Craigslist Removes Its Controversial Adult Section

Cyrus writes "The online classified website Craigslist has removed its controversial Adult Services portion of its website. Technology blog TechCrunch was the first to report the section had been blacked out with the word 'Censored.'"

backpage.com

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.backpage.com/classifieds/index. Like prostitution is going to go away. lol

Re:Only seems to effect the USA

[Psychotria]

It works fine for me on the Toronto, Canada Craigslist. Out-call prostitution is legal in Ontario though.

Yes. If you'd bothered to read the article you'd have noticed "The section was shut down on Friday night to all users in the United States, but is still viewable by international users."

Re:And as we all know...

[yincrash]

citation http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201008310900 [kqed.org] (jim buckmaster's assertion)

Re:oh darn

[Anonymous Coward]

I once hired an escort in Arizona, average price, so nothing special. She was very friendly and happy to talk to me. She said she made about 200k a year doing this, had two houses, and could afford to co-rent an apartment for incalls. 200k doesn't sound like a lot but the cost of living in AZ is pretty low. While I'm sure that isn't the norm, and streetwalkers and drug users definitely fit your description, a significant part of prostitution is because it pays better than the alternative (at least the entire escort business).

Re:Consenting Adults

[cappp]

I'm not sure you're right there, at least in part. Prostitution is legal and regulated in a fair number of countries - Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, Canada for instance - and treated in a somewhat more complicated manner in many more - most of the rest of Europe, India, a smattering of Central American states, and so on. The sheer scale of the sexual industry in countries that have legal protections in place - which have reduced financial incentives for what would otherwise be illicit trades - suggests that a decent number of men and woman deliberately choose prostitution as a rational employment route. Superfreakenomics has an interesting chapter online [timesonline.co.uk] which covers the basic topic.

That of course leaves the question of trafficking which is the usual problem raised i.e. does the prostitution industry provide a prime motivation for human trafficing. However there seems to be a significant lack of data supporting this. The Guardian ran an interesting piece [guardian.co.uk] covering this topic. I'm going to quote just the opening paragraph but its well worth a read if you find yourself with a free 10 minutes.

There is something familiar about the tide of misinformation which has swept through the subject of sex trafficking in the UK: it flows through exactly the same channels as the now notorious torrent about Saddam Hussein's weapons. In the story of UK sex trafficking, the conclusions of academics who study the sex trade have been subjected to the same treatment as the restrained reports of intelligence analysts who studied Iraqi weapons – stripped of caution, stretched to their most alarming possible meaning and tossed into the public domain. There, they have been picked up by the media who have stretched them even further in stories which have then been treated as reliable sources by politicians, who in turn provided quotes for more misleading stories.

Yes, that doesn't prove that sex workers necessarily enjoy their work. It doesn't prove that other forms of coercion don't exist.But it does frame the issue somewhat differently.

Re:Consenting Adults

[cappp]

Uh buddy....if you're paying a couple hundred you're the one getting fucked

It turns out that the typical street prostitute in Chicago works 13 hours a week, performing 10 sex acts during that period, and earns an hourly wage of approximately $27. So her weekly take-home pay is roughly $350. This includes an average of $20 that a prostitute steals from her customers and drugs accepted in lieu of cash.

Thats from the Superfreakenomics article exerpt I cited before.

Re:oh darn

[pitchpipe]

But it's without foundation to bring up the "lots of women want to do it" argument. And "want to do it", whatever the tedious capitalist he-may-be-interned-in-a-factory-but-at-least-he's-not-dying-in-the-fields armchair philosophers will tell you, must not be confused with "is desperate for money and willing to do it because there is no viable alternative".

Why do you think that I go to my job everyday. Take call-outs in the middle of the fucking night when there is two feet of snow on the ground on Christmas (I work in an open pit mine)? It's the money, duh!

I have not read any evidence that a majority of prostitutes work because they enjoy being prostitutes. Have you?

I'm betting that you probably haven't researched it far enough to find out. After ten seconds with Google. [dearcupid.org] Maybe not a majority, but there sure are a LOT of shit jobs out there that pay a lot less!

Re:oh darn

[kestasjk]

• It's not always women
• You're being morally presumptuous, basically saying you want to decide whether they should work as prostitutes based on whether you think it's wrong

I'm not commenting on whether I think it's right (I'd sure never consider it a career option), but I don't think it's right to decide for other people.

