Prostitutes Have Just Moved From Craigslist To Facebook
from the big-help dept
When Craigslist -- under a peer pressure campaign from grandstanding state attorneys general and some misguided activists groups -- shut down its adult services section, it wasn't difficult to predict that this would do little to nothing to actually slow down or prevent prostitution. Instead, it would just drive those activities to other sites, and those sites might not work quite as closely with law enforcement as Craigslist did. In fact, we noted that Craigslist was a very useful tool for law enforcement to actually track down and crack prostitution rings.Anyway, as expected, it appears that the activity hasn't gone away, it's just moved elsewhere. News.com highlights how it appears that Facebook has become the site of choice for prostitutes, picking up on a small bit of some new research on prostitution by Sudhir Venkatesh. The report suggested that Facebook had already been growing as a tool for prostitutes, but the exodus from Craigslist may have just sped that whole process up a bit.
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Filed Under: grandstanding, prostitution
Companies: craigslist, facebook
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YES!
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Re:
The adult section will be shut down, the prostitutes will move somewhere else (maybe Twitter is next?), the AGs will get reelected because the electorate is ignorant, and we'll repeat the whole process over again.
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Not to offend
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Or...
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Re: Or...
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This will make i tharder to fight
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Ew
*Joe Ew Likes This!*
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Tinfoil hat FIRMLY on
Maybe this is what Law Enforcement had in mind all along!
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Good Luck
I mean, come on, do you really think you can get rid of something that has been around longer than any religion you may be a part of?
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Re: Ew
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hmmm.
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Re: This will make i tharder to fight
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How do you know for a fact that shutting down the section on Craigslist did "little to nothing to actually slow down or prevent prostitution"? What evidence do you have to support this claim?
I'm going to have to say it, Mike: It's faith-based FUD.
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Re:
Did you even READ any of the back articles describing craigslist problems and their solutions? Do you read the articles or just come here to say it's FUD?
Seriously, your entire scare/FUD campaign is getting old.
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Re: Re: This will make i tharder to fight
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Craigslist Shuts Down Adult Services; Says It's Being Censored - and in the article, near the bottom:
Salon.com - sex ads linger on Craigslist
Your Post-Craigslist Guide to Buying Sex Online
It's NOT FUD. It's actual fact based knowledge that you constantly ignore to pile up the rhetoric. Stop doing that!
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AJ is the true FUD...
It didn't happen, so there is no evidence!
Tell you what Joe, why don't you go out into space and prove to me there isn't a vacuum out there and take your eff'd up FUD with you!
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Re: Re: Re: This will make i tharder to fight
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Re: Re: Re: This will make i tharder to fight
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Uhmmm...
[...]it appears that Facebook has become the site of choice for prostitutes,[...]
Could someone please e-mail me some names in my area? LOL
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Re: AJ is the true FUD...
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Prostitution......
THEN you will see some interesting things, lol.
Like SCHOOLS for prostitutes, Sliding scale costs, Requirements for health checks every 6 months, Licenses.....
The list goes on.... and nowhere in it do i see any reason NOT to legalize it, lol.
Heck even the insurance companies would be involved, selling policies to hookers, lol
As far as I can see, would be a nice addition to the economy :)
But, as some church-based geek would say, what do i know?
my thought is, if they offend your church.....DON'T PATRONIZE THEM!
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Re: Tinfoil hat FIRMLY on
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The last two, where it shows that the prostitutes merely moved elsewhere...
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Re: Prostitution......
Illegal prostitutes would remain, and not only that, but a whole new industry of faked legal prostitution licenses and circumvented tests would exist.
It is simply not a solution to a real problem.
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Yo, AC...learn to READ
And, if you are stupid enough to utilize an illegal prostitute, you get what you paid for :)
We DO still have laws against illegal prostitution, lol. And if we didn't, guaranteed, they would be in place at the same time that they legalized it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
The last two, where it shows that the prostitutes merely moved elsewhere...
Some prostitution may have moved elsewhere, but that doesn't mean that overall prostitution wasn't slowed down or otherwise prevented.
And for future reference, Gawker, where "today's gossip is tomorrow's news," is not generally cited as "proof" of anything. Nor is salon.com for that matter.
