FOSTA/SESTA Was Passed Based On Made Up Stats About Sex Trafficking

from the this-seems-like-a-problem dept

Last year we had a post detailing how the numbers that supporters of SESTA were pushing didn't appear to have any factual basis. Some huge numbers were thrown around, claiming that trafficking was a $9.8 billion industry or that thousands of kids were lured into sex trafficking every year. But, when reporters and experts dug into those numbers, they found that they were either made up, involved egregious sampling errors or insane extrapolation. These reports all suggested that while sex trafficking is real, the problem is not nearly as big as politicians and supporters of SESTA were making it out to be.

Now an article in Buzzfeed by two academics provides even more details in how the claims about sex trafficking used to pass FOSTA/SESTA were based on myths. The two academics, Drs. Jenny Heineman and Brooke Wagner point to a ton of empirical research they did (funded by the Justice Department) that completely debunked some of the key claims behind SESTA/FOSTA. The first myth? That no one chooses sex work, but that nearly all sex workers are victims of trafficking by pimps. That's not what they found.

In our subsample of youth under the age of 18 who were, at the time of interview, engaged in survival sex, 33 individuals — 24% —had a pimp or trafficker, liberally defined as someone with whom the respondent shared their earnings. That definition raises questions of its own, and one young woman’s experience stood out as representative of those questions. Rena, who was 16 at the time of the interview, laughed when we asked if she had a pimp. She tipped her head toward one of her friends.

Again, that's not to take away from the issue about those who are trafficking or are dealing with abusive pimps. But, if we're going to tackle a problem it should be focused on the actual problem.

The researchers also studied Backpage and how much of it was used for trafficking as opposed to sex workers choosing to use the platform themselves. Take a guess what they found:

Another myth is that the internet — and in particular sites like backpage.com, which was recently shuttered by the FBI — is primarily used by pimps. This is not what our research showed. In fact, the percentage of respondents who used the internet to find customers remained the same, whether or not they reported having a pimp.

In fact, the only variable that correlated with using an online platform to find clients was neighborhood conflict — respondents whose neighborhoods were marked with disputes that led to physical fights or altercations were more likely to seek customers from the internet. This suggests online platforms act as safety nets and buffers against violence.

And, their research also shows -- as we noted in a few of our posts -- that shutting down sites like Backpage actually puts sex workers at much greater risk of being harmed or killed:

Because law enforcement routinely uses online platforms to entrap and arrest sex workers, it’s clear that these women would rather advertise online and risk arrest — which can spell death for black, brown, and indigenous people, trans people, and people with mental illness — rather than face the violence of the street. Our current federal policy is to take away that choice, and the crackdown on online platforms used by sex workers is likely to push those women into violent situations.

There are ways to deal with the actual victims of course. But that involves doing actual police work. Tracking down actual victims (something that online platforms like Backpage actually helped in doing) and arresting their abusers. But that's actually harder in a post-FOSTA/SESTA world.

And what do we get for this? Well, as Vox recently noted, nothing less than undermining the internet as we know it. If we're going to do that, it seems like it should have been done based on, you know, actual facts, rather than completely made up statistics and lies. Alas.

Filed Under: exaggerations, fosta, sesta, sex trafficking, stats
Companies: backpage

FOSTA/SESTA Passed Thanks To Facebook's Vocal Support; New Article Suggests Facebook Is Violating FOSTA/SESTA

from the self-own dept

One of the main reasons FOSTA/SESTA is now law is because of Facebook's vocal support for the bill. Sheryl Sandberg repeatedly spoke out in favor of the bill, misrepresenting what the bill actually did. In our own post-mortem on what happened with FOSTA/SESTA we noted that a big part of the problem was that many people inside Facebook (incredibly) did not appear to understand how CDA 230 works, and thus misunderstood how FOSTA/SESTA would create all sorts of problems. Last month, we noted that there was some evidence to suggest that Facebook itself was violating the law it supported.

