Craigslist Personals, Some Subreddits Disappear After FOSTA Passage (arstechnica.com) 149
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In the wake of this week's passage of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) bill in both houses of Congress on Wednesday, Craigslist has removed its "Personals" section entirely, and Reddit has removed some related subreddits, likely out of fear of future lawsuits. FOSTA, which awaits the signature of President Donald Trump before becoming law, removes some portions of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The landmark 1996 law shields website operators that host third-party content (such as commenters, for example) from civil liability. The new bill is aimed squarely at Backpage, a notorious website that continues to allow prostitution advertisements and has been under federal scrutiny for years. In a bizarre turn of events, the Department of Justice also warned the House in February 2018 that the bill "raises a serious constitutional concern," as it would apply retroactively -- a seeming violation of the Constitution's ex post facto clause. Congress passed it anyway. The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a blog post: "It's easy to see the impact that this ramp-up in liability will have on online speech: facing the risk of ruinous litigation, online platforms will have little choice but to become much more restrictive in what sorts of discussion -- and what sorts of users -- they allow, censoring innocent people in the process."
Government shooting itself in the foot (Score:5, Insightful)
If they really wanted to reduce traficking, they just made it harder. It wasn't terribly difficult to suss out potentially bad CL ads. Guys looking for you to be "generous", and for the DEA guys, "let's go skiiing"... in Florida. By getting rid of this stuff, they just shut down a source where people were providing them with leads. Or maybe they were just embarrassed that they couldn't follow up on all that stuff.
Re:Government shooting itself in the foot (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly -- the ideal situation would be legalization between consenting adults so the industry is in the open and can be monitored for offerings that don't involve consenting adults. Harm reduction, same as with drug legalization -- let the people have their fun while rooting out the real bad actors.
But American Puritanism (from both parties!) won't let such a rational policy be enacted.
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How dare you support the exploitation of Womyn! Womyn's bodies belong to them, and it is purest misogyny to think that a Man can control that with money.
captcha: cringe
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I'd like to see UBI too (Score:1)
Re:I'd like to see UBI too (Score:5, Insightful)
And even if you could be as virtuous as you'd like with everyone else's money, it wouldn't ultimately matter anyway. There are going to be enough men that want sex who are willing to pay for it that some women will engage in prostitution not out of necessity or for their survival, but because it allows them to earn extra money. This may surprise you, but some women like sex as much as most men, especially if they can be discerning in who they're hopping into bed with. If they can get paid for doing what they enjoy, who the hell are you to tell them what they're allowed to do with their bodies?
Legalizing prostitution will do a lot of prevent the kinds of horrible conditions and abuse that many women find themselves in just as repealing prohibition meant that no one had to get shot or poisoned over bootleg liquor.
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If they can get paid for doing what they enjoy, who the hell are you to tell them what they're allowed to do with their bodies?
We're politicians that aren't getting the lion's share of the money changing hands, that's who!
Now shut the fuck up and pay your taxes like a good slave! /s
Strat
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A lot easier to tax a legal business. It's also one of the arguments for legalizing marijuana, of course the right up here are just screaming about the children without stopping to consider we already have one of the highest amounts of usage by children. Same with sex, when our Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional to ban prostitution, they just made it illegal to buy sex and put in regulations like no selling sex within a ridiculous distance from schools. They scream about free speech and being allowe
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Plus, if it's in the open, it can be regulated and taxed. And then the "vendors" could form guilds / unions to collectively pool for health insurance making the entire enterprise that much safer.
But all of those things (sex, taxes, unions, health insurance) are things this Republican Party are against.... so good luck with that.
Re:Government shooting itself in the foot (Score:5, Insightful)
are things this Republican Party are against.....
Republican and Democrat Parties, you mean. Only person who voted against this is a Republican.
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"
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Re: Government shooting itself in the foot (Score:2)
Re:Government shooting itself in the foot (Score:4, Insightful)
When the effect of a bill differs greatly from what the bill's proponents are saying, that leaves us with only one conclusion: the bill's proponents are lying about their intent. It is popular to think of congressmen as stupid. They are NOT FUCKING STUPID. They know exactly what this bill will accomplish, and that is exactly what they want. Everything else is bullshit to win hearts and minds.
They want to reduce Internet filth. There are too many websites with this kind of content all over them, and that garbage needs to be taken down!
The potential harm to legitimate content that wouldn't qualify as filth is worth it, in their minds.
Fairness and what-not are not considerations here. It's all about "cleaning up" then Internet, and that's it.
Re: Government shooting itself in the foot (Score:1)
Trafficking of who by whom?
