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Senate Passes Controversial Online Sex Trafficking Bill (thehill.com)
The Senate today gave final approval to a bill aimed at cracking down on online sex trafficking, sending the measure to the White House where President Trump is expected to sign it into law. From a report: The legislation, called the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), but also referred to as SESTA, would cut into the broad protections websites have from legal liability for content posted by their users. Those protections are codified in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act from 1996, a law that many internet companies see as vital to protecting their platforms and that SESTA would amend to create an exception for sex trafficking.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the most outspoken critic of SESTA and one of the authors of the 1996 law, said that making exceptions to Section 230 will lead to small internet companies having to face an onslaught of frivolous lawsuits. EFF expressed its disappointment, saying, "Today is a dark day for the Internet. Congress just passed the Internet censorship bill SESTA/FOSTA. SESTA/FOSTA will silence online speech by forcing Internet platforms to censor their users. As lobbyists and members of Congress applaud themselves for enacting a law ostensibly tackling the problem of trafficking, let's be clear: Congress just made trafficking victims less safe, not more. Sex trafficking experts have tried again and again to explain to Congress how SESTA/FOSTA will put trafficking victims in danger. Sex workers have spoken out too, explaining how online platforms have literally saved their lives. Why didn't Congress consult with the people their bill would most directly affect? [...] When platforms choose to err on the side of censorship, marginalized voices are censored disproportionately. SESTA/FOSTA will make the Internet a less inclusive place, something that hurts all of us. This might just be the beginning. Some of these groups behind SESTA / FOSTA seem to see the bill as a mere stepping stone to banning pornography from the Internet."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the most outspoken critic of SESTA and one of the authors of the 1996 law, said that making exceptions to Section 230 will lead to small internet companies having to face an onslaught of frivolous lawsuits. EFF expressed its disappointment, saying, "Today is a dark day for the Internet. Congress just passed the Internet censorship bill SESTA/FOSTA. SESTA/FOSTA will silence online speech by forcing Internet platforms to censor their users. As lobbyists and members of Congress applaud themselves for enacting a law ostensibly tackling the problem of trafficking, let's be clear: Congress just made trafficking victims less safe, not more. Sex trafficking experts have tried again and again to explain to Congress how SESTA/FOSTA will put trafficking victims in danger. Sex workers have spoken out too, explaining how online platforms have literally saved their lives. Why didn't Congress consult with the people their bill would most directly affect? [...] When platforms choose to err on the side of censorship, marginalized voices are censored disproportionately. SESTA/FOSTA will make the Internet a less inclusive place, something that hurts all of us. This might just be the beginning. Some of these groups behind SESTA / FOSTA seem to see the bill as a mere stepping stone to banning pornography from the Internet."
This one isn't due to partisan ignorance, just the general kind.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
They were talking about this on NPR this afternoon - apparently, sex traffickers were posting classified ads on Backpage.com with keywords like "lolita" and "fresh" to indicate underage girls
Which they are not in all these cases. Nobody would advertise something like that openly. It is purely the fantasy of the customer being addressed here. A "lolita" is a sex worker that looks young, but is anywhere from 18-30. There are basically almost no underage sex workers, and where there are, they are 17 or 16. There are, for example, also statements from brothel owners in Switzerland where prostitution used to be legal from 16 years on, that they actually did not want any this young because they cannot do the job well and mainly cause problems. And there were statements from the Swiss police that this was extremely rare and in the small handful of cases they merely informed the parents.
Incidentally, from countries were it is legal, we also know that there are almost no sex workers forced into the trade. For example, the Mafia stopped decades ago, because it does not work economically. A forced sex worker is a bad, non-motivated sex worker that brings in the lowest rates and comes with the problem that typically one of the first customers reports this to the police because men are not total scum. For example a famous case in Germany about 20 years back had 3 actual customers and the first one went to the police. These things are so rare that they make the national news, while there are an estimated 1 million (!) prostitutes in the US.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.