However, a new article from Buzzfeed presents even more evidence of just how much liability Facebook may have put on itself in supporting the law. The article is fairly incredible, talking about how Facebook has allowed a group on its site that helps landlords seek out gay sex in exchange for housing -- and the report is chilling in how far it goes. In some cases, it certainly appears to reach the level of sex trafficking, where those desperate for housing basically become sex slaves to their landlords.

Today, in the first instalment of this series, we uncover some of the damage done to these young men – the sexual violence – by landlords, and reveal how they are being enabled by two major internet companies, one of which is Facebook. The world’s largest social media platform, BuzzFeed News can reveal, is hosting explicit posts from landlords promising housing in return for gay sex.

In multiple interviews with the men exchanging sex for rent and groups trying to deal with the crisis, BuzzFeed News also uncovered a spectrum of experiences that goes far beyond what has so far been documented, with social media, hook-up apps, and chemsex parties facilitating everything.

At best, impoverished young men are seeking refuge in places where they are at risk of sexual exploitation. At worst, teenagers are being kept in domestic prisons where all personal boundaries are breached, where their lives are in danger.

I've seen multiple people point out -- accurately -- that the article's focus on Facebook here is a little silly. The real focus should be on the "landlords" who are seeking out and taking advantage of desperate young men in need of a place to live. But, given that the focus is on Facebook, it certainly appears that Facebook has the knowledge required to be a violation of FOSTA/SESTA:

Despite the explicit nature of the postings on the group’s site, the administrator told BuzzFeed News that Facebook has not intervened. “We have never had an incident from Facebook,” he said. “If they [members] want to post something that will not fly with Facebook I write them, and tell them what needs to be changed.”

This has not stopped explicit notices being posted.

When approached by BuzzFeed News to respond to issues relating to this group, Facebook initially replied promising that a representative would comment. That response, however, did not materialise, despite several attempts by BuzzFeed News, over several days, to invite Facebook to do so. A week after first contacting the social media company, the group remains on its site.

It still seems wrong to blame Facebook for what the horrific landlords are doing here, but, hey, FOSTA/SESTA is now the law, and it's the law thanks in large part to Facebook's strong support for it. So, given all of this, will Facebook now face legal action, either from the victims of this group or from law enforcement?

Filed Under: fosta, groups, houseboys, prostitution, sesta, sex for rent, sex trafficking, slavery
Companies: facebook

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

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

As Expected Senate Overwhelmingly Passes Unconstitutional SESTA Bill, Putting Lives In Danger

from the total-failure dept

This was not unexpected, but earlier today the Senate easily passed SESTA/FOSTA (the same version the House passed a few weeks ago) by a 97 to 2 vote -- with only Senators Ron Wyden and Rand Paul voting against it. We've explained in great detail why the bill is bad. We've explained in great detail why the bill won't stop sex trafficking and will actually put sex workers' lives in more danger, while also stomping on free speech and the open internet at the same time (which some see as a feature rather than a bug). The Senate declined to put any fixes in place.

Senator Wyden, who had originally offered up an amendment that would have fixed at least one big problem with the bill (clarifying that doing any moderation doesn't subject you to liability for other types of content) pulled the amendment right before the vote, noting that there had been a significant, if dishonest, lobbying effort to kill those amendments, meaning it had no chance. He did note that because of the many problems of the bill, he fully expects that these issues will be revisited shortly.

As for the many problems of the bill... well, they are legion, starting with the fact that multiple parts of the bill appear to be unconstitutional. That's most obvious in the "ex post facto" clause that applies the new criminal laws to activities in the past, which is just blatantly unconstitutional. There are some other serious questions about other parts of the bill, including concerns about it violating the First Amendment as well. It seems likely that the law will be challenged in court soon enough.

