One thing missing from this entire conversation: I personally signed up for Facebook at the age of 14. In fact, my friend made it for me and I took it over after he successfully harangued me into using it. I never, as an adult, consented to this statutory data rape.
This is something really important to consider: Should Facebook be allowed only for 18+ people? If I remember correctly they allow 13yo and up to sign up and I don't think they have the legal abiliy to consent to this level of data sharing
I am the same as you, but I worry the opposite. Using an encrypted VPN in a sea of unencrypted traffic paints a big target on you that says "Im doing things I don't want you to see". You can bet they are working on / can already decrypt and some three letter agency is targeting specifically VPN traffic.
This is wrong. SESTA-FOSTA has dramatically lowered the bar. Some quotes:
"The new bill holds website owners legally liable for criminal prosecution for any sex trafficking discussions that are viewable on their platform."
"The legislation says a website is responsible if it “assists, supports, or facilitates” sex trafficking. Some of the vague wording opens up the bill for interpretation and has critics fearing frivolous lawsuits against platforms that didn’t know trafficking was happening on their site."
The bar is not "knowingly aided". The bar is "built a platform that someone else used to sex-traffic".
This is not that vague. If I post a comment about prostitution on HN, HN is not liable (HN is clearly not a sex trafficking site), whereas the operator of The Erotic Review is definitely within scope of getting fucked.
This is about eradicating purpose-driven websites related to prostitution. Backpage's C-team did some really, really bad stuff. No jury is going to convict the CEO of Reddit because someone somewhere posted a comment about prostitution on a subreddit. Section 230 still exists.
After the law was passed, Reddit immediately banned a large number of communities such as /r/Escorts, /r/MaleEscorts, /r/SugarDaddy, /r/weeddeals, and even seemingly benign subreddits like /r/cigarmarket, /r/scotchswap and /r/pipetobaccomarket, among many others. So it appears the CEO of Reddit disagrees with you about how broad his liability is under this law.
If I post a comment about prostitution on HN, HN is not liable
Are you sure? And are you in a position to be making that call?
No jury is going to convict the CEO of Reddit because someone somewhere posted a comment about prostitution on a subreddit.
That's probably why Reddit eliminated basically all the subreddits related to prostitution. They're also probably less concerned about their CEO being jailed than they are about massive fines.
> This is about eradicating purpose-driven websites related to prostitution.
That's the propaganda, but the text does not restrict the limitation of Section 230 safe harbor to only apply to “purpose driven websites related to prostitution”.
> Backpage's C-team did some really, really bad stuff.
None of which requires modifying Section 230 to address.
In my view as a lawyer, SESTA guts Section 230. Nobody is going convict the CEO of reddit sure. But by the time you’re on trial for facilitating sex trafficking you’re pretty screwed already.
Laws need to be clear enough where you can head off charges before they are filed with a letter to an investigator explaining why any case would be doomed. Section 230 drew bright lines and enabled that. If prosecutors think they can get to trial, and SESTA makes that dramatically easier through its loose language, that dramatically ups their leverage.
So craigslist was/is a purpose-driven websites related to prostitution? The had to take down their entire dating section, which was both full of sex-workers and honest personals, because some of them might be trafficking victims. This is one of those cases where purportedly desired first order effects are minimal but obvious blue law second order effects dominate.
when the classifieds sites like craigslist took the erotic section down, people just post ads in the for sale section, the jobs wanted section, the small business section, the services section, basically any other section...
Gosh, it must be so awful for the market for transcriptional sex to spill over to those innocent boards, with the foul unnatural acts that everyone should be prevented. . . oh wait everyone who isn't a test tube baby is a product of a sex act. And look it's being offered for sale, as a contract or service job. Seems appropriate I hope the law bothers to catch up with reality.
They might use certain obscure language as a form of steganography. Just like certain words are non-descriptive (but become descriptive over time) such as in street language or street names for [certain] drugs.
TBH, that sounds sensible to me. Keep in mind that the words mean nothing without judicial process. In most cases vague language is intentionally introduced to give the judge latitude in handing out judgements. The stricter the language, the easier it is to find loopholes.
I think it's probably more accurate to say most people don't care. The average person isn't approaching policy discussions thinking about real-world effects; if one can't be bothered to spend ten seconds googling the effect of a policy before they talk about or vote on it, that pretty handily crosses the line from ignorance to agency (in the form of willful ignorance).
The sad fact is, the vast majority of people are far more interested in how policies look, what they signal, and how voicing support for them makes them look. The actual effects the policy may have is way, way down the list of motivating factors, if it even enters their mind at all.
Yes, your level of confidence in an issue should be proportional to the amount of effort you've put into understanding it and inversely proportional to uncontroversial metrics of how complex the issue is. I was bemoaning those who can't even be bothered to do ten seconds of research, not claiming that that's the maximum anyone ever needs to do.
> A quick search will find the leading arguments pro and con, but no way to know which arguments are right.
