craigslist caves in....

[Guest lurkerspeaks]

In what can only be assumed as caving in to pressure from many Attorney Generals, Craigslist has now deleted its "adult services" section. In the space under "Services" where it formerly said "Adult" is now a reverse font of white text in a black box saying "CENSORED"... Of course, this is only in the USA sections of craigslist.. in a quick check, other countries still retain the "erotic" services section.

Let's see if this helps get more people over to the knockoff site, backpage.com.......they still offer escort ads there..

[Guest FourAces]

I just noticed this censored tag. I think if it was related specifically to the states legal action there would have been some news coverage. I have not seen anything on it yet. Its a holiday weekend so if they wanted to go as unnoticed as possible they did pick the right time to do so. I guess we will have to see how it all plays out.

[Lucky]

Why are these attorney generals so worried that their constitutents are out there having sex?

[Guest FourAces]

Now the articles are starting to appear. This one is from Wired.

The “Adult Services” listing on Craiglist was removed late Friday on its U.S.-based sites and replaced with the word “censored.”

Craigslist did not announce the move and its blog was not updated as of Saturday morning. Craigslist did not immediately respond to e-mail and voice mail messages seeking comment.

The change comes as the service faces growing pressure in the U.S. over sex services advertised on its classifieds network, as well as allegations that it abets in human sex trafficking.

Police routinely conduct prostitution sting operations using its listings, as have some media outlets such as CNN, which has made it something of a mission (see below). Wired.com has also reported on the problem.

The stakes were raised again last week when Craigslist received a letter from 17 state attorneys general demanding the company immediately shut down its adult services listing, citing the case of two girls who said last month that they were trafficked for sex through the site.

If Craigslist has bowed to public pressure that would signal a major shift in the company’s strategy.

According the AIM Group, Craigslist’s adult services section accounts for 30 percent of its overall revenue — a projected $36.6 million in 2010 out of $122 million. More than half the company’s revenue comes from recruitment advertising and about 17 percent (almost $21 million) comes from apartment ads in New York City, the AIM Group estimates.

Craigslist has made numerous changes to its sex listings over the years to accommodate critics, changing its sex listings label from “erotic services” to “adult services,” imposing rules about the types of ads that can appear, and manually filtering ads. But it has also fiercely defended its overall practices as ethical, and censorship as a useless and hypocritical dodge.

When Craigslist was hit with a lawsuit by South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster in 2009, it struck back with a preemptive lawsuit of its own and won. Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has also used the company’s blog to blast critics, most recently an “ambush” CNN video interview of Craigslist founder Craig Newmark.

Craiglist has a point: Given other sites on the web (and in print) serve the same types of ads without the same level of scrutiny, it seems politicians are making the pioneering, 15-year-old service an opportunistic scapegoat. Internet services may accelerate and exacerbate some social problems like prostitution, but they rarely cause them. The root of these issues — and their solutions — lie in the realm of public policy, not web sites and ham-handed web site filtering.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/censored-craigslist-adult-services-blocked-in-u-s/

[TampaYankee]

Too bad. It is election season though.

[JKane]

I noticed it today while in Hollywood looking to have some fun. The personal section has also been especially flag-happy of late, somebody offering to be generous may get through but any guy requesting generous seems to get flagged off almost instantly, in Los Angeles at least.

Yet the bitter fucks determined to stop my having fun leave all the damn PNP and Tina ads alone!

So where will the guys end up? I think the bitter crusaders will keep them off any part of CL... so... Backpage? Dating sites, like gay.co.uk? Maybe some will get their stuff together enough to have ads on Men4rentnow or Rentboy, but I really like the spur of the moment, not really doing this as a career, and not charging Rentboy prices kind of guys! Are there still chatrooms with those kind of guys?

I was on SMB today. 3 drag queens out, obviously working, every pass... how do they get away with it? Only noticed two guys, out a lot less often and much more discrete... one muscular but well past his prime (hired before) latin guy that hangs out with the day laborers near the lumber yard (doesn't do much and not a great massage) and a guy I hadn't seen before (not good looking and also didn't seem very bright in our brief conversation)...

[Guest FourAces]

I was on SMB today.

