arrangements like nude photos, panties, fetishes, and sugardaddy-type relationships.
Incidentally, as of last night I had posted several ads (over the past two weeks) that were live on my city's "Adult Gigs" section. Logging into my account now, they appear to still be live: Each ad appears colored in green on my account page, which means it is "active," and I can still access management options for each ad ("Edit," "Delete," etc.).
You sir are a worthless human being with no redeeming quality. Comparing prostitution with a normal job no matter how much you might look down on is the hallmark of a very narrow mind. The kind who says it is okay his iPod was made with slave labor because else these people would have just starved.
Disgusting.
So, the computer (or is it a smart phone?) that you posted your self-righteous message from -- please tell us, where were all of its components manufactured? Presumably in a unionized factory in Canada or western Europe, by workers earning a living wage and working reasonable hours, protected by a social safety net that won't leave them to starve in the street if they don't like their working conditions, or leave them to die in their beds if they fall ill, is that right?
Otherwise you can shove off, you hypocritical, sanctimonious ass.
~Idarubicin
It seems unlikely that closing off this route of advertising will do much to discourage prostitution. On the other hand, it will make it harder for women to offer sexual services as independent operators, and will tend to force more of them into exploitive arrangements in which much of their income is taken by "management." So it is a lose for the women, but a big win for the pimps.
51% of the population is female. A good number of those women are incredibly ugly but rely on a vagina monopoly to get artificially higher benefits from their men. If guys were able to just go out and sleep with good looking women then they would reconsider marrying their ugly-domineering American women and would stop blowing so much money on them. This is why prostitution is illegal, it competes with legal prostitution, which is called marriage. It equalizes the power struggle between men and women.
I happen to be married to an awesome woman, btw. Just because social norms are that way doesn't mean you can't be happy. I married her because I love her, but I am under no delusions that if I stopped paying for her housing, food, chocolate and occasional roses then I would masturbate a good deal more. See what I mean about equality? She's got all kinds of reasons to keep prostitution illegal. Men are willing to pay such a high price because they have nowhere else to go - monopoly. Yes, I could just remain in the dating scene but you can only do that for so long before the women find out you'll not commit to the terms and issue an embargo on vaginal access.
There's no romanticism in this, but damn is it ever true. The really brilliant part is that women enjoy sex too.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
Only in the US apparently.
I know law students that work at prostitution because it's a very high-paying job and the hours are flexible.
Dr. Hibbert paid for med school by working as a male stripper (under the stage name Malcolm Sex)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I work by lending my brain to whoever pay to overuse/abuse/misuse it. I've been in IT for 20+ years and I would stop going to work tomorrow if it was not for the paycheck. Still I do like to program but only for free. Free use of my brain is fun for both sides but I gotta make living so I let my brain. So why is my job legal and prostitution is not?
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
Now all the hookers will go back to cas, and they'll have to put a paywall on that, and I'll never have sex again.
It's important to note that a prostitute, who is transported (for gain of course) by another to a third country, of her own choice, and is informed that she will be a prostitute there, but earning more than she is currently, if all of the promises to her are kept, is by the definitions of the above report 'A victim of human trafficking'.
I see a lot of rhetoric here about the relationship between society and prostitution, but what about fucking Craiglist? I say "fucking" Craigslist, because I am shocked that they would fail to take a stand for what is RIGHT! When did they pimp their morals for the "bottom" line. Whoops! That one just slipped in.... Oh fuck, I mean darn it! I am trying to be serious here. Newmark, WTF???
Social Credit would solve everything...
Twitter is the new Craigslist for escorts.
Learn About Outsourcing. http://www.pioutsource.com
Well, the usual Slashdot groupthink seems to be in full effect, with basically every user^^^^man on here saying the usual anarcho-libertarian line about "mutually consenting adults engaging in a contractual transaction".
I'm probably going to get modded troll for going against the gropethink, but I'm going to pull your heads out of the sand. Life is not an MMORPG, kids. Trading cash for actions is not a morally value-neutral act, given what goes on. And I love how everyone here claims traditional religion is the reason why people think prostitution is bad. Have these people never heard of feminism?
The cold, hard facts:
Prostitution is a major reason for the modern slave trade. Wage-slavery exists in some industries, but nowhere is the actual buying and selling of people (women, and yes, girls) as open, widespread and close to classical slavery as it is in prostitution. And the welfare of the slaves is given far less care than even the slave trade of old, because the owners feel far less long-term investment in their property, who they go through in a fast pace fashion.
Mutually consenting - Mutual consent between the molester and the seller, yes. But how much do you think a prostitute's owner cares what she thinks of the molester and how enthusiastic she is to suck his cock? And yes, I am using the real words to describe what they are because the usual language of prostitution like 'john' and 'pimp' is used to soften the impact of what is actually being done. Or do you think all prostitutes are self-employed free agents?
Adults - don't make me laugh.
Contractual transaction - there's a reason why they say "money up front", it's because it's nearly impossible to get payment for a sex act afterwards if the customer won't pay. You have no leverage from which to negotiate from. The law will not help you, both because it is illegal and because the customer can claim it was consentual and free. Not to mention many owners use illegally immiigrated slaves that are afraid to go to the authorities, or cannot speak the language.
Face it, prostitution is evil not because Jesus says so, but because it is an industry that makes it very easy to(and encourages) traffic of slaves that are kept in line through fear of violence and abuse, moved across borders and kept hidden through view while the owners reap the profits. It has a bigger problem with this than other industries that abuse labor because it is far easier to use an abused, addicted, scared girl or woman who doesn't speak the language or fears talking to the authorities to make money by making them fucked by random strangers. For the owner the fucking by filthy cocks has the added benefit of making them more despairing and easier to handle, as does drug addiction.
Stop thinking with your cock, people.
I assume that escort services, and modeling services, are no longer allowed to be advertised in phone books, or newspapers?