Despite Repeated Evidence That It's Unnecessary And Damaging, Trump Signs SESTA/FOSTA

from the because-of-course dept

This was no surprise, but as everyone expected, yesterday President Trump signed SESTA/FOSTA into law leading to the usual excitement from the bill's supporters -- despite the fact that events of the past couple weeks have proved them all wrong. The bill's supporters repeatedly insisted that SESTA/FOSTA was necessary to stop one company, Backpage.com, because (they falsely insisted) CDA 230 made the site completely immune. Except, that's clearly not true. In the two weeks since the bill was approved by Congress, two separate courts declared Backpage not protected by CDA 230 and (more importantly) the DOJ seized the whole damn site and indicted most of the company's execs -- all without SESTA/FOSTA.

And, on top of that, many many sites have already shut down or modified how they do business because of SESTA/FOSTA proving that the bill's reach clearly is impacting free expression online -- just as tons of civil liberties experts warned. And that's not even touching on the very real concerns of those involved in sex work on how SESTA/FOSTA literally puts their lives in danger -- and how it makes it that much more difficult to actually rescue victims of sex trafficking.

As usual, Professor Eric Goldman has a pretty thorough summary of the situation, and notes that there are still a bunch of open questions -- including the inevitable constitutional challenges to the bill. The retroactive clause (saying it applies to things that happened prior to the bill being signed) is so obviously unconstitutional that even the Justice Department warned that it would doom the bill if not fixed (which Congress dutifully ignored). But, to me, there's a bigger question: whether or not a First Amendment challenge could knock out SESTA/FOSTA in the same way that it got most of the original Communications Decency Act tossed out 20 years ago (CDA 230 was all that survived of the original CDA).

I am also curious whether or not we will see any reaction from those who promoted and supported SESTA for the past year or so, when the rates of sex trafficking don't decrease, but the ability to rescue such victims does decline. Somehow, I get the feeling they'll have moved on and forgotten all of this. And that's because, for most of them, "stopping sex trafficking" was a convenient excuse for trying to attack the internet.

Filed Under: cda, fosta, free speech, section 230, sesta, trump

Ted Cruz Gets Section 230 All Wrong, While Zuck Claims He's Not Familiar With It

from the nobody-looks-great dept

There's plenty to say about Mark Zuckerberg's first congressional hearing this week (like Senator Thune's thinly-veiled threat of more SESTA-like laws, or Senator Cantwell's strange, unfocused tangent about Palantir and WhatsApp) but one exchange stands out as so utterly ridiculous that it bears special note.

Senator Cruz used his time in an attempt to shift the focus onto Republican fears that Facebook is a liberal propaganda machine, and specifically tried to box Zuckerberg into declaring whether Facebook was "a first amendment speaker expressing your views", or a "neutral public forum" — and then explicitly claimed that being the latter is a prerequisite of CDA Section 230 protections.

This is blatantly untrue, as that language appears nowhere in the law, and Section 230 is (as we've reiterated many times during the SESTA debate) designed to encourage moderation. But Zuckerberg's reply was, well, absurd:

"I'm not that familiar with the specific legal language of the law that you speak to, so I would need to follow up with you on that."

That's the CEO of Facebook — a service that not only relies on Section 230 to a staggering degree, but just played a major role in developing and supporting a law that drastically alters it — professing ignorance on the letter of the law, as though it were some obscure statute that only his legal department would be fully familiar with.

Uh-huh.

Now, to be fair, Cruz was trying to box him in with a loaded and ultimately meaningless question — and when you're being grilled by a panel of Senators, you've got to be pretty choosy about if and when you're actually going to say "you are incorrect, that's not true" in response to one of their questions. But... could anyone in that room possibly believe him? Or any of the rest of us? SESTA — which, again, Facebook played a major role in — had already been mentioned several times during the hearing, even alongside expressions of appreciation that Facebook helped refine and ultimately supported the bill. Even if we somehow contorted our brains to believe he is genuinely unfamiliar with the language (again: uh-huh...) that would just paint an equally terrible picture in which Zuck has been only vaguely aware of his company's policy positions all year.