James when we met several years back I said to myself he's a nice looking young man but not exactly SMB material

Actually, I miss the early eighties when SMB between Highland and Fairfax was like a candy store and I was a sugar starved addict

[Guest zipperzone]

Why are these attorney generals so worried that their constitutents are out there having sex?

Because they think it their Dod given mission to be the protector of our morals.

[MsGuy]

Because they think it their Dod given mission to be the protector of our morals.

Not really true, Zipper. The only mission, G-d given or otherwise, that most AGs recognize is that of being elected governor.

[Guest BrandenJKnox]

Wow, I am shocked. I am just now as of this moment discovering the news about Craigslist caving in to the Attorney General Department.

I do not understand why they had to just black it out with just saying sensoered. Can they not have a user/password access to that section of their classifieds. They can require users to provide name/indentity information/photo id, etc. to verify their legal age and indentity in order to get user access to that section of the classifieds.

Never heard of backpage.com - Definitely gonna have to check that out.

Most recently I am advertising on multiple escort ad/profile sites: MaleEscortReview.com, RentMen.com, and HourBoy.com thus far.

Hey anyone got any suggestions of some other great sites that are low-cost with lots of traffic that I should advertise on?

Thanks.

[Keenan Smith]

I'm also shocked by the move. As of right now and have always I am advertising here on MaleEscortReview.com and Hourboy.com

[TotallyOz]

I don't understand why they just didn't move out of the USA. Seems like it would have been a wiser move for them. Would that have protected them?

Or, requiring people that post the ads to have verification?

I am sure there were other options they didn't pursue. Why I wonder?

[JKane]

Or, requiring people that post the ads to have verification?

They've required that for a long time. Phone number linked to email in personals plus credit card for adult/erotic services.

They also took out the adult section of gigs, which was sometimes used for prostitution but also seemed widely used by porn makers.

[JKane]

Never heard of backpage.com - Definitely gonna have to check that out.

Most recently I am advertising on multiple escort ad/profile sites: MaleEscortReview.com, RentMen.com, and HourBoy.com thus far.

Hey anyone got any suggestions of some other great sites that are low-cost with lots of traffic that I should advertise on?

Thanks.

You should ad your links, location and info to your message center profile, and maybe create a signature with them.

[lookin]

From what I can gather, Craigslist isn't your ordinary website, your ordinary business, or your ordinary anything. Although it ranks 7th in page views in the U. S., and 33rd worldwide, its corporate headquarters is still in the founder's apartment in San Francisco's Sunset District.

According to Wikipedia, the CEO told Wall Street analysts that the company "has little interest in maximizing profit, instead it prefers to help users find cars, apartments, jobs, and dates."

Although eBay snagged a 25% ownership from one of the original investors, they're not presently calling the shots, and Craigslist is still operating according to the founder's original user-oriented cooperative vision. There's no advertising at all, most listings are free, and much of the money that does flow into the company flows right out again to support community grassroots organizations.

I'm sure Craig Newmark could be a billionaire any time he decides to abandon his roots and play footsie with Wall Street, or sell out to someone who will. But he hasn't yet, and my personal hope is that he won't. Until he does, I think you'll find the company doing the unexpected. If Newmark finds the Attorneys General too much of a nuisance, I expect he'll roll out of their way and let somebody else put up with the aggravation.

It always amazes me how freeing it can be to be motivated by something other than money.

[JKane]

From what I can gather, Craigslist isn't your ordinary website, your ordinary business, or your ordinary anything. Although it ranks 7th in page views in the U. S., and 33rd worldwide, its corporate headquarters is still in the founder's apartment in San Francisco's Sunset District.

According to Wikipedia, the CEO told Wall Street analysts that the company "has little interest in maximizing profit, instead it prefers to help users find cars, apartments, jobs, and dates."

I agree they're a pretty different company, with a real small-company mentality. I don't blame them for this, and would not be surprised if they did not even seriously consider moving overseas.

They held out as long as they could in our farking puritanical country, and didn't let the issue go quietly either. Much more praiseworthy than so many of Google's actions these last several years...

[TotallyOz]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/technology/06craigslist.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Fascinating article on why some think this is a ploy and that Craig's List is going to come back with a vengeance.

