Posted on 03/30/2018 3:21:18 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
WASHINGTON, D.C., March 30 (C-Fam) Many websites are shutting down or curtailing their sex trade just weeks after the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed similar anti-human trafficking bills that would allow victims to sue the websites on which they were bought and sold.
“Illegal commercial sex advertising platforms and forums have been blowing up, and johns have been calling our office and messaging us left and right, indicating that Congress has taken a powerful first step,” Congressman Ann Wagner’s staff told an anti-trafficking coalition on Thursday. “FOSTA-SESTA is disrupting demand for sex trafficking and shaking up the illegal commercial sex industry.”
Rachel Wagley, Wagner’s legislative director, told the coalition that many websites traffickers use to buy and sell victims for sex have shut down or curtailed business in just the last week.
Cityvibe shut down completely, the Erotic Review, the