In the meantime, though, the damage here is real. The clearest delineation of the outright harm this bill will cause can be seen in a Twitter thread from a lawyer who represents victims of sex trafficking, who tweeted last night just how much damage this will do. It's a long Twitter thread, but well worth reading. Among other things, she notes that sites like Backpage were actually really useful for finding victims of sex trafficking and in helping them get out of dangerous situations. She talks about how her own clients would disappear, and the only way she could get back in touch with them to help them was often through these platforms. And all that will be gone, meaning that more people will be in danger and it will be that much harder for advocates and law enforcement to help them. She similarly notes that many of the groups supporting SESTA "haven't gotten their hands dirty in the field" and don't really understand what's happening.

That's true on the internet side as well. Mike Godwin highlights the history before CDA 230 was law and the kinds of problems that come about when you make platforms liable for the speech of their users.

In Cubby, a federal judge suggested (in a closely reasoned opinion) that the proper First Amendment model was the bookstore – bookstores, under American law, are a constitutionally protected space for hosting other people’s expression. But that case was misinterpreted by a later decision (Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co., 1995), so lawyers and policy advocates pushed to include platform protections in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that amounted to a statutory equivalent of the Cubby precedent. Those protections, in Section 230, allowed platform providers to engage in certain kinds of editorial intervention and selection without becoming transformed by their actions into “publishers” of users’ content (and thus legally liable for what users say).

In short, we at EFF wanted platform providers to be free to create humane digital spaces without necessarily acquiring legal liability for everything their users said and did, and with no legal compulsion to invade users’ privacy. We argued from the very beginning, about the need for service providers to be just, to support human rights even when they didn’t have to and to provide space and platforms for open creativity. The rules we worked to put into place later gave full bloom to the World Wide Web, to new communities on platforms like Facebook and Twitter and to collaborative collective enterprises like Wikipedia and open-source software.

Meanwhile the Senators who passed the bill will completely forget about all of this by next week, other than to pat themselves on the back and include 3 seconds in their next campaign ad about how they "took on big tech to stop sex trafficking." And, of course, people in Hollywood are laughing at how they pulled a fast one on the internet, and are already strategizing their next attacks on both CDA 230 and DMCA 512 (expect it soon).

None of those celebrating realize how much damage they've actually caused. They think they've "won" when they really did astounding levels of damage to both victims of sex trafficking and free speech in the same effort.

Filed Under: cda 230, intermediary liability, rand paul, ron wyden, sesta, sex trafficking

Did Facebook Violate SESTA By Promoting Child Abuse Videos?

from the maybe-rethink-that-support,-sheryl dept

Facebook -- and Sheryl Sandberg in particular -- have been the most vocal supporters of SESTA. Sandberg wrote a bizarre Facebook post supporting the horrible SESTA/FOSTA Frankenstein bill the day it was voted on in the House. In it, she wrote:

I care deeply about this issue and I’m so thankful to all the advocates who are fighting tirelessly to make sure we put a stop to trafficking while helping victims get the support they need. Facebook is committed to working with them and with legislators in the House and Senate as the process moves forward to make sure we pass meaningful and strong legislation to stop sex trafficking.

Which is weird, given that the bill does nothing to actually stop sex trafficking, but it does place potentially criminal liability on any internet site that knowingly facilitates sex trafficking. Like... say... Facebook. You see, last week, there was a bit of a kerfuffle when Facebook suddenly started pushing horrific child abuse videos on its users.

The social network’s search suggestions, which are supposed to automatically offer the most popular search terms to users, apparently broke around 4am in the UK, and started to suggest unpleasant results for those who typed in “video of”.

Multiple users posted examples on Twitter, with the site proposing searches including “video of girl sucking dick under water”, “videos of sexuals” and “video of little girl giving oral”. Others reported similar results in other languages.

While Facebook has since apologized for this and claimed that it is committed to taking down such content, how hard would it be for someone to make a case that the company had just engaged in pushing child pornography on unsuspecting users, and there could be a credible claim that many of the videos involved victims of sex trafficking.

And, of course, this comes right after another possibly SESTA-violating fiasco at Facebook in which the company sent out a survey about whether the site should allow adult men to ask for sexual pictures of teenaged girls. No, really.