Attached article:

SAN FRANCISCO — Craigslist, by shutting off its “adult services” section and slapping a “censored” label in its place, may be engaging in a high-stakes stunt to influence public opinion, some analysts say.

Since blocking access to the ads as the Labor Day weekend began — and suspending a revenue stream that could bring in an estimated $44 million this year — Craigslist has refused to discuss its motivations. But using the word “censored” suggests that the increasingly combative company is trying to draw attention to its fight with state attorneys general over sex ads and to issues of free speech on the Internet.

The law has been on Craigslist’s side. The federal Communications Decency Act protects Web sites against liability for what their users post on the sites. And last year, the efforts of attorneys general were stymied when a federal judge blocked South Carolina’s attorney general from prosecuting Craigslist executives for listings that resulted in prostitution arrests.

“It certainly appears to be a statement about how they feel about being judged in the court of public opinion,” said Thomas R. Burke, a First Amendment lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine who specializes in Internet law and does not work for Craigslist. “It’s certainly the law that they’re not liable for it, but it’s another matter if the attorneys general are saying change your ways.”

Attorneys general and advocacy groups have continued to pressure the company to remove the “adult services” section. A letter from 17 state attorneys general dated Aug. 24 demanded that Craigslist close the section, contending that it helped facilitate prostitution and the trafficking of women and children.

The “adult services” section of Craigslist was still blocked in the United States on Sunday evening. “Sorry, no statement,” Susan MacTavish Best, Craigslist’s spokeswoman, wrote on Sunday in response to an e-mail message.

Analysts said that if the block was a temporary statement of protest, it could backfire because of the avalanche of news coverage that the site had received for taking down the ads.

“I’m very convinced that this is permanent, even if it was not their intention to make it permanent,” said Peter M. Zollman, founding principal of the Advanced Interactive Media Group, a consulting firm that follows Craigslist closely. “I think it will be difficult, if not impossible, for them to go back and reopen that section without really running into a buzzsaw of negative publicity and reaction.”

Attorneys general in several states said they had so far been unable to get any information from Craigslist.

“If this announcement is a stunt or a ploy, it will only redouble our determination to pursue this issue with Craigslist, because they would be in a sense be thumbing their nose at the public interest,” Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general who has headed the campaign against Craigslist, said in an interview by phone on Sunday.

Mr. Blumenthal said Craigslist’s outside lawyer had been in touch with his office, but that the lawyer had not clarified whether the shutdown of the section was permanent, or said when Craigslist might make a statement.

Even though courts have said that Craigslist is protected under federal law, Mr. Blumenthal said part of his mission was to rally public support to change federal law.

“Raising public awareness is extraordinarily important, because it increases support for changes in the law that will hold them accountable,” he said. “Their view of the law, which is blanket immunity for every site on the Internet, never has been upheld by the United States Supreme Court, and I think there is some serious doubt.”

Richard Cordray, the Ohio attorney general, said in an interview by phone on Sunday: “We’re taking it at face value. I think it’s a step forward, maybe grudging, in response to the efforts of the attorneys general.”

But Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois, was more skeptical about Craigslist’s intentions. “Certainly because of the way they did it,” she said, “it leaves an open question as to whether this is truly the end of adult services on Craigslist or if this is just a continuing battle.”

For a site that prides itself on being a neighborly town square, Craigslist has been increasingly pugnacious in response to its critics.

Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist’s chief executive, has written screeds on the company blog explaining and defending Craigslist’s efforts to combat sex crimes, including manually screening sex ads and meeting with advocacy groups.

“Craigslist is committed to being socially responsible, and when it comes to adult services ads, that includes aggressively combating violent crime and human rights violations, including human trafficking and the exploitation of minors,” he wrote last month.

But he also uses the blog to lash out at eBay, an investor and a competitor that also has a sex ads service, and Craigslist critics and reporters who question Craigslist’s actions on sex ads.

Last month, Amber Lyon of CNN reported about sex ads on Craigslist and questioned Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist and who is no longer a manager at the company, outside a conference where he spoke about a different topic.