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Re: Re: Tinfoil hat FIRMLY on
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What evidence do you have to support that it DID slow down or prevent prostitution?
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Slavery is legal/popular again?
AZ where "...buying a guy..." is done in the Home Depot parking lot. However the state government who passed laws to deter this activity (because the Federal gov't is ineffective in enforcing it's own laws covering this same behavior) has come under fire as racist and bigots.
Sorry the typo was easy money and humorous.
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Shut Down Red Light District
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Shut Down Red Light District
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Re: Re: Prostitution......
Legalizing it wouldn't completely eliminate illegal prostitution, but it would reduce it to the point where it's no longer a major problem. Just look at liquor laws for your example...
When the US government instituted prohibition and outlawed the sale of alcohol, an entire underground system sprang up around the illegal manufacture, distribution and sale of alcohol. Eventually, the politicians realized that it was a losing battle and repealed the law. How much of a problem is illegal liquor today?
I'm sure that some crime is associated with illegal liquor, but when was the last time you read a news story about a politician calling for a crackdown on it? Or a report of the police busting a major illegal liquor ring? The fact is that by legalizing it (again), they basically destroyed the illegal market for alcohol such that it's no longer a major problem.
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Re: Re:
None. But keep in mind, I'm not the one making a claim either way.
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Re: Re: Prostitution......
Legalizing prostitution would result in it being like alcohol or tobacco sales. Both still have some people that do things to avoid the laws (taxes, who you can sell to, etc.), but this is the very small minority.
On the other hand, laws that attempt to completely prevent access to desirable goods result in what you say about gun laws, with alcohol prohibition, drug laws, and even DRM in the same category...all are completely ineffective at preventing access to the "protected" good.
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RE 140 Characters
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The reason I'm more inclined to believe his research is because this is the man that hung out with a crack den for 5 years to see their affect on a community.
You absolutely ignored the graph on the Wired article that shows that it isn't going away.
Basically, average, there's more evidence that the Craigslist option hasn't affected a prostitute's (or escort's) chances at the world's oldest profession.
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Re: hmmm.
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Re:
Google search for "Los Angeles scorts" equals about 3,890,000 results (0.23 seconds)
They even use Google maps to show you where they operate and go.
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Re: Not to offend
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WTF!
Not to mention the scandals involving ex-AG's.
Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal
Now a WTF!
Google search for "American prostitutes scandals" equals about 1,680,000 results (0.22 seconds)
Prostitution is so pervasive that not even Sarah Pallin is getting it out of the shit storm (Sarah Palin husband paid for sex according Shailey Tripp)
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Those misguided AGs grandstanding against Craigslist shot their own cops in the foot. They have hobbled law enforcement efforts forever. Just like in the recording industry, when new players tried to work with the industry giants to offer their catalogs on new distribution channels, only to be sued into bypassing the old media, new commercial sites won't work with the cops to avoid being identified to these rampaging AGs.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: This will make i tharder to fight
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Re: Re: AJ is the true FUD...
My proof that it didn't is I personally see the same month to month crime statistics in my city and surrounding areas and this crime has not declined. Since a single source is not the best proof (for me anyway) I also witness first hand, the same amount of "traffic" in certain parts of San Diego as a I did only a year or two ago.
I understand how easy it is to be the contrarian without a viewpoint of your own, or to even have the willingness to have your own opinion but really it does get rather old hearing someone claim there is no proof of anything simply because they wish to not believe anyone else whether it be MM or folks like myself who pass along their actual first hand knowledge. If you won't believe others then you need to go find your own proof and get away from the keyboard for a change!
Often times you simply comes across as a child with their fingers in their ears yelling "I can't hear you! I can't hear you!".
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Re: Re: Prostitution......
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Re: YES!
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By running ads for them of course ...
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The beginning of the end of Facebook
Then the hookers moved into MySpace. An endless stream of women wanting to be friends on MySpace. The noise level got so high that many people moved on.