On Sunday, the social network ran a survey for some users asking how they thought the company should handle grooming behaviour. “There are a wide range of topics and behaviours that appear on Facebook,” one question began. “In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook’s policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures.”

The options available to respondents ranged from “this content should not be allowed on Facebook, and no one should be able to see it” to “this content should be allowed on Facebook, and I would not mind seeing it”.

A second question asked who should decide the rules around whether or not the adult man should be allowed to ask for such pictures on Facebook. Options available included “Facebook users decide the rules by voting and tell Facebook” and “Facebook decides the rules on its own”.

After this became public and people called it out, Facebook also claimed that this was "an error," but it seems like it wouldn't take a genius lawyer or prosecutor to argue that the company choosing to send out just such a survey shows it facilitating sex trafficking. I mean, it was directly asking if it should allow for the sort of activity directly involved in grooming victims for sex trafficking.

Oh, and remember, that even while this is blatantly unconstitutional, SESTA says the law applies retroactively -- meaning that even though all of this happened prior to SESTA becoming law, Facebook is potentially still quite guilty of violating the poorly drafted criminal law it is loudly supporting.

Filed Under: child abuse, grooming, sesta, sex trafficking, sheryl sandberg, suggested videos, videos
Companies: facebook

Sex Workers And Survivors Raising The Alarm About SESTA: It Will Literally Put Their Lives In Danger

from the granstanding-putting-people's-lives-at-risk dept

Last week I asked for anyone to explain how SESTA would (in any way) reduce sex trafficking? Not a single person even tried to answer. Because there is no answer. Sex trafficking is already illegal, and yet people do it. Nothing in SESTA makes sex trafficking more illegal. Nothing in SESTA makes it easier for law enforcement to find or crack down on sex trafficking or to help the victims of sex trafficking. Indeed, as we've detailed, it does the exact opposite. It puts criminal liability on internet sites that are somehow used in conjunction with prostitution (going beyond just trafficking, thanks to the FOSTA addition to SESTA), and uses a vague, poorly drafted, unclear "knowledge" standard that none of SESTA's supporters can adequately explain or define. As we noted, from our experience in covering what happens when you pin liability on a platform instead of its users -- especially using vague and unclear standards -- bad things usually result.

But over the past few days, it's becoming increasingly clear just how dangerous this bill could actually be. Last week we wrote about Alana Massey's powerful article on just how much damage SESTA could actually do to sex workers, including shutting down the various resources that they use to protect themselves, keep safe, or even get information to get out of sex work (for those who wish to do so). It also will mean that sites that provide tools and information for victims of sex trafficking may also be forced to shut down. It's hard to see how that's a good thing.

Over at Jezebel, Tracy Clark-Flory notes that the bill "is a disaster for basically everything it touches," and highlights how survivors of sex work have set up their own Survivors Against SESTA website that lays out in stark detail just how dangerous SESTA will be for everyone.

Shutting down websites that sex workers use to work indoors and screen clients more safely does not stop traffickers. To the contrary, this only drives sex workers, including those who are trafficked, to find clients on the street where they face higher rates of violence, HIV, Hepatitis C and sexually transmitted infections, and exploitation.

These websites hold vital resources for trafficking investigations.

There are no industry standards to stop traffickers from using websites for exploitation. This legislation does not get us closer to that goal, and instead makes it harder for police, prosecutors, or websites to identify and help victims.

They also note that SESTA will disproportionately harm those in the LGBTQ community. It highlights a letter from the National Center for Transgender Equality, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and a bunch of other groups noting:

Meaningful anti-trafficking work should not make those in the sex trade more susceptible to violence and exploitation. After the closure of RedBook and Rentboy.com, sex workers were instantly thrown from the online spaces and communities which provided the ability to screen clients, find out safety and health information and form community. The ability to access online platforms to advertise means that sex workers are able to screen clients for safety, negotiate boundaries such as condom use, and work in physically safer spaces. A 2017 study from West Virginia University and Baylor University found a 17% drop in female homicide rates correlated to Craigslist opening its Erotic section – because it made sex work safer. Taking away online platforms moves sex workers into more vulnerable and violent conditions, including street-based work where rates of physical and sexual violence and exploitation are significantly higher.