So, that was weird. Senate hearings like this are, of course, mostly theatrical — but that clunky bit of dialogue certainly eviscerated any remaining suspension of disbelief.

Filed Under: mark zuckerberg, privacy, section 230, sesta, ted cruz
Companies: facebook

Federal Backpage Indictment Shows SESTA Unnecessary, Contains Zero Sex Trafficking Charges

from the all-about-the-sex-trafficking-except-when-it-isn't-really-about-that dept

Last Friday, the DOJ somehow managed to seize Backpage's websites, despite SESTA/FOSTA still lying on the president's desk waiting for a signature. The anti-Section 230 law, d/b/a an anti-sex trafficking statute, was declared a necessity by supporters -- the only thing able to pierce service provider immunity and somehow bring sex traffickers to justice by... [checks notes] arresting or fining tech company executives.

The indictment [PDF] behind the DOJ site seizures has finally been made public. It contains a wealth of details about Backpage's adult ads business and a plethora of charges (93) levelled at seven Backpage principals, including founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin.

What you won't find amongst the charges is anything about sex trafficking. Lacey is charged with 79 felonies, which include money laundering (which occurred after credit card companies were pressured into refusing to process Backpage ad payments), conspiracy, and 50 counts of Travel Act violations. Because Backpage processed adult ads for sex traffickers all over the nation, prosecutors are able to bring federal charges for state-level "facilitating prostitution" violations against Backpage execs under the theory these electronic transactions "crossed" state lines.

So, for all the handwringing about sex trafficking and "untouchable" tech execs, the DOJ has nailed a handful of execs and foregone any concerns about their apparent role in sex trafficking. What the indictment shows is Backpage allegedly facilitated a whole lot of consensual sex between paying customers and sex workers. The indictment also inadvertently shows how Backpage made things safer for sex workers.

In one internal email, LACEY actually bragged about the company's contributions to the prostitution industry: "Backpage is part of the solution. Eliminating adult advertising will in no way eliminate or even reduce the incidence of prostitution in this country… For the very first time, the oldest profession in the world has transparency, record keeping and safeguards."

To the government, this is a bad thing. To sex workers, it was a way to pre-screen customers and reduce their own risks. The government really doesn't care if sex workers are beaten, raped, or killed. It would rather force the oldest profession as far underground as possible and presumably let attrition cull the supply side. Meanwhile, it will busy itself with arresting the demand side, because that's the easiest way for it to rack up convictions. It quotes an affidavit from a Boston PD detective stating that "since 2010," the PD had arrested "over 100 buyers of sex of both adults and minors through Backpage.com ads." And this stops sex trafficking how? There's no mention of pimps being arrested despite the same detective making the sworn statement that "nearly all" cases associated with Backpage "involve pimp-controlled prostitution."

But that's about all the nice things I have to say about Backpage. The indictment contains details from internal documents showing ad moderators routinely stripped references to underage sex from ads so they could still allow the ads to run and presumably reach customers. They also show Backpage never implemented recommendations from NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) and researchers to better police ads for possible abuse of minors. The communications obtained by the government also show Backpage withheld info from NCMEC to keep its referrals to less than 500 a month. So, while it was referring plenty of stuff to the child exploitation clearinghouse, it was also holding stuff back so as not to appear to be a clearinghouse for child exploitation.

As for the efforts it made to strip ads of terms and pictures that might have given away the illegal nature of the acts being advertised, I'm less appalled. To be sure, this sort of facilitation is illegal. But the moderation efforts, in some cases, prevented illegal ads from being posted and only allowed those through that eliminated indications sex was being exchanged for money. The ads were likely legal post-moderation, but the acts being slyly advertised, not so much.

The bottom line appears to have been the main consideration -- not adherence to multiple statutes in the multiple states Backpage served customers. That leads to another fact routinely trumpeted by politicians and prosecutors: that the vast majority of Backpage's income came from "illegal" sex-for-sale ads. It's a fact but it's somewhat misleading. Sex ads were the only base service Backpage charged for. It was always going to make the most money from these ad sales. It's not because they were so much more profitable on their own. There's just nothing else to compare it to. Something that costs something is always going to generate more income than stuff given away for free.