In a blog post addressed to Ms. Lyon, Mr. Buckmaster responded: “There is a class of ‘journalists’ known for gratuitously trashing respected organizations and individuals, ignoring readily available facts in favor of rank sensationalism and self-promotion. They work for tabloid media.”

And he wrote a sarcastic post titled “Advocate Indeed” in response to a television appearance by Malika Saada Saar, executive director of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, a nonprofit group that has urged Craigslist to shut the sex ads section.

Though sex ads on Craigslist are the most salacious example of the debate over free speech on the Internet, it is a battle being waged across the Web. Yelp, the review site for local businesses, has been repeatedly sued by small businesses for what its users write. The suits have been dismissed by courts citing the Communications Decency Act or withdrawn by defendants once they learned about Web sites’ immunity, said Vince Sollitto, a Yelp spokesman.

Some Internet law experts say the issue strikes at the heart of free speech. “For the government to intervene in Internet communication, it has to do that very carefully,” said Margaret M. Russell, a law professor at Santa Clara University in California. “The ultimate goal, public safety, is really important, but these are venues of free speech communication. They’re not conspirators in crimes.”

The erotic services categories are still accessible on Craigslist sites outside the United States, and the personals section of the site is still active. Craigslist has said that if it takes down the “adult services” section, sex ads will simply migrate to other parts of the site.

Doubts about whether the block on the sex ads section is permanent are fueled by the prospect of Craigslist losing a significant amount of money. The ads, which cost $10 to post and $5 to repost, are expected to bring in $44.4 million this year, about a third of Craigslist’s annual revenue, according to the Advanced Interactive Media Group.

Still, it is difficult to predict the motives of the company, which employs about 30 people and operates in a quirky, opaque and at times petulant manner.

“It would surprise me if they didn’t try to find a workable solution to reintroduce some of that income,” said M. Ryan Calo, a senior research fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. “Although, that said, Craigslist is not your typical company in the sense that it doesn’t seem to be exclusively motivated by profit.”

[lookin]

"If this announcement is a stunt or a ploy, it will only redouble our determination to pursue this issue with Craigslist, because they would be in a sense be thumbing their nose at the public interest," Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general who has headed the campaign against Craigslist, said in an interview by phone on Sunday.

Sounds like Blumenthal doesn't want to give up his primary prey. He's probably got a whole game plan built around running Craigslist to ground, and they just disappeared down the rabbit hole. Now he needs to find another rabbit.

If Newmark really is thumbing his nose at the censors, good for him. Somebody had to do it.

[lookin]

They held out as long as they could in our farking puritanical country...

Bad as our homegrown prudes are, they're a pale imitation of the wackos in Iran, where a woman may be stoned to death this week for adultery.

Lawyer says Iranian woman could be stoned soon

It never ceases to amaze me what we are capable of in the name of 'religion'.

I can't imagine a just God willing to be in the same room with these monsters.

[AdamSmith]

a just God

But you contradict yourself.

[TampaYankee]

Bad as our homegrown prudes are, they're a pale imitation of the wackos in Iran, where a woman may be stoned to death this week for adultery.

Lawyer says Iranian woman could be stoned soon

It never ceases to amaze me what we are capable of in the name of 'religion'.

I can't imagine a just God willing to be in the same room with these monsters.

Of course if he were, then he wouldn't.

The real scourge and evil that much religion has practiced is laid to the co-opting of God to sanction the evil views of human individuals, whether for power, influence, fortune or their own warped hang-ups. Part of the pathology of human beings who are capable of man things for both good and ill.

[Guest JamesWilson]

We are in municipal election season up here in Canada, and now the RCMP is starting to get into the act:

Toronto Star - RCMP wants Craigslist to stop erotic ads in Canada

RCMP wants Craigslist to stop erotic ads in Canada

Toronto Star

September 8, 2010

The Canadian Press

The RCMP says it's working with Craigslist to try to stop erotic ads that many fear are a cover for prostitution from being posted on the company's website in Canada.

Craigslist shut down its adult services section in the United States on Saturday and replaced it with a black bar that simply says "censored." The move came after a group of state attorneys general said there weren't enough protections against blocking potentially illegal ads promoting prostitution.

