Caving to pressure (from, like, attorneys general and stuff) to stop acting as a hub for prostitution, Craigslist has removed its “Adult Services” section for all U.S. cities. Where dozens of blue headlines offering special friendships used to live is now just the word “Censored.”
EARLIER:
FLIP-FLOP: Craigslist Yanks Sex Listings (And Why It’s a Terrible Decision)
Michael
And so, let the First Amendment legal games begin, as all this traffic moves to other Internet portals. Yawn.
B
Re No. 1 · Michael
The SF Gate article on it http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=71630&tsp=1 mentions that the censorship is only within the U.S. (they are probably using IP addresses to determine approximate locations) and that the “erotic services” stuff is available in other countries.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/29/BUGI1F4F9K.DTL discusses some of the issues.
Nobody in the press has realized that one can quite likely use proxy servers located outside the U.S. to reach the “adult services” section of craigslist.
Queer Supremacist
None of this crap would happen if the United States would just legalize prostitution.
But anyone who has to pay for sex is a loser with too much money and no idea of how to spend it wisely.
Hyhybt
@B: Aren’t offerings on Craigslist divided up by city anyway, though? Even if they weren’t for all things, prostitution is, by its nature, pretty well limited by location. I mean, if you were to advertise yourself, you wouldn’t want to do so globally and then hope that whoever answers just happens to be within reasonable traveling distance.
B
No. 4 · Hyhybt wrote, “@B: Aren’t offerings on Craigslist divided up by city anyway, though? Even if they weren’t for all things, prostitution is, by its nature, pretty well limited by location. I mean, if you were to advertise yourself, you wouldn’t want to do so globally and then hope that whoever answers just happens to be within reasonable traveling distance.”
Just because you can’t access it using a U.S. IP address doesn’t mean that someone in another country can’t see or post listings for U.S. cities: it depends on how Craiglist implemented the restriction.
Even if they do remove the web pages for U.S. cities in this category, someone might just post under a different city and describe the actual location in the text – users would have to search in this case.
Finally, obscuring the locations would presumably appeal to the very worst of the lot – the people allegedly selling children as sex toys. It is in their interest to be secretive given the time in jail if caught. A little inconvenience while searching is worth it to them if it helps them avoid 20 years in the slammer.
cherrywang
There is definitely a lot of censorship right now on Craiglist. The other day, I had created an offer for Happy ending Massage UK and was unable to post but I am not from the USA.