On top of that, this ad section -- where Backpage made money -- was already killed by Backpage voluntarily. People selling and buying sex didn't just vanish, though. It migrated to other sections of the site, just like it did when Craigslist killed their adult services section off years ago. The market didn't disappear. It just became a little bit tougher to locate.

Whether you believe Backpage execs are scapegoats or pariahs, one thing is certain: legislators didn't need to tamper with Section 230 protections to make this happen. Plenty of existing statutes were available for prosecutors to wield against the website and its founders. And for all the talk of sex trafficking over the weekend, there's not a single charge related to sex trafficking in the long list being presented to a federal judge.

Filed Under: doj, sesta
Companies: backpage

Politicians Who Said SESTA Was Needed To Takedown Backpage Claim Victory Over Backpage Takedown... Without SESTA

from the say-what-now? dept

From the very beginning of SESTA and FOSTA, its backers kept insisting that the bill was necessary to takedown Backpage.com. Indeed, Senator Rob Portman, in announcing SESTA, entitled his press release "Senators Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Hold Backpage Accountable." And he's spent the past six months pointing to Backpage as the reason we absolutely needed SESTA. At launch, his quote was the following:

For too long, courts around the country have ruled that Backpage can continue to facilitate illegal sex trafficking online with no repercussions. The Communications Decency Act is a well-intentioned law, but it was never intended to help protect sex traffickers who prey on the most innocent and vulnerable among us.

Except, as we pointed out multiple times, that's not at all what courts have said. What they've said is that CDA 230 immunizes the site from certain types of liability. But as two recent courts -- not to mention the DOJ shutting down Backpage on Friday -- have made clear, nothing in CDA 230 immunizes Backpage from illegal activity that it directly engaged in.

So you'd think that maybe, just maybe, Senator Portman would recognize that SESTA was a giant unnecessary boondoggle that puts a ton of people and speech at risk. But, nope. Instead, he's released a statement praising the action and pretending that SESTA will "hold online sex traffickers accountable."

“I’m pleased that Congress has taken additional steps by passing my SESTA legislation to let sex trafficking victims seek justice and allow state and local law enforcement to swiftly prosecute websites that violate federal sex trafficking laws. This bipartisan measure will make it easier to hold online sex traffickers accountable, and I look forward to seeing President Trump sign this bill into law next week.”

Except not a single thing in SESTA holds online sex traffickers accountable. Indeed, it does the exact opposite of that, in that it makes it that much more difficult for law enforcement to track down actual sex traffickers. Prior to SESTA, websites (including Backpage) frequently worked with law enforcement to help them track down those using their platforms for illegal activity. Under SESTA, no site will be willing to assist law enforcement in such a manner, because doing so will provide evidence of "knowledge" and thus, potentially, criminal liability. This sweeps the problem of sex trafficking under the rug, which might make Senator Portman feel better, but does nothing to tackle the actual problem, and makes it that much more difficult to find and prosecute actual traffickers, let alone find and rescue victims held against their will.

Still, at least Senator Portman acknowledges that SESTA/FOSTA has not been signed into law yet. That basic fact apparently escaped Representative Mimi Walters, who provided the amendment that attached SESTA to FOSTA in the House. She actually took to Twitter to claim that Backpage was shut down because of her amendment:

That's pretty incredible, considering her bill hasn't been signed into law yet. You would think that a Representative would know that her own bill wasn't a law yet, wouldn't you? Or does Congress not work that way? Anyway, SESTA/FOSTA is not the law yet, and it clearly wasn't used to take down Backpage. And, of course, what was Rep. Walters' reason for pushing SESTA in the first place? The need to take down Backpage. So, not only is she not admitting that her law (which she said was necessary) was not, in fact, necessary, she's now living in a fantasy world where her law must have helped, despite it not yet being a law.

Can we elect better people to Congress please?

