In an apparent response to attorneys general in 17 states demanding that Craigslist remove its adult services section because the
site doesn’t adequately block potentially illegal ads promoting prostitution and child trafficking, the section was replaced Saturday with a black bar that says, simply, ”censored.”
Michael Arrington notes that Craigslist has taken a disproportionate share of the heat over prostitution and sexual trafficking claims. “A half page ad was recently run by two ‘survivors of Craigslist sex trafficking’ in the Washington Post, for example. And last year South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster targeted Craigslist as part of his run for governor.”
With the takedown, adult ads are popping up on other parts of the site, something Cragislist CEO Jim Buckmaster always argued would happen. The San Francisco Chronicle’s James Temple, speaking earlier on All Things Considered:
He’s been arguing all along that taking down this section of the site is not the most appropriate way of dealing with the harms that go along with these sorts of ads, because at least before Friday they were contained to one section where they could monitor the ads, where they could take them down if they were blatantly illicit. And now, as he said would happen, they seem to be spreading to other sections of the site, which makes the job presumably more difficult for Craigslist to monitor.
In an impassioned appeal in the Huffington Post, danah boyd buttresses Buckmaster’s point. She says the visibility of Craigslist should make it easier to help hose who are being victimized; it’s “a public perch from which law enforcement can watch without being seen.”
Sadly, attacking Craigslist is easier than funding more actual enforcement:
I had the fortune of spending a lot of time with a few FBI folks and talking to a whole lot of local law enforcement. I learned a scary reality about criminal activity online. Folks in law enforcement know about a lot more criminal activity than they have the time to pursue. Sure, they focus on the big players, going after the massive collectors of child pornography who are most likely to be sex offenders than spending time on the small-time abusers. But it was the medium-time criminals that gnawed at them. They were desperate for more resources so that they could train more law enforcers, pursue more cases, and help more victims. The Internet had made it a lot easier for them to find criminals, but that didn’t make their jobs any easier because they were now aware of how many more victims they were unable to help. Most law enforcement in this area are really there because they want to help people and it kills them when they can’t help everyone.
There’s a lot more political gain to be had demonizing profitable companies than demanding more money be spent (and thus, more taxes be raised) supporting the work that law enforcement does. Taking something that is visible and making it invisible makes a politician look good, even if it does absolutely nothing to help the victims who are harmed. It creates the illusion of safety, while signaling to pimps, traffickers, and other scumbags that their businesses are perfectly safe as long as they stay invisible….
Censoring Craigslist will do absolutely nothing to help those being victimized, but it will do a lot to help those profiting off of victimization. Censoring Craigslist will also create new jobs for pimps and other corrupt intermediaries, since it’ll temporarily make it a whole lot harder for individual scumbags to find clients…
If you want to end human trafficking, if you want to combat nonconsensual prostitution, if you care about the victims of the sex-power industry, don’t cheer Craigslist’s censorship. This did nothing to combat the cycle of abuse. What we desperately need are more resources for law enforcement to leverage the visibility of the Internet to go after the scumbags who abuse. What we desperately need are for sites like Craigslist to be encouraged to work with law enforcement and help create channels to actually help victims. What we need are innovative citizens who leverage new opportunities to devise new ways of countering abusive industries. We need to take this moment of visibility and embrace it, leverage it to create change, leverage it to help those who are victimized and lack the infrastructure to get help. What you see online should haunt you. But it should drive you to address the core problem by finding and helping victims, not looking for new ways to blindfold yourself. Please, I beg you, don’t close your eyes. We need you.
MORE…
Jeff Jarvis on why are government and media going after craigslist. Gawker’s Post-Craigslist Guide to Buying Sex Online demonstrates that Craigslist is far from the only place to score sex on the Internet.
The Craigslist Blog, where you will learn that not all eBay classifieds are family friendly. Kara Swisher, Craigslist CEO Blasts CNN Reporter for “Ambush” of Founder Newmark in Prostitution Story (includes the CNN video). ReadWriteWeb has more on craigslist and the media.
Topix CEO Chris Tolles guest authored a post on Tech Crunch about his experience as the target of two attorneys general. His conclusions highlight just how tough a spot Craigslist finds itself in now.