Over and over again supporters of SESTA have framed anyone against is as somehow being supporters of sex trafficking -- which is both wrong and blatantly intellectually dishonest. One can be very much against the exploitation of trafficking victims while simultaneously recognizing that SESTA and FOSTA are horrible ways to try to deal with those issues, and to highlight how those bills will not help, and will cause an awful lot of very real damage, including putting people's lives at risk. In response, some SESTA supporters will rightly claim that sex trafficking victims lives are also at risk -- which is true... but that brings us back to the simple fact that nothing in SESTA actually helps victims of sex trafficking. It just maks it harder for law enforcement to find them, help them and to arrest those responsible for the trafficking in the first place. Instead, it gives law enforcement incentives to go after internet companies, while the sex trafficking continues, often in places that are more difficult for law enforcement to track, and while making it much harder for those involved to get access to the information they need.

Elsewhere, groups that work with victims of sex trafficking are speaking out on how much damage these bills would do to the actual victims. They even point out that the demonized Backpage was essential in helping bring traffickers to justice:

Megan Mattimoe, executive director and staff attorney at Advocating Opportunity, which assisted 150 victims of trafficking this past year, says she has seen Backpage provide information about trafficking victims captured in ads along with data on advertisers to aid in prosecutions. “In our cases,” she says, “Backpage not only complied with prosecutors’ requests, but they would also send someone to trial to testify that those business records were authentic.” Since Backpage closed its adult advertising section in January 2017, Mattimoe says, her organization has seen “victims advertised on sites housed outside the U.S.,” where federal prosecutors have neither subpoena power nor Backpage’s cooperation.

Again, it is difficult to see how this is helping victims of sex trafficking in any way at all.

Many more people are speaking out on Twitter using the hashtag #LetUsSurvive. One of the organizers of that campain, Lola Li, gave a fascinating interview in which she discusses why she is so worried about SESTA/FOSTA and the impact it will have on survivors and marginalized communities:

...the laws that prosecutors need to go after traffickers ALREADY EXIST. We don’t need more laws. That’s not going to address the root causes of the problem. This bill is not about fighting trafficking. It’s a way for self-interested politicians and self-interested “anti-trafficking” (rolling my eyes, as if anyone could be pro-trafficking) groups to pat themselves on the back while actually doing nothing to help.

Unfortunately, from all indications, almost no one in the Senate cares about what this bill will actually do. They've decided that since the bill says it's against sex trafficking, it must actually be against sex trafficking, and no matter how many times people point to the damage it will actually do to victims, they're going to vote for it, and then hide from and ignore the very real damage they've created.

Filed Under: cda 230, fosta, intermediary liability, resources, sesta, sex trafficking, sex workers

If You Think SESTA Will Help Victims Of Sex Trafficking, Read This Now

from the congress-is-about-to-make-a-huge-mistake dept

Earlier this week, I asked for anyone to explain how SESTA would actually stop any sex trafficking. No one had an answer. In that post, I detailed how it would actually make it harder to stop sex trafficking on various platforms. That's not because I'm knowledgeable about sex trafficking -- but I have spent 20 years documenting what happens when you make platforms liable for the actions of their users. And the result is never what the people pushing for such liability expect. It's almost always incredibly counterproductive and dangerous.

But someone who does understand issues related to sex work and sex trafficking is Alana Massey, who has written a really fantastic piece detailing just how much harm SESTA will do to both sex workers and victims of sex trafficking. We've already discussed how FOSTA expands the scope of the law away from just "sex trafficking" to cover all sex work. And in bolting that together with SESTA, which punches a giant hole (surrounded by vague untested standards) into CDA 230, it also creates a ridiculous moderator's dilemma for any website. Massey details what that will actually mean.