Then we have Senator John McCain. His wife has been at the forefront of the anti-Backpage campaign for many years. Indeed, many people I spoke to on Capitol Hill said that it was John and Cindy McCain's support for SESTA that made the bill viable in the first place. So it's no surprise that Cindy McCain was quick to tell the media how good the seizure is, calling it a "good day." And then the Senator put out the following statement celebrating the takedown, but oddly insisting it proves why SESTA was needed.

The seizure of the malicious sex marketplace Backpage.com marks an important step forward in the fight against human trafficking. This builds on the historic effort in Congress to reform the law that for too long has protected websites like Backpage from being held liable for enabling the sale of young women and children. Today’s action sends a strong message to Backpage and any other company facilitating online sex trafficking that they will be held accountable for these horrific crimes.

But, considering that Backpage was taken down prior to SESTA becoming law, how can McCain honestly claim that the law protected Backpage from being held liable? It did not. It only protected them from liability for actions of third parties. It has never protected the site from liability for its own actions. And the takedown on Friday proved that. So it's quite bizarre for McCain to pretend otherwise.

Either way, all of this is yet more evidence that SESTA was never truly about going after Backpage. That was all just a convenient excuse to gut Section 230 of the CDA and pave the way for changing some of the fundamental open parts of the internet, closing them off and putting up more and more gatekeepers. That those who supported SESTA and insisted it was necessary to take down Backpage are now pretending otherwise just underlines that fact.

Filed Under: cda 230, cindy mccain, doj, fosta, intermediary liability, john mccain, mimi walters, rob portman, sesta
Companies: backpage

DOJ Seizes And Shuts Down Backpage.com (Before SESTA Has Even Been Signed)

from the well,-well,-well dept

So here's a Friday evening surprise: the DOJ has just seized Backpage. If you visit the site now you will see the following graphic:

It notes that additional information will be provided soon, and we'll update this post when that occurs. But first, there are a few important things to note. Before and after SESTA was voted on by Congress, we noted that while supporters of SESTA kept pointing to Backpage as the reason we needed to change CDA 230, there were two reasons why we thought it was premature to make such a change. The first was that there was a court in Massachusetts considering whether or not Backpage had lost its CDA 230 immunity by being an active participant in creating trafficking ads. And the second, more important, one was that there were many reports claiming that a DOJ grand jury was investigating Backpage, and nothing in CDA 230 stopped that from happening (federal crimes are exempt from CDA 230).

Last week the Massachusetts court ruled that Backpage had lost its CDA 230 immunity for at least one victim, and this week a court in Florida ruled the same thing (though for dubious reasons).

And now the DOJ has seized the entire site, suggesting that the grand jury found the evidence it needed to take it down (we'll reserve judgment on that evidence until the indictment is out).

And while SESTA has been approved by Congress, it is still not the law. The President is likely going to sign it next week.

So we have a pretty big open question: if SESTA was supposedly necessary to take down Backpage -- and yet now both of the key reasons many of us noted that Backpage probably wasn't protected have been not just proven true, but resulted in Backpage being seized -- why do we still need SESTA?

We'll be back with more later when the details are out, but for the SESTA supporters out there, let's hear your answers.

Filed Under: cda 230, doj, fosta, intermediary liability, seizure, sesta, sex trafficking
Companies: backpage

Yet Another Court Says Victims Don't Need SESTA/FOSTA To Go After Backpage

from the well,-look-at-that dept

We already pointed to a ruling in Massachusetts showing that victims of sex trafficking don't need SESTA/FOSTA to get around CDA 230 and go after Backpage when Backpage is an active participant, and now another court has found something similar. Found via Eric Goldman, a court in Florida has rejected a motion to dismiss by Backpage on CDA 230 grounds. The full order is here (and embedded below).