But as of Wednesday morning, the Canadian site still had an "erotic" link listed under services. Mounties want that to change.

"The RCMP Human Trafficking National Co-ordination Centre has partnered with Craigslist and has met (with Craigslist officials) on several occasions trying to implement some measures in Canada," Sgt. Marie-Claude Arsenault said at a news conference in Winnipeg.

"There's already some measures in place ... not all the ones that are in the U.S. at the time, but we are speaking with them and trying to bring these measures in Canada."

When asked directly if the RCMP wanted Craigslist to shut down adult sections on its Canadian website, Arsenault said: "These are the kinds of measures we are looking at in Canada."

A Craigslist spokeswoman did not immediately respond to emails from The Canadian Press requesting comment.

However, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster said in a May blog posting that the company's ads were no worse than those published by the alternative newspaper chain Village Voice Media. He cited one explicit ad which included the phrase: "anything goes $90," the Associated Press reported.

The "erotic" link on the Canadian site has a warning and disclaimer attached to it. It says users agree "to flag as 'prohibited' anything illegal or in violation of the Craigslist terms of use. This includes, but is not limited to, offers for or the solicitation of prostitution."

Media and legal experts suggest Craigslist may have to follow suit by shutting down such services in Canada.

"There was a huge wave of pressure coming from all kinds of points of interest, pressuring Craigslist to shut down this service, from the community and also from government," said Sidneyeve Matrix, a media professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.

"The pushback is the same in the U.S. and Canada."

Matrix's colleague at Queen's University, law professor Art Cockfield, said there are perhaps thousand of sites that offer similar adult services.

But Cockfield said a lot of hostility was directed towards Craigslist in the U.S. was because of the so-called Craigslist killer. The adult services listings came under new scrutiny after the jailhouse suicide last month of a former medical student who was awaiting trial in the killing of a masseuse he met through Craigslist.

"Because of the U.S. action, because it's decided to shut this down south of the border, may be there will be public pressure on Craigslist and there also may be a bit of a Canadian public outcry against law enforcement saying 'Why aren't you putting pressure on them like the American authorities did?' " said Cockfield.

He's unsure if the company could be legally forced to shut down in Canada.

"If the law enforcement officials believe that they were engaged in illegal activities, actually acting as an online pimp, then that is a violation of our federal criminal laws and they could be prosecuted," said Cockfield.

Removing the service from Craigslist won't stop human trafficking or prostitution, but Matrix believes it's a good step forward.

"It's very easy to find interviews with people who are working in the ... sex trade who have said that (Craigslist) is the best way for them to advertise," she said.

"Not having that service will definitely be an obvious disincentive and it will just make buying sex and finding those kind of activities just a little bit harder."

[Guest JamesWilson]

Here is an interesting perspective on why going after Craigslist (and other online advertisers) may not be such a good thing public policy-wise...

How Censoring Craigslist Helps Pimps, Child Traffickers and Other Abusive Scumbags

How Censoring Craigslist Helps Pimps, Child Traffickers and Other Abusive Scumbags

By danah boyd

Alternet

I believe that the current efforts to censor Craigslist's "adult services" achieves the absolute opposite of their intention.

September 7, 2010

For the last 12 years, I've dedicated immense amounts of time, money and energy to end violence against women and children. As a victim of violence myself, I'm deeply committed to destroying any institution or individual leveraging the sex-power matrix that results in child trafficking, nonconsensual prostitution, domestic violence and other abuses. If I believed that censoring Craigslist would achieve these goals, I'd be the first in line to watch them fall. But from the bottom of my soul and the depths of my intellect, I believe that the current efforts to censor Craigslist's "adult services" achieves the absolute opposite. Rather than helping those who are abused, it fundamentally helps pimps, human traffickers and others who profit off of abusing others.

On Friday, under tremendous pressure from US attorneys general and public advocacy groups, Craigslist shut down its "Adult Services" section. There is little doubt that this space has been used by people engaged in all sorts of illicit activities, many of which result in harmful abuses. But the debate that has ensued has centered on the wrong axis, pitting protecting the abused against freedom of speech. What's implied in public discourse is that protecting potential victims requires censorship; thus, anti-censorship advocates are up in arms attacking regulators for trying to curtail First Amendment rights. While I am certainly a proponent of free speech online, I find it utterly depressing that these groups fail to see how this is actually an issue of transparency, not free speech. And how this does more to hurt potential victims than help.