... the new legislation would threaten to criminalize peer-to-peer resource sharing that makes people in sex work safer and more connected. The very websites that these bills enable law enforcement to criminalize are precisely where I found the generous communities and actionable advice I needed to get out of and avoid exploitative sex work situations going forward. Though the bill is meant to target sites hosting sex work advertisements, it covers online forums where sex workers can tip each other off about dangerous clients, find emergency housing, get recommendations for service providers who are sex worker-friendly, and even enjoy an occasional meme. These are often on the same websites where advertisements are hosted.

Before you say, "Just get rid of the ads, then," know that online ads themselves are one of the greatest tools for protecting yourself as a sex worker: They make it possible to screen clients, arrange safe indoor working conditions, and establish a communication record with clients that street-based work doesn't provide.

Massey has a lot more in that article about how important CDA 230 is, but that's the kind of stuff we cover all the time. What's more interesting are the details about just how much damage SESTA will do directly to the people it purports to "help." Oh, and she also debunks the moral panic leading up to the bill -- specifically the claim that's been repeated by multiple politicians and famous people pushing SESTA, that it's as easy to engage in sex trafficking today as it is to order a pizza. She tested out that claim:

The premise is that right this second and in your own hometown, it is totally possible to go online and buy a child for sexual slavery — that it's "as easy as ordering a pizza," according to Schumer. I put this claim to the test in my local area and surrounding counties via a set of searches on Backpage that have likely landed me on an FBI watch list. Not one lousy "kid," "minor," "teen," or "child" was available for purchase. Meanwhile, Domino's is at my house within 21 minutes of me placing an order, come hell or high water. It is almost as if perpetrators of human trafficking aren't really all that likely to advertise using photos of shackled minors.

And that leads into a much bigger point about just how damaging SESTA is going to be to those victims. I won't quote the whole thing (go read it!), but she directly takes on the propaganda film, I Am Jane Doe, which has been used widely to support SESTA, to explain how SESTA is likely to create more Jane Does, not fewer.

The term "Jane Doe" has two main uses: The first is referring to a woman in court, often a victim of sexual violence, who is not being legally identified in the proceedings. The second is referring to the unidentified corpses of women murder victims. These bills seek to destroy the few lines of defense people in the sex trades have to protect themselves from becoming Jane Does. These online resources are how I found people who could help me transition out of sex work safely. They didn't smuggle me out of a lurid foot fetish party in a suitcase under cover of night. They introduced me to editors and gave me some nice pointers on what I could write about when just starting out. My career trajectory was every bit as boring as most career trajectories are: often characterized by boredom and punctuated by both extreme satisfaction and intense desperation.

I don't feel especially moved to talk about the exploitative scenarios I mentioned above just so I can be summarily dismissed as either a liar or too damaged to speak for myself. I have turned my traumas into practical guidance for new sex workers to help them avoid similar situations. The legislation these celebrities are championing may soon make this healing and sharing process a criminal act punishable by years in prison.

There's so much more in the article worth reading -- including a detailed debunking of what various celebrities have been saying in support of SESTA. It's a must read for anyone who thinks SESTA is going to save lives. In all the writing I've done about SESTA, it's been from the perspective of wonky knowledge of how "intermediary liability protection" laws work -- which made it clear to me that laws like SESTA and FOSTA would backfire and be abused in various ways. Massey's piece has opened my eyes to the very specific ways in which these laws will create real harm for the victims the bill is supposedly trying to help. Please read it.

Filed Under: alana massey, cda 230, education, fosta, intermediary liability, resources, section 230, sesta, sex trafficking, victims

More People Realizing That SESTA Will Do A Lot More Harm Than Good

from the it's-a-problem dept

At this point, it seems fairly clear that Congress simply does not care that SESTA is going to do an awful lot of harm for almost no benefit at all, and is rushing towards a Senate vote. But more and more people outside of Congress are recognizing the problems that it will cause. While all of the supporters of the bill are insisting they're doing it to "protect" victims of sex trafficking, as we've explained SESTA will almost certainly make their lives worse -- putting them at much more risk while doing little to nothing to stop actual trafficking. The Daily Dot has a good article talking to advocates for victims of sex trafficking and sex workers, talking about the damage SESTA will cause:

In her 40 years of involvement with the industry—formerly as a trafficking victim, a consensual sex worker, and currently as an advocate and outreach provider—DiAngelo has seen many similar efforts by the government and law enforcement to crack down on the establishments and platforms sex workers use to secure clients. Every time, she explains, the end result is the same.