As with other cases (including the Massachusetts case) the real issue here is whether or not Backpage was just a service provider, or if it crossed the line into being a content provider itself, and did so in ways that broke the law. To be clear, the court here does seem... confused about CDA 230 and how other courts have ruled, and basically rejects plenty of existing caselaw and the nature of 230:

Some courts characterize the "protection" of § 230(c)(1) as "a broad immunity," but this view is not universal.... And some courts regard § 230(c)(1) as an affirmative defense that needs not be overcome by a complaint's allegations and is not the proper subject of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. Some courts have found that even if it is affirmative defense, the issue of the applicability of §230(c)(1) can be resolved on a 12(b)(6) motion if it is clear from the face of the complaint...."

That basically is laying out a few different interpretations of CDA 230 -- but does little to note that nearly all courts have found it to represent a broad immunity, and one that can be used at the motion to dismiss stage. Instead, this ruling points to a few limited cases that have found otherwise, and acted as if there's a widespread dispute with equal balance on either side. It also exaggerates the finding in some of those other cases, such as in Barnes where the court noted 230 immunity is not "absolute" (that case involved an employee promising to do something, which removed the 230 immunity). But here, the court interprets "not absolute" as meaning "not broad." And, as Goldman points out in his post, those two things are not synonymous.

Also odd in this ruling is that, unlike in the Massachusetts ruling, the court here presents no explanation of why Backpage has passed the threshold from service provider to content provider, and thus is no longer immune under CDA 230. Instead, it just says sufficient evidence has been presented.

Plaintiffs have alleged facts suggesting that Defendants materially contributed to the content of the advertisements, and thus the issue of CDA immunity cannot be resolved on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss in this case.

That's... a pretty important sentence in a ruling, and you'd hope that it was backed up with evidence for why that is (as happened in the Massachusetts case). That's not to say it's wrong. It might be right, but it's important to know what activities take one from being a service provider to a content provider, and courts have fought over these issues in the past. Here, what you see in that sentence above is basically all the court has to say.

The court does note other problems with the complaint, and tells the plaintiffs to try amend the complaint, and this time to actually plead an actual federal claim. As it notes the existing claim doesn't make much sense -- arguing that Backpage tried to hide advertisements of minors, but this case doesn't even involve a minor. However, as Eric Goldman points out, even with this weak of a complaint and with a court that doesn't really explain its reasoning, the court is willing to get past the CDA 230 arguments, and again this raises the issue of why did we need SESTA and FOSTA in the first place.

The loudest advocates for SESTA/FOSTA kept falsely portraying Backpage as 100% immune from any claim due to CDA 230. Yet, this ruling and last week's ruling (not to mention an earlier ruling in Washington, a federal grand jury, and a Senate investigation) certainly suggested that Backpage was not 100% protected by CDA 230. Instead, just as Congress intended with CDA 230, it was protected from illegal actions done by others on its platform, and is not protected from illegal actions that it does itself.

But, of course, none of this seems to matter. Congress overwhelmingly voted SESTA/FOSTA through, and we're hearing that President Trump will sign it into law sometime next week.

Filed Under: cda 230, florida, fosta, immunity, sesta
Companies: backpage

Sex Workers Fighting Back Against SESTA/FOSTA With Their Own Social Network... And Plan To Expose Politicians

from the don't-fuck-with-sex-workers dept

One of the most vocal groups in opposition to SESTA/FOSTA were sex workers, who spoke out about how the bills would put their lives at risk and how it would put the lives of trafficking victims at risk, often making it more difficult for victims to find information on how to get help or to protect themselves. Indeed, there are already reports of information sites shutting down entirely. But it's also interesting to see that sex workers are continuing to fight this -- including reports of a Google Doc making the rounds where sex workers can expose members of Congress who have used their services:

Of course, who knows how accurate such a list would ever be, but it will be interesting to watch if we suddenly learn of elected officials who voted for SESTA/FOSTA suddenly being outed for making use of sex workers. I mean, it certainly wouldn't be the first time an elected official claiming to crack down on sex work was found to have been making use of the services he was moralizing against.

Perhaps more interesting, though, is that a group of sex workers have apparently attempted to set up their own social network, called Switter. It's a Mastodon Instance (Mastodon being the fairly well known open source decentralized social networking platform that allows anyone to set up an individual "instance" which can then choose -- or choose not -- to federate with other Mastodon instances). The stated reasons for Switter are to prepare for the possibility of Twitter banning accounts of sex workers and to have more control over their social media space. As I write this, the site claims to have about 12,000 signed up users.