If you've ever met someone who is victimized through trafficking or prostitution, you'll hear a pretty harrowing story about what it means to be invisible and powerless, feeling like no one cares and no one's listening. Human trafficking and most forms of abusive prostitution exist in a black market, with corrupt intermediaries making connections and offering "protection" to those who they abuse for profit. The abused often have no recourse, either because their movements are heavily regulated (as with those trafficked) or because they're violating the law themselves (as with prostitutes).

The Internet has changed the dynamics of prostitution and trafficking, making it easier for prostitutes and traffickers to connect with clients without too many layers of intermediaries. As a result, the Internet has become an intermediary, often without the knowledge of those internet service providers (ISPs) who are the conduits. This is what makes people believe that they should go after ISPs like Craigslist. Faulty logic suggests that if Craigslist is effectively a digital pimp who's profiting off of online traffic, why shouldn't it be prosecuted as such?

The problem with this logic is that it fails to account for three important differences: 1) most ISPs have a fundamental business -- if not moral -- interest in helping protect people; 2) the visibility of illicit activities online makes it much easier to get at, and help, those who are being victimized; and 3) a one-stop-shop is more helpful for law enforcement than for criminals. In short, Craigslist is not a pimp, but a public perch from which law enforcement can watch without being seen.

1. Internet Services Providers have a fundamental business interest in helping people.

When Internet companies profit off of online traffic, they need their clients to value them and the services they provide. If companies can't be trusted -- especially when money is exchanging hands -- they lose business. This is especially true for companies that support peer-to-peer exchange of money and goods. This is what motivates services like eBay and Amazon to make it very easy for customers to get refunded when ripped off. Craigslist has made its name and business on helping people connect around services, and while there are plenty of people who use its openness to try to abuse others, Craigslist is deeply committed to reducing fraud and abuse. It's not always successful -- no company is. And the more freedom that a company affords, the more room for abuse. But what makes Craigslist especially beloved is that it is run by people who truly want to make the world a better place and who are deeply committed to a healthy civic life.

I have always been in awe of Craig Newmark, Craigslist's founder and now a "customer service rep" with the company. He's made a pretty penny off of Craigslist, so what's he doing with it? Certainly not basking in the Caribbean sun. He's dedicated his life to public service, working with organizations like Sunlight Foundation to increase government accountability and using his resources and networks to help out countless organizations like Donors Choose, Kiva, Consumer Reports and Iraq/Afghani Vets of America. This is the villain behind Craigslist trying to pimp out abused people?

Craigslist is in a tremendous position to actually work with law enforcement, both because it's in their economic interests and because the people behind it genuinely want to do good in this world. This isn't an organization dedicated to profiting off of criminals, hosting servers in corrupt political regimes to evade responsibility. This is an organization with both the incentives and interest to actually help. And they have a long track record of doing so.

2. Visibility makes it easier to help victims.

If you live a privileged life, your exposure to prostitution may be limited to made-for-TV movies and a curious dip into the red-light district of Amsterdam. You are most likely lucky enough to never have known someone who was forced into prostitution, let alone someone who was sold by or stolen from their parents as a child. Perhaps if you live in San Francisco or Las Vegas, you know a high-end escort who has freely chosen her life and works for an agency or lives in a community where she's highly supported. Truly consensual prostitutes do exist, but the vast majority of prostitution is nonconsensual, either through force or desperation. And, no matter how many hip-hop songs try to imply otherwise, the vast majority of pimps are abusive, manipulative, corrupt, addicted bastards. To be fair, I will acknowledge that these scumbags are typically from abusive environments where they too are forced into their profession through circumstances that are unimaginable to most middle class folks. But I still don't believe that this justifies their role in continuing the cycle of abuse.

Along comes the Internet, exposing you to the underbelly of the economy, making visible the sex-power industry that makes you want to vomit. Most people see such cesspools online and imagine them to be the equivalent of a crack house opening up in their gated community. Let's try a different metaphor. Why not think of it instead as a documentary movie happening in real time where you can actually do something about it?