This is an incredibly significant milestone in understanding an issue though. There are many many many people who entirely lack exposure to one half of the discourse on an issue; this is exacerbated by the fact that it's increasingly en vogue to consider it a moral failing to even consider the other side's arguments (even for the purposes of rebuttal).
It's sort of like utilitarianism is losing to deontology, except that many of the decision-makers don't really even seem smart enough to compare the two. It's more arbitrary.
That's a bit disingenuous to say. A lot of policies are complex and a 10-second google search is unlikely to bring you anywhere near competence from willful ignorance.
Consider, for example, the science on minimum wage experiments performed in different cities and at different time intervals. The outcomes are conflicting in some cases and, perhaps, are not reproducible elsewhere.
How can we expect a layman to really understand the effect a policy may have, especially 20 years down the line? That's something even experts struggle with.
> A lot of policies are complex and a 10-second google search is unlikely to bring you anywhere near competence from willful ignorance.
I'm not talking about competence. I'm talking about people not leaving or even attempting to leave the state of willful ignorance.
> How can we expect a layman to really understand the effect a policy may have, especially 20 years down the line? That's something even experts struggle with.
It's obvious that my comment wasn't a plea for universal omniscience. None of this is relevant to my complaint about people deprioritizing the effects of a policy, as if it's not close to the _only_ thing that's important.
> Consider, for example, the science on minimum wage experiments performed in different cities and at different time intervals. The outcomes are conflicting in some cases and, perhaps, are not reproducible elsewhere.
This is a perfect example, thank you. Do you know what I would say if asked what I thought the effect of min wage changes are? _I would say I have no idea_, and anyone who tells you they do for sure is lying to you. Accepting that doesn't mean throwing up your hands in hopelessness, but it does suggest a different understanding of the effects of each policy than simply what feeling you get from hearing the one-line description.
Policy, and the world in general, generally isn't as simple as people would like it to be. In democracies, one's insistence on pretending that things work the oversimplified way you want them to has concrete costs to those affected by those policies and is more than a little despicable.
The first page I get when Googling "effects of minimum wage", [1], does not take a particularly simplistic view of the issue. The first paragraph says:
> Recent research shows conflicting evidence on both sides of the issue. In general, the evidence suggests that it is appropriate to weigh the cost of potential job losses from a higher minimum wage against the benefits of wage increases for other workers.
"What kind of persimmon faced killjoy is against a little adult fun?" is a more effective line to use than a dissertation on all the benefits of legal sex work?
Many if not most politicians (and those pulling their strings) passing the laws to enable this crackdown absolutely understand what they are doing. This is about control, at a very basic level. Access to sex and control of sex are a huge lever for shaping society. Moves like this aim to push society in a "traditional" or "reactionary" direction.
And I might be more specific and say "control of women's sexuality". A lot of traditionalist mores are much more accepting of men's sexual liberty than women's.
Yes as normal relationships break down under the stress of social inequality sex becomes not a human right but something only for the wealthy. This has a huge impact on health. They're pushing the limit, once they cut off food stamps for many even food will be something only for the wealthy. But DC may have many enemies but none take more hatred from them than the very citizens they are supposedly tasked to protect and serve.
It's like all the hiring of illegal immigrants, and then hounding them for coming here and doing the work.
I'm not trying to claim any kind of parity between the two.
I am saying, it's another form of persecuting the supply -- and putting it at increased risk -- in lieu of dealing with the demand or even being honest about it.
It's also another excuse -- vehicle -- for the prescriptive moralists. Who, the more they complain about something, seemingly inevitably turn out to be engaged in it themselves.
"I can't control myself. But, by God, I can control you!"
Sex trafficking is a horrendous circumstance. Unfortunately, I'm left with no trust in our politicians being honest brokers with respect to the laws they introduce. Even if they honestly want to address the problem, they will -- heh -- not be able to "control themselves" with respect to how they use the expanded powers, going forward.
It is pretty easy to find the meat processing plants, agribusinesses, construction companies, etc who demand labor at prices not possible on the legal market.
Likewise, it is very easy to find the johns soliciting prostitutes, even high end ones. (Recall former governor Eliot Spitzer)
Hopefully this will spur more constituencies to legalize regulated prostitution instead of having to excuse children being forced into slavery for the greater good of legitimate sex workers trying to make a living.
And note that nothing here is going to stop your duly elected congressperson from booking a 1st class flight to sex slave island. There are 20M+ victims of sex trafficking outside the United States. Some perspective: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/a-...
How many prostitutes have you come across in your daily business (not in your leisure activities)? Many years ago, I was a taxi driver and came across enough doing that kind of work to see that each of them was similarly affected by the business they were in.
I always found them courteous and well mannered. But there was this hardness in them that I could only attribute to the business they were involved in. Almost a kind of lifelessness in them. It is not a victimless crime, it is full of victims - a profound disruption of humanity.