Of course, I'm not sure that this actually solves any of the problems of SESTA/FOSTA -- and, indeed, this may put a target on the backs of those who set up Switter. Depending on how one reads the law (and, again, part of the problem is that SESTA/FOSTA's drafting is terrible, with lots of vague terminology and little clarification), it's possible that prosecutors could argue that Switter itself violates SESTA/FOSTA. I mean, here's a key provision in the bill:

Whoever, using a facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce or in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, owns, manages, or operates an interactive computer service (as such term is defined in defined in section 230(f) the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 230(f))), or conspires or attempts to do so, with the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person shall be fined under this title, imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both.

Is Switter "promoting or facilitating the prostitution of another person"? You can see how a prosecutor could make an argument that it is. And while the site is apparently based in Australia, giving it potentially some protection from US laws, the US government isn't exactly known for caring about such jurisdictional issues. Of course, if cases were brought against the people running Switter, you would think they would potentially have pretty strong First Amendment arguments for why SESTA/FOSTA is unconstitutional. If they were just setting up a community around sex work, and suddenly faced liability, there are some clear implications for freedom of expression -- once again, highlighting some of the many constitutional concerns of SESTA/FOSTA that its drafters and supporters still refuse to take seriously.

Filed Under: fosta, sesta, sex workers, social networks, speech, switter

Court Shows SESTA Is Not Needed: Says Backpage Can Lose Its CDA 230 Protections If It Helped Create Illegal Content

from the congress-couldn't-have-waited? dept

So, in the lead up to Congress' vote on FOSTA/SESTA, we pointed out that a court in Boston was likely on the verge of ruling that Backpage was not protected by CDA 230, because of actions the site had taken. Considering that the publicly stated rationale by nearly everyone supporting FOSTA/SESTA was that it was needed to get around Backpage's CDA 230 protections, we wondered why Congress couldn't wait to see how the court ruled. Yesterday, the Judge indeed ruled against a motion to dismiss in the case of one of the plaintiffs (there were three in the case), saying that enough evidence had been presented to get around CDA 230 for the time being. The key issue: whether or not Backpage directly changed the content, making it the content creator, rather than just the service provider. Backpage has insisted that it didn't make any changes (that a user did), but the court finds that there's enough evidence to reject the motion to dismiss, and to allow the case the move forward:

The allegation in the complaint that “Backpage . . . redrafted the advertisement [of Jane Doe No. 3] to suggest she was an adult” suffices to allow the complaint by Jane Doe No. 3 to proceed in the face of the CDA’s statutory immunity, which does not protect service providers when they create content, FTC v. Accusearch, Inc., 570 F.3d 1187, 1197 (10th Cir. 2009). The further discovery, while not clarifying greatly the matter, provides, drawing all reasonable inferences in Plaintiff’s favor, a modicum of support for the notion that Backpage has substantively changed an ad, which then supports the information and belief allegation in the complaint. Thus, the CDA poses no bar to Jane Doe No. 3’s claim at this stage of the proceedings.

On the other two plaintiffs, the court notes that merely classifying posts or removing terms that imply illegality doesn't rid the site of its protections:

Plaintiffs allege Backpage revised one advertisement regarding Jane Doe No. 1 by not only deleting words but also by adding a word.... The advertisement initially included the language “Latina shorty,” which was later replaced by the words “Exotic Latina.” Id. Backpage’s alleged alteration of the advertisement of Jane Doe is not enough to transform Backpage from an internet service provider to the creator, even in part, of this advertisement’s content. “Shorty”, per the Complaint, signaled, in slang, a young girl. Id. The deletion of this word did not create content. Backpage added the word “exotic.” The Complaint does not allege that the word exotic carries any special or slang meaning. Ordinarily, the word means from a foreign or distant land. In the circumstances of this advertisement as described in the complaint, the addition of the word exotic is in the nature of editorial change rather than content creation, as its addition does not substantively alter the meaning of the already provided identifier “Latina.”