Re:oh darn

[Kilrah_il]

I don't know about you, but many times that I have sex with a "normal woman" I become somewhat poorer (although usually not 200$). I do admit that the one getting richer is the restaurant/bar and not the woman, so who is the victim here?

P.S. In a magazine in my country they once did a comparison of the price of getting laid between a hooker, one-night stand, steady girlfriend and wife. As you can guess, the hooker and the one-night stand were the cheapest.

Re:oh darn

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends greatly on the country too. Here in Italy, an extremely high percentage of prostitutes are essentially Russian women who are slaves to crime organizations.

However, if it were above-ground and regulated, there wouldn't really be that problem...

Re:oh darn

[jewishbaconzombies]

There's plenty of other sites. Backpage.com is just one of many that comes to mind. Is Facebook is another.

Re:oh darn

[Anonymous Coward]

At least 5, many of them having been posted to slashdot before. Go look through the archives, since I don't have the links handy.

Suffice it to say a number of law enforcement agencies were using craigslist to easily catch prostitutes, but getting greedy, decided they should file suit against them (civil I believe.) to cash in on the political capital such a move offers.

So long story short CL is closing it because some douchebags were being douches, even though the only reason it had been added to CL in the first place was the clear up casual encounters for people actually WANTING casual encounters. Maybe they can just add a 'non-commercial casual encounters' section and deprecate CE into an adult services category without the adult services name. But YMMV and all that.

Re:oh darn

[wmac]

You mean all prostitutes are prostitutes because they are poor?

Don't you remember the girl which messed up the governors life? She became a prostitute in order to become rich very fast. I personally knew a prostitute which owned and rented several apartments.

Some women try to find a rich man just because they want to become rich ASAP. What is the difference with a prostitute then? (except that some of them agree to be exclusive by signing a marriage contract).

Re:oh darn

[TheLink]

But did they clutter up "casual encounters" that much when the adult section was around? If they didn't then it sure shows that the section worked.

I don't see the problem with having an adult section.

If it bothers people, those people just should stop going there.

As for kids, just install some nanny software or a proxy and let them learn to use their brains to think of clever ways of getting at porn or find other things to do :).

Re:oh darn

[TheLink]

Uh that's why it pays a lot more than serving fast food. A lot more. Higher risk, higher pay. It might even be safer than doing night-shift in 7-11 or similar places, and it sure as hell pays a lot better.

And if you don't want to sleep with a disgusting old lard, don't. Who's forcing you? It's the illegal prostitution rings that really force women to do what they don't want to do - they lock the women up in rooms etc. So if prostitution was legal and well regulated it'll be a lot better for the prostitute (and their customers).

I don't recommend prostitution as a job (I've actually discouraged someone from doing so, hopefully she's got a safer job now - I doubt it pays as well though). It's a bit like one of those "star jobs" (sports athletes, actresses etc) but not as bad in some ways- the top bunch get a lot of money, the mid bunch get a fair bit, the rest just get by. And when you get less attractive the money dries up, and you better have other skills or have enough money stashed away.

Re:oh darn

[TooMuchToDo]

After working in the adult entertainment industry on the tech side, let me tell you that you're half-correct. Some girls do it because they're desperate. The other side of it (that you get wrong) is that there are girls who enjoy making $150K+/yr from sex. Hence, the need for a regulated sex industry (see: Amsterdam).

Then it's very effective

[rsilvergun]

you're just mistaken about the purpose. One of the key benefits to drug and prostitution control is segregation. It keeps the wealthy and the poor separate, because if you're poor and you drive up to a wealthy neighborhood to use their (very nice) parks and schools chances are you or one of you're friends has drugs/is a prostitute. Our 'zero tolerance' property seizure laws make you guilty by association.

There were two different sections.

[Anonymous Coward]

Up until yesterday, Craigslist had two separate sections for prostitution-related ads: "Adult Services," where advertisers paid a fee to post, CL staff monitored and approved all content, and there were no flagging options; and "Adult Gigs," which required telephone verification to post but was free and otherwise worked exactly like the rest of the site. "Adult Services" tended to be for professional, working prostitutes, while "Adult Gigs" tended to be for both girls and johns who were looking for more amateur arrangements like nude photos, panties, fetishes, and sugardaddy-type relationships.

Incidentally, as of last night I had posted several ads (over the past two weeks) that were live on my city's "Adult Gigs" section. Logging into my account now, they appear to still be live: Each ad appears colored in green on my account page, which means it is "active," and I can still access management options for each ad ("Edit," "Delete," etc.).