The answer is the same in all Western nations- by legal or illegal recent immigrants of teen girls, many of whom are illegal aliens themselves.
A classic example of liberals will gnaw away at the basis of our Constitution and civilization itself rather than face a hard realityn you can't permit unfettered movement of just random people from just anywhere into your country if you want to maintain your rights, your civilization and your values.
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Who said anything about ancestors? Only you.
Re:Government shooting itself in the foot (Score:5, Informative)
Stopping trafficking isn't the goal. [techdirt.com]
Immoral to buy a movie ticket - screw MPAA (Score:2)
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But then Congresspeople can't make speeches about how they're protecting poor, exploited children and thus deserve your vote in November.
Instead it actually protects poor, exploited children.
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Back in the '70s and '80s, This type of ad was the mainstay of numerous local tabloid "newspapers," that had just enough articles to qualify for the term. Almost all of them were for women, and many of them were looking for "generous men." There was a special section of personals for men, and I'd presume that at least some of them used the same wording, but I never bothered looking at them because that kind of thing never interested me. Back then, you could tell wh
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That's exactly where this leads; the return of the local weekly printed newspaper!
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There's more than one they. The DOJ specifically protested this law for the reasons you mention.
MOAR litigation! (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't even need to censor people anymore, just ramp up the legal risk and they'll do it themselves.
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This is not limited to the liberals. There's plenty of "conservatives" that have issues with parts of the Bill of Rights as well.
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Best thing would be to invalidate every law that infringes on the 1st and 2nd. Wouldn't take long for a push to repeal them. No laws limiting speech, not even for national security or child porn. No laws restricting owning weapons, not for certain classes of people, not for certain government buildings such as courts or airports, not for weapons of mass destruction.
The 1st and 2nd are very simple, yet the American Supreme Court has totally twisted them. Only some types of speech are protected and only some
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Keep in mind, #1 and #2 don't say the same type of thing about two subjects. In the case of freedom of the press it says "congress shall make no law," and "the press" basically meant small businesses printing fake news and offensive opinions. In the case of the right to bear arms, it says a bunch of stuff about the right to be in a well-regulated militia, and that the right to bear arms shall not be "infringed." But "making no law" is much more strict than simply not infringing on a right. The second amendm
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The 2nd Amendment being about the well-regulated militia and all...
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The 2nd Amendment being about the well-regulated militia and all...
"Well regulated" meant "in good working order" when the Amendment was written.
"Organized militia -- consisting of State militia forces; notably, the National Guard and Naval Militia.[9] (Note: the National Guard is not to be confused with the National Guard of the United States.)
Unorganized militia -- composing the Reserve Militia: every able-bodied man of at least 17 and under 45 years of age, not a member of the National Guard or Naval Militia."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Redefining words is straight out of the dystopian novel "1984".
Strat
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"Well regulated" meant "in good working order" in other trades, but in the military it meant that they can march as a unit.
It means your unit can pass a basic parade drill given by the military in the event that your State calls your unit up for military service. That's why the stuff about being necessary for the security of a State is in there.
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"Well regulated" meant "in good working order" in other trades, but in the military it meant that they can march as a unit.
It means your unit can pass a basic parade drill given by the military in the event that your State calls your unit up for military service. That's why the stuff about being necessary for the security of a State is in there.
Interesting interpretation, but I think we're splitting hairs here. It definitely does not mean the militia were part of the the Federal or State army or National Guard as the poster I replied to implied.
I'd be interested in seeing any citations/data you have about requirements for Revolutionary War-era civilian militias to be trained as marching units. Seeing as much of the fighting against the British was more guerrilla in nature, ambushing from cover, sniping officers, etc, I'm not certain that parade ma
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Nobody said militias were part of the military.
I assumed people who are joining this conversation would know this stuff, or else they should really be doing 101-level history readings on their own instead.
A militia is a group of volunteers who practice on their own, and in times of war are called up by the State or Federal authorities to fight. They're then placed under the command of some military leader. If they haven't been called up by their State to fight, they're only supposed to be training. They're
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If you can't pass a parade drill, then you're not well regulated and you're all going to have to put on government uniforms and go off to boot camp with everybody else.
You keep saying that but I can find nothing that corroborates this.
Strat
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Try historical sources and not political ones. You'll know you're in the right place when they're telling you what happened instead of telling you how you think and feel about it.
Also, any legal history of the 2nd amendment that isn't political will tell you that right at the start, with references. If they left it out, they probably also expressed opinions, and if they did that, they're not a source of information they're propaganda.
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Try historical sources and not political ones.