I've started seeing the pattern on Facebook. One of the techniques is for someone to tag one of your friends on Facebook. That puts their "Come see my photos" message into your news stream even though you're not friends with the hookers yourself. I've been marking those as spam as I see them, but the fact that they are even turning up at all suggests the same patten that screwed email and MySpace will happen with Facebook, too. Once it becomes too trashy, the "cool" kids will move on to something else and eventually everyone else will follow.
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But it is okay to do so in newspapers, yellow pages, etc...
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They can also write off work related expenses, fishnet stockings for example.
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So I'd say the onus is on you to come up with proof that it did have an effect.
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Re: Re: AJ is the true FUD...
A complete and total hypocrite. You've lost all integrity. And, no, that's not faith-based.
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CL made it very easy for girls to casually work in that business. Buy a disposable phone, take a couple of mirror pics that don't show your face, put an ad on CL, and make a little fast money on your back. If you go looking on escort boards and stuff, you would have seen that CL was valued for it's "gems", girls who would appear for a day or two and disappear, usually students, house wives, and the like trying to make some extra cash the old fashioned way. CL makes it easy because it is the ultimate in fast communication, no commitment, no nothing. If you get up today and your husband is away on a business trip, heck, fire up CL and make a few hundred while he is gone.
In the end, that is the real risk on a site like CL (or backpages now): It makes it to easy to work illegally in a casual manner, making it too easy, too simple, and too normal.
Is prostitution itself going away? Nope. World's oldest profession isn't going to just disappear. The key question would be "who is buying, and who is selling". If the client base changes because there are no CL ads, or the girls working change because there are no CL ads, then there has been a change and a difference.
The reason I'm more inclined to believe his research is because this is the man that hung out with a crack den for 5 years to see their affect on a community.
Your mistake is assuming that crack-hoes are the entire market. Crack addled people will do whatever to get crack, CL or no CL. But they are only a subset of all working girls, and it is very hard to take that experience and broad brush it onto the rest of that "industry".
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I am being scientific. Mike claimed that shutting down Craigslist did "little to nothing to actually slow down or prevent prostitution," yet he offered no evidence to support that claim. I don't believe there is any such evidence, so I'm not surprised he didn't offer any. I think he's so desperate to say how dumb it is that he's just making stuff up, so I called him out on it. I'm not presenting "an different hypothesis." I'm pointing out the lack of basis for someone else's hypothesis. Why don't you learn how to use reason, and then get back to me.
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Re: Re:
There is no onus on me, as I've made no claim about prostitution either way. I only pointed out that Mike's claim was baseless as he presented it.
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Re: Re: Re: AJ is the true FUD...
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Re: Re: Re: AJ is the true FUD...
Why should I do that? I made no claim either way. I simply called out the person who did make a claim, a claim that appears to be totally made up.
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Re:
You also have to understand that in order to make a case, the police need to have the girl actually solicit them. That would mean calling the girls, finding out a location, going to some random place (with a wire on) setting up an operation, and sending the guy in and hoping the girl solicits him.
Sorry, but CL wouldn't help much.
It isn't such a black and white world. The idea of pushing the ads off of CL (and other online properties) is to make is harder for casual clients to find WGs. You don't want to make it easy, you don't want to make it simple. They want the ads to be generic in nature and easily controlled (like yellow pages), in a manner that discourages transient sex workers, part timers, and the like. They want to make it harder for clients to find girls, and for girls to find clients.
Catching criminals isn't the only job of law enforcement, it is also crime control and abatement. It's about keeping crime underground rather than in public. It's about making the criminal life less desirable to be part of, and less desirable to deal with.
It is incredibly short sighted to say "but CL could have helped". There is already way more help than the police can work from. Whatever help CL would add is incredibly outweighed by it's harm.
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http://www.seroundtable.com/google-maps-escorts-12929.html
Apparently it is still okay to advertise in newspapers and phone books though.
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Re: YES!
Muwahahahahaha
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Re:
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Re: Re:
And how's that going?
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Re:
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Re: Prostitution......
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thanks tech dirt
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Phyllis the Prostitutue
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Facebook Prostitutes
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Re: Uhmmm...
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Re: Prostitutes
Thank
You
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lol
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did not move
they change it to or on wemon seeking men
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craigslist hookers and where did they go
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Company
Company
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Re: Re:
Its not in US though
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Re: foreal thoe
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