Prostitution has had various levels of acceptability in many societies over the millenia. In some it was a highly regarded position, in others completely unacceptable and everything in between in others.
There are those who choose it as a way of life, there are many others who are forced into it. When we are unwillingly or unable to help these as a society then we, as a society, are failing these vulnerable people as we fail all those who are vulnerable.
In the same way that hiring illegal immigrants hurts the market position of low-skilled domestic workers, hiring prostitutes hurts the market position of women who could otherwise demand more in exchange for sex.
> In the same way that hiring illegal immigrants hurts the market position of low-skilled domestic workers, hiring prostitutes hurts the market position of women who could otherwise demand more in exchange for sex.
People (women or otherwise) who are trading sex for goods and services in the market are prostitutes.
Except that there are acceptable forms of doing so and unacceptable forms of doing so. Compare and contrast gold-digging versus being an escort.
Not to mention that there are acceptable places to do (small counties in Nevada) and unacceptable places to do so (everywhere else in the US). I won't even get into the number of countries that have either legalized or decriminalized this practice.
Finally, the best way to find sex trafficking victims seems to be decriminalization which removes the stigma of speaking out. What's really broken here is that the foot soldiers of sex trafficking seem to be against all this pending legislation, fearing it will drive the practice further underground, rather than assist with battling it.
I'm not even convinced that illegal immigration necessarily harms low-skilled domestic workers. At least in California's Central Valley (with which I'm at least somewhat familiar, having grown up there and having family and friends there), there's a significant shortage of agricultural labor because illegal immigrants are facing crackdowns while legal residents seem to have no desire to fill the positions even at $20+/hr wages. The only option farmers have left is automation, which would actively reduce the number of jobs available and be just as "harmful".
Taxpayers might be harmed, but I suspect they'd be harmed much more severely by food prices skyrocketing because farms don't have sufficient labor to keep up with the demand from a growing national population (let alone global; California is the leading - and in some cases the only significant - exporter of a staggeringly-large number of fruits and vegetables).
Meanwhile, cracking down on illegal immigrants' ability to work and live in the US gives employers of said immigrants more leverage ("work these long hours for chump change or we'll report you and your whole family to the authorities"). Amnesty programs and other means to convert illegal immigrants into legal immigrants shifts at least some leverage back to the illegal worker, which then allows better negotiating power for higher wages and thus addresses the supposed problem that illegal workers are undercutting legal workers.
<I'm not even convinced that illegal immigration necessarily harms low-skilled domestic workers.
These jobs used to pay a man enough to support a family. Where has the money gone? What happens if an illegal gets hurt? Do they get workmen's compensation? I'm sure they get a small settlement, the cut fixed, and sent home. All the people are complicit. It is all about growth and more profit. You can have a sustainable business and employees that get decent pay with benefits.
> These jobs used to pay a man enough to support a family.
$20/hour is enough to do exactly that in most places that don't start with "San" and end with "Francisco". I know full well that not every illegal-immigrant-hiring industry pays that well, but it's my understanding that agriculture does, and that's one industry that seems to be disproportionately affected by the lack of undocumented workers.
> What happens if an illegal gets hurt? Do they get workmen's compensation?
In California at least, as far as workmen's compensation is concerned, illegal immigrants qualify as "employees"[1], so if a legal immigrant (or natural citizen) is entitled to it, then so is an illegal immigrant.
I don't think that's a good analogy at all. People have been hiring prostitutes for centuries. These sites help sex workers take control of their industry and bodies, vs being depending on street walking and abusive pimps.
The big danger in America is the equality between prostitute and sex trafficking. They are not the same thing, and yet we're being fed the line that they are (except in some counties in Nevada).
This is definitely true. These days it seems law enforcement and news agencies seem to use the terms synonymously. It's a very worrying trend because "sex trafficking" sounds much worse than just regular-ole prostitution.
It's possible that moving it off the street has made it so much less visible that these kinds of myths have developed about it much more easily. When hookers were out on the street corner it was a nuisance, but people could see that it was mostly voluntary. Online anonymity has made it more frightening to some.
Safe injection sites are only effective apparently when combined with legalization and/or decriminalization of the drugs injected, source: http://chasingthescream.com/
TLDR: the criminal lifestyle one must pursue to obtain illegal supercharged versions of the drugs is vastly more harmful than the drugs themselves when legalized. I see a lot of parallels here in equating all sex work to sex trafficking. Both sides have their points, but what is the most effective strategy to minimize sex trafficking?
> My sense is that, in most cases, sex workers do not act as their own agents
Your sense is totally wrong. Sites like craigslist and backpage make it easier for sex workers to pre screen johns. Cold street approaches are nearly impossible to screen and very dangerous, hence pimps. This shutdown further entrenches the dominance of pimps over sex workers and makes sex work significantly more dangerous.
Is it time that we own up to the fact that nobody exists in a vacuum? Can we skip straight to the socialism part?