Then you must have a gistorical source to cite. I've asked several times for a source and you have failed to provide one, only repeating your assertion without evidence
Without a historical citation I'll have to call BS.
Strat
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The supreme court just recently decided that the 2nd protects private ownership, not just militia ownership.
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You added nothing to the conversation other than implying that you paid so little attention, you didn't even notice if your comment was going to add anything.
In 250 years, there is one SCOTUS ruling that talks about the individual right to gun ownership, and they did nothing to establish the boundaries at either end. So talking about it is just blah-blah. They didn't change anything with that ruling. Nothing at all, not even a small detail on the edges.
You were told by political propaganda to repeat the wor
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You're just wallowing in your desire to have me argue from authority to you, but your cries will not result in me doing the basic research for you.
Listen to ideas, and go and research them to find out if they are well-supported or not.
Asking for citations is a privilege you'd get if you were an expert, and had already read all the normal supporting documents you'd need to understand a citation, and if in fact the context of our conversation was such that I would expect you to go and read the whole study and
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Yup, bullshit.
Thanks for playing.
Strat
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Knowledge is for people who can think and read, not for people who whine and play a game of seeking approval.
Approval can't be substituted for knowledge in actual situations, only in your game.
Rants & Raves (Score:3)
The good news is they FINALLY took Rants & Raves out of "personals" and put it under Community / Local News.
I never did understand why it was under "personals" to begin with. I mean, most of the insults there were pretty personal - but even so - it did not seem to fit with all the other "personals" categories.
Idiotic scum run the government. (Score:4, Informative)
And laws like FOSTA are what we get as a result.
Only Ron Wyden and Rand Paul voted against it.
Every last one of the pieces of trash who voted for it need to be voted out of office.
Re: Idiotic scum run the government. (Score:2)
Your recommended punctuation is clumsy and unstylish.
all over and I wonder (Score:2)
The death of Web 2.0 is here (Score:3, Insightful)
The transition of the Web from "Wild West" to "cable TV" continues.
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The transition of the Web from "Wild West" to "cable TV" continues.
Does anyone remember when the allure of cable was "No Commercials?"
Get off my lawn!
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I kind of saw the whole web 2.0 thing as the start of all this.
Time to go back to Usenet/other decentralized (Score:4, Funny)
Fire up those terminal emulators, folks!
(or the real thing (vt320, vt220, vt525, wy60, etc) if you've got them)
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I beamed this in from the other story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I used Procomm 2.4.2. Procomm Plus was a commercial turd.
When 2.4.2 became obsolete, we all switched to Telemate, which rocked.
Whelp (Score:1)
There goes my weekend plan.
No craigslist personals? (Score:3)
Then where else am I going to find the best 100% heterosexual, no gay stuff, Manhood Camping [craigslist.org] where guys get around a fire to J/O?
Trump's Twitter Feed (Score:2)
Get outta town. (Score:2)
Over the past few years it really seems like our government is hell bent on pushing internet facing companies out of the country.(USA)
Why?
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The NSA can break into any foreign computer with no repercussions at all.
-jcr
That's not true, their repercussion is in the form of continued funding.
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Have you looked at the B&O taxes in places like Seattle? The state charges us over 3 times more since we moved from manufacturing in about 1998 to completely Internet-based by 2005. Seattle's tax is almost twice as much for service companies versus manufacturing. Also, both the state and city's taxes are on gross so even if you lose money, you still have to pay a lot in taxes. Seattle is pushing hard to get rid of Internet companies.
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Seattle is pushing hard to get rid of Internet companies.
Nah, they'll just pass a law that businesses cannot leave Seattle if they have Seattle taxes due, and will make sure there's always a tax balance due on the ones they haven't bankrupted yet.
Strat
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Seattle does not have a standing army, nor is it feasible to block any and all moving vans from leaving city limits.
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Those were Federal Environmentalist police, engaged in a Just Cause (tm) during the Obama Administration.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: Hooker ads going offshore? (Score:2)
You know it's coming.
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given his fondness for adult services... (Score:2)
There is still a chance that Trump won't sign it. After all, this legislation hits home for him.
Re: given his fondness for adult services... (Score:2)
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> a calm, smooth-talker who's into little boys more than money.
*rimshot*
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Perhaps we're talking about President Reginald J. Priest [wikia.com].
Hello Slashdot... (Score:1)
We'll be watching you very closely. If you're gonna cave, just shut the doors and turn off the lights. Up until now you have been the most censorship free site around. If you lose that distinction, there is no reason for you to exist.
To the rest of you assholes, YOU voted for this, if you don't sweep all the incumbents out of the house and reverse this crap, fuck you sideways!