Separately, the court feels the need to point out that what happened to the plaintiffs, as alleged in the complaint, is horrifying. But that does not mean it's appropriate to blame a tool that was used by those doling out the horrific practices.

Finally, crediting the truthfulness of the Plaintiffs’ allegations, as the law instructs, the Complaint describes unimaginable sexual abuse, repeatedly endured by each Plaintiff.... Nothing about the Court’s ruling as to Jane No. 1 or No. 2 diminishes the harm suffered by each of these woman. The ruling addresses only the applicable civil law. 47 U.S.C. § 230(e)(1) (creating immunity from civil and state criminal law, but not federal criminal law).

For FOSTA/SESTA supporters, they will almost certainly use this as vindication for why FOSTA/SESTA is still necessary. After all, the court ruled against them here. But, in actuality, it should again show why CDA 230 is properly calibrated. If Backpage had no direct role in creating the content, why does it make sense to hold it liable? What happened to the plaintiffs here does sound horrible. But the proper people to go after are those who actually engaged in trafficking the women. And nothing has ever stopped law enforcement from doing that. Similarly, as the court notes, Backpage is still subject to federal criminal law (and multiple reports have said that a federal grand jury has been empaneled to investigate the company's operations).

And, finally, the fact that Jane Doe 3 is able to proceed shows that Backpage can potentially face liability if there is evidence to suggest that it had a real hand in creating the content, thus removing the liability. This ruling, once again, shows why FOSTA/SESTA was not needed to get at the original stated goal of those pushing for it. Indeed, as law professor Eric Goldman points out, this ruling makes it plain that the logic behind FOSTA/SESTA is "nonsensical."

Filed Under: cda 230, fosta, intermediary liability, sesta, sex trafficking
Companies: backpage.com

SESTA's First Victim: Craigslist Shuts Down Personals Section

from the more-to-come dept

It's not like people didn't warn about this. But, following Congress passing SESTA (likely to be signed soon by the President), a bunch of sites are already starting to make changes. Craiglist is probably the most notable, announcing that it was completely shutting down its Personals Section:

US Congress just passed HR 1865, "FOSTA", seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully.

Any tool or service can be misused. We can't take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. Hopefully we can bring them back some day.

To the millions of spouses, partners, and couples who met through craigslist, we wish you every happiness!

This is interesting on multiple levels, since the moral panic against online sites that eventually resulted in SESTA actually did start with Craiglist nearly a decade ago, with various state Attorneys General ganging up on the company -- despite no legal basis -- even threatening criminal charges. Because of all that, Craigslist eventually shut down its "adult" section, which was really what pushed Backpage into the spotlight.

And, as we noted last fall, a recent study showed that when Craigslist shut down its adult section, there was a dramatic increase in homicide, which many attributed to sex workers being unable to use the website to screen clients and protect themselves.

But, either way, the site dropped its adult section entirely all the way back in 2010. And, yet, now it realized it must shut its entire personals section, or potentially face crippling criminal liability. Remember how all the SESTA supporters insisted that SESTA would only target those willfully supporting sex trafficking and wouldn't do anything against other sites? That's already been proven wrong.

There are some additional reports of sites or online services no longer working, though it's not clear if any of them are directly because of SESTA or not, and at least some of them appear to be "escort" sites, which SESTA was clearly targeting anyway (so not "collateral" damage). Some are also suggesting that Reddit closing some subreddits is connected to SESTA as well, though the link there is not entirely clear either.

But a straight up "personals" site like Craigslist? It's certainly at risk (as is any online dating site) of being declared in violation of SESTA. We'll be seeing the fallout from SESTA for quite some time.

Filed Under: cda 230, censorship, dating, free speech, intermediary liability, personals, sesta
Companies: craigslist

Wherein Facebook Loses Recess For Everyone

from the with-Facebook-friends-like-these dept

Hold on tight to those memories of all the good things the Internet has brought. SESTA has just passed the Senate, and at this point it's a clear legislative path to undermining Section 230, the law that has enabled all those good things the Internet has offered.