“When you take away a worker’s available options, they have to drop down to the next-best available option. Nobody thinks about that,” DiAngelo says. “But we don’t disappear because they get rid of our work. Our food disappears, our security, our housing … our safety, that disappears, but we don’t and our need for services definitely doesn’t disappear.” Those things, she says, only grow.

Finding work from an ad posted on the internet means there’s a documented trail linking a sex worker and the client; it means the sex worker has the time to do due diligence, checking in with the client’s references and consulting a community of peers to determine whether or not this person is safe. When those sites shut down, as they periodically do, sex workers look elsewhere for clients—most often, on the street.

And that leads to much more dangerous situations:

Fearful of arrest, sex workers move off main streets and into areas where they’re more difficult to spot. Under pressure to make money, they have less time to assess the situation at hand, leaving them vulnerable to violent predators and, indeed, traffickers with a penchant for exploiting people in desperate situations. When sites like RedBook and Backpage shut down, “the life of the trafficker does not change at all,” DiAngelo says. “They still have their product, which is the victim.”

So again, it's unclear why people think that attacking the platforms (and not the actual traffickers) will help the victims at all.

Meanwhile, following the lead of the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times has released an editorial detailing what a disaster SESTA is and how much harm it will do:

The internet has been a tremendous force for good in the world, creating untold opportunities to connect, communicate, learn, create and make a living. But many of the properties of the net that make good things possible also enable less desirable pursuits, and even evil ones, on a vast scale. Congress is now focused on one of the worst of those pursuits: sex trafficking. It's taking particular aim at websites like Backpage.com that run ads for prostitutes, some of whom have been shown to be underage or adults who are effectively enslaved. But in their efforts to give prosecutors and victims more power in court, lawmakers are poised to weaken a legal protection that has helped produce much of what's good about the net.

The LA Times piece, as did the WSJ piece, also notes that Backpage -- the site that backers of the bill admitted they're targeting, despite the fact that it has already shut down its adult ads section -- still faces two big legal challenges that will show the site is not immune under CDA 230:

The irony is that, as a Senate investigation last year contended, Backpage may not be entitled to immunity under Section 230. It's now facing a Justice Department investigation and a renewed lawsuit by trafficking victims in Boston. If Congress simply cannot wait to see how those cases turn out, there is a middle ground — it could give state attorneys general clearer authority to go after websites that violate federal sex trafficking laws. But if it insists on carving out a bigger hole in Section 230 to battle sex trafficking, it's only a matter of time before it comes under pressure to address another evil, and then another, and then another. And before you know it, there will be nothing left of Section 230.

It really is a big question that no one in Congress seems to want to answer. Why can't Congress wait to see if either the DOJ or the court in Boston can get to Backpage -- because if they can, then there's really no argument for SESTA at all (and, as noted in the first half of this post, it's not clear what the argument is for SESTA anyway). However, in talking to people on the Hill, it appears the general opinion of our lawmakers is that they don't really care if the bill doesn't do anything good. They really want to claim they've "done something" and "going after sex trafficking" (even if it will actually make the problem worse) leads to good headlines. Also, the impression I've gotten is they're sick of people arguing about how bad this bill will be, so they want to pass it just to get it off their plates -- which seems like a bad way to make laws to me. But what do I know?