To the technical talent, please bring back USENET, and make it unblockable, and tell the whiners crying about spam to learn how to wr
Don't Worry... (Score:3)
"Human Trafficking" (Score:3)
The fundies really did some good PR work to make human trafficking a synonym to prostitution.
Clearly unconstitutional (Score:3)
"it would apply retroactively -- a seeming violation of the Constitution's ex post facto clause"
Seeming? That's a clear, unambiguous violation of the Constitution's prohibition against ex post facto laws: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." There's no wiggle room there.
Deliberately misleading terminology (Score:4, Insightful)
I've noticed that the term "prostitution" has been replaced by the term "sex trafficking" lately. This strikes me as deliberately misleading terminology, aimed at making people think that human trafficking -- that is, slavery -- is what is being targeted, when in reality it is certain voluntary transactions that are being targeted.
This is glorious. (Score:1)
Every braindead conservative on the Internet is now crawling out of the woodwork to complain that YouTube and reddit are affecting MUH FREEDOMS by violating the First Amendment. It's almost like they have no idea what their own government is doing, or how their own Constitution works, or what rights private companies (that they love to defend against regulation) have.
Good thing + Easy Civil Disobedience (Score:1)
Bear with me here.
This is a good thing because the current makeup of the Supreme Court as mainly 'strict constitutionalists' (I won't say 'conservative' because that's a loaded term) means that most if not all of this bill will likely be struck down if/when any case gets to the Supreme Court and there's no doubt that someone with deep pockets will take it to the Supreme Court level as there's no way to meet the obligations of this bill with 100% accuracy. Further to that though while such a case may be abou
Destroying the internet (Score:3)
I remember when CL revolved the escorts section. I said then that they would move to casual encounters- the did; all be it slowing over a couple years. Now this... which only means they are either going to adopt another forum or just spam all the forums. I can't wait for this to reach the supreme court to be struck down for being overreaching and and an overburden.
All forums all over the internet are going to be setup with bogus adds by unscrupulous attorneys. I can see many companies coming together showing all the money spent to censor this stuff but it only becoming more prevalent because attorneys can profit from inflating the problem. You are absolutely going to see adds all over big companies forums.
Hey politicians in congress.... you just screwed over big business and speech at the same time.
Re:Jeff Sessions (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't blame the Republicans for this. More of them voted against this than we did.
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If they're smart, Democrats nominate Barney the purple dinosaur before they give Hillary another go. I mean, she couldn't even win against Trump...
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I'm a gay atheist. You can have sex with whoever you want to. Just don't try to force me to pay for the consequences of your sexual escapades (single motherhood, abortions, family courts, STDs, divorce, sexual harassment, etc.).
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See how offensive that is?
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Why would it be offensive to me? I just said the same thing. Growing up, I knew HIV medication wouldn't be covered by my medical system and catching HIV would likely be a death sentence. Later, my insurance covered the cheap, less-effective medications but wouldn't have covered the latest treatments from the US; if I wanted those, it would have been expensive. All of this was a strong incentive to practice safe sex. Shielding people from the consequences of their choices is not doing them a favor, whether y
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I am from the US.
My medical insurance covers some high dollar AIDS treatment, which means I help cover some high cost AIDS treatment. Something I'm virtually guaranteed never to contract.
And frankly, I'd rather it did than see a good person die from an unfortunate mistake.
Shielding people from the consequences of their choices when the consequence is an unproductive, short, and expensive rest of their life is doing *society* a favor.
Educational improvement wo
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First, you talk about this as if it were an individual choice, but it's not: under ACA, everybody is forced to do this. Now, you personally may be so wealthy that you may not mind spending $1000/
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Second, effective HIV treatment costs a few hundred dollars per year
They sure as hell don't here. I'm going to assume you mean "there", or you pulled the number right out of your ass.
First, you talk about this as if it were an individual choice, but it's not: under ACA, everybody is forced to do this.
Nice soap box. Everyone was forced to do this before hand with their FICA taxes, or if they were like the majority of the country with private insurance- insured through their employer- they were doing it that way. What the fuck was your point again?
the extra spending is for crony capitalism on excessively expensive treatments
The extra spending is definitely related to capitalism run amok, but it's not cronyism. The pharmaceutical industry has realized the power it has w
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Correct: effective HIV treatments abroad cost a few hundred dollars, whereas people pay ruinous amounts for it in the US because of America's broken health care system.
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Actually, Sessions' DoJ raised objections to the bill, which Congress ignored: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4390045-DOJ-FOSTA-Letter.html