It is not entirely Facebook's fault: opportunists from Hollywood saw it as a chance to weaken the innovation that weakens their antiquated grip over people's creativity. Ill-informed celebrities, who understood absolutely nothing about the cause they professed to advocate for, pressed their bumper-sticker demands that something be done, even though that something is destructive to the very cause the bumper-stickers were for. Willfully ignorant members of Congress then bought into the bumper-sticker rhetoric, despite all the evidence they had about how destructive this law would be to those interests and online speech generally.

Even frequent innovation ally Senator Wyden joined the chorus mounting against the tech industry, lending credence to the idea that when it came to a law that would undermine the Internet, the Internet had it coming.

With all due respect, that criticism is not fair. Setting aside that many of these companies didn't even exist twenty years ago, we have never before lived in a world where we could all talk to each other. It makes no sense to punish the people who have enabled this gift simply because we haven't quite figured out how best to manage it. We are but toddlers in Internet time, and just as we would not crush a toddler's ability to learn to do better, it makes no sense to punish today's Internet service providers, or future innovators, or speakers, simply because figuring out how to handle the promise of this global interconnectivity is hard. We cannot let the reactionary antipathy against Facebook mask difficult issues that need to be carefully teased apart before applying regulatory "solutions."

But when we tally the score on whose fault today is, plenty can still be laid at Facebook's door. Again, not all of its current troubles are necessarily of its own making: in addition to being square in the eye of the worst growing pains that computer-mediated communication can offer, it has also been misused, and even potentially illegally manipulated, by bad actors keen to exploit the inherent vulnerabilities presented by this shift from a world of physical scarcity to a world of digital plenty. Meanwhile doctoral theses in organizational theory could be written about the challenges faced by large companies, especially those that have grown so quickly, in reacting to the challenges their success has invited. In other words, we need to separate which expectations of the company are reasonable from those that are not necessarily fair to expect from an enterprise pioneering a new business that could not have even existed just a few years ago.

Yet while much of what Facebook does should be viewed charitably, it is not beyond criticism. To say it is like a bull in a china shop would be unfair to bulls, who at least seem to have some awareness of the chaos they leave in their wake as they throw their weight around. Whereas Facebook seems to have little insight into just what it is that it does, where it lives in the Internet ecosystem, and who is in there with it. As it blunders about, stoking outrage that makes people too upset to see the need for nuance in regulatory response, it also interferes with those advocating for that nuanced regulatory response. It is becoming very hard to trust Facebook as a partner in addressing the complex issues its business choices raise when the company itself seems to lack any coherent understanding of what those choices are. After all, what exactly is the business of Facebook? Is it to aggregate data, or to connect people and intermediate their speech? Or something else? These competing agendas antagonize users and cloud the regulatory waters, leading to overreactions like SESTA that end up hurting everyone. The bitter irony of SESTA, of course, is that it only punishes the good things Facebook does—the being a global platform facilitating speech and interpersonal connections around the world—that benefit our lives, and not those that give us pause. But it also makes sure that no one else will be able to come along and perform any of these functions any better.

Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that, as a matter of politics, Facebook allowed this regulatory travesty to happen. Its shocking endorsement of these dysfunctional policies undermined the resistance that the speakers and innovators were trying to mount against these policies that so that threaten them. Facebook may be foolish enough to believe it can endure the regulatory shift SESTA will bring, but even if it were correct, no one else can. Not even Facebook's own users.

Today is a sad day for the future and all the speech, innovation, and interconnectivity we were counting on to help us confront the challenges of living together in this increasingly small world. There is plenty of blame to go around, but the oblivious insularity of one of the biggest actors in the policy space is a deserving recipient of much of it. Not only was it a lightning rod for regulatory outrage, not entirely undeservedly, but it then greased the skids for the worst of it, indifferent to the effects on others. It will surely suffer from its choices, but so will everyone else.

Filed Under: cda 230, free speech, innovation, intermediary liability, mark zuckerberg, ron wyden, sesta
Companies: facebook