Filed Under: cda 230, intermediary liability, sesta, sex trafficking, sex workers

Can Someone Explain How SESTA Will Stop Sex Trafficking?

from the questions,-questions dept

Last week I got into a bit of a debate with a SESTA supporter about the bill, which boiled down to me saying that the bill won't do what it claims, will likely make things worse for victims of sex-trafficking, and will also have massive consequences for the internet and speech online. And the response from the person I was debating was "but my side has all these anti-sex-trafficking groups supporting SESTA." That's not exactly a response to any of the points that I raised. As we've noted from the very start, we may not be experts in sex-trafficking, but we do know how the internet works -- and how laws on intermediary liability impact the internet and content online. And nothing in SESTA will work the way its supporters seem to think it will work.

So I want to directly ask here the same questions I asked the individual I was debating (which he refused to answer before tossing out a few ad hominems and suggesting that I'm not worth talking to because I'm "a blogger."): what in SESTA will actually stop or limit sex-trafficking? Because as far as I can tell, it does absolutely nothing to stop sex-trafficking. It does not target sex-traffickers in any way. Supporters of the bill claim or appear to believe that it will stop sex-trafficking by stopping websites from allowing anyone to engage in sex-trafficking or advertising sex-trafficking victims on their websites. But that's not at all how the bill works.

It's (obviously!) already illegal to engage in sex-trafficking. And it's already illegal to advertise sex-trafficking. And law enforcement can already go after those doing both of those things. And yet, miraculously, both of those things still occur frequently online. Now, a reasonable response to this would be to suggest that law enforcement has a good source of information with which to investigate, arrest, and prosecute sex traffickers, since the necessary information is apparently so easily obtained online.

So, what does SESTA do? Rather than make it easier for law enforcement to go after those illegal activities, it creates a new illegal activity: that of running a website that is used by sex traffickers. So, as we've discussed before, this creates a serious "moderator's dilemma" for websites, leading to one of two likely outcomes. Many websites may stop moderating content, because if they're not looking at the content, they can more credibly claim a lack of knowledge. That means less moderation, less oversight, and likely more use of those platforms for sex-trafficking ads. So, suddenly, sex-traffickers will gravitate to those platforms, and those platforms will be less likely to cooperate with law enforcement because (again) they want to avoid "knowledge" of how their platform is being used, and working with law enforcement risks more knowledge.

On the flip-side of the moderator's dilemma, you will get sites that much more vigorously moderate content. This seems to be the solution that SESTA supports think all platforms will embrace -- which is almost certainly incorrect. Indeed, it's incorrect on multiple levels, because not only will some platforms embrace this more heavy moderation setup, those that do will almost certainly over-moderate to a drastic degree, in order to avoid liability. That will mean fairly aggressive levels of keyword blocking, filters, and automated removals. And, as anyone who has studied how such systems work in the real world, all of those will fail. And they'll fail with both false negatives and false positives. That is, lots of perfectly legitimate content will get taken down (perhaps, as we've discussed before, it could be material to help victims of sex-trafficking), and lots of sex-trafficking content will still get through.

It's that latter point that's pretty important: the people engaged in sex-trafficking are already breaking the law. SESTA changes nothing for them in terms of the illegality of what they're doing. It just means the tools they use are going to change a little bit, and anyone who thinks the traffickers won't adjust with it has apparently never spent any time on the internet. If keywords get blocked, traffickers will come up with new euphemisms (they always do). If forums get shut down, they will gravitate to other forums. If filters are created, they will figure out ways to get around the filters. Nothing in SESTA creates any disincentives at all for actual traffickers.

Indeed, SESTA creates a few things that will make life easier for traffickers. As noted above, it will likely lead some sites to do less moderation, and traffickers will quickly gravitate to such sites. Additionally, it will make it much, much harder for rights groups to post information to help victims of sex-trafficking, since much of that information will be seen as a liability risk, and blocked or taken down. And, finally, it will create massive disincentives for sites to work with law enforcement or families of victims to help them, because of the risk of those actions being used to prove the requisite "knowledge."

So, please: can someone who is a supporter of SESTA explain how the bill will do anything to actually stop sex trafficking? Because I can't find a single useful thing that it does.

Filed Under: intermediary liability, moderator's dilemma, sesta, sex trafficking