Visibility is one of the trickiest issues in advocacy. Anyone who's worked for a nonprofit knows that getting people to care is really, really hard. Movies are made in the hopes that people will watch them and do something about the issues present. Protests and marathons are held in the hopes of bringing awareness to a topic. But there's nothing like the awareness that can happen when it's in your own backyard. And this is why advocates spend a lot of time trying to bring issues home to people.

Visibility serves many important purposes in advocacy. Not only does it motivate people to act, but it also shines a spotlight on every person involved in the issue at hand. In the case of nonconsensual prostitution and human trafficking, this means that those who are engaged in these activities aren't so deeply underground as to be invisible. They're right there. And while they feel protected by the theoretical power of anonymity and the belief that no one can physically approach and arrest them, they're leaving traces of all sorts that make them far easier to find than most underground criminals.

3. Law enforcement can make online spaces risky for criminals.

Law enforcement is always struggling to gain access to underground networks in order to go after the bastards who abuse people for profit. Underground enforcement is really difficult, and it takes a lot of time to invade a community and build enough trust to get access to information that will hopefully lead to the dens of sin. While it always looks so easy on TV, there's nothing easy or pretty about this kind of work. The Internet has given law enforcement more data than they even know what to do with, more information about more people engaged in more horrific abuses than they've ever been able to obtain through underground work. It's far too easy to mistake more data for more crime and too many aspiring governors use the increase of data to spin the public into a frenzy about the dangers of the Internet. The increased availability of data is not the problem; it's a godsend for getting at the root of the problem and actually helping people.

When law enforcement is ready to go after a criminal network, they systematically set up a sting, trying to get as many people as possible, knowing that whoever they have underground will immediately lose access the moment they act. The Internet changes this dynamic, because it's a whole lot easier to be underground online, to invade networks and build trust, to go after people one at a time, to grab victims as they're being victimized. It's a lot easier to set up stings online, posing as buyers or sellers and luring scumbags into making the wrong move. All without compromising informants.

Working with ISPs to collect data and doing systematic online stings can make an online space more dangerous for criminals than for victims because this process erodes the trust in the intermediary, the online space. Eventually, law enforcement stings will make a space uninhabitable for criminals by making it too risky for them to try to operate there. Censoring a space may hurt the ISP but it does absolutely nothing to hurt the criminals. Making a space uninhabitable by making it risky for criminals to operate there -- and publicizing it -- is far more effective. This, by the way, is the core lesson that Giuliani's crew learned in New York. The problem with this plan is that it requires funding law enforcement.

4. Using the Internet to combat the sex-power industry

It makes me scream when I think of how many resources have been used attempting to censor Craigslist instead of leveraging it as a space for effective law enforcement. During the height of the moral panic over sexual predators on MySpace, 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. Sure, many of these scumbags have an incentive to be as visible as possible to reach as many possible clients as possible, and so they will move on and invade a new service where they can reach clients. And they'll make that ISP's life hell by putting them in the spotlight. And maybe they'll choose an offshore one that American law enforcement can do nothing about. Censorship online is nothing more than whack-a-mole, pushing the issue elsewhere or more underground.

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. This will be particularly devastating for the low-end prostitutes who were using Craigslist to escape violent pimps. Keep in mind that occasionally getting beaten up by a scary john is often a whole lot more desirable for many than the regular physical, psychological, and economic abuse they receive from their pimps. So while it'll make it temporarily harder for clients to get access to abusive services, nothing good will come out of it in the long run.

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.

(My views on this matter do not necessarily represent the views of any institution with which I'm affiliated.)

danah boyd is a Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

To follow her work and findings, see:

•Blog: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts

•Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/zephoria

•Papers: http://www.danah.org/papers

[axiom2001]

Although I cherish my citizenship, I find the United States of America to be much too damn prudish even in the 21st century! We should be more open in allowing persons to do as pleased as long as NO ONE is hurt or killed or injured in any way!

[Guest lurkerspeaks]

noticed this morning that not only is the black "CENSORED" label missing, now the entire space were adult or erotic services section was is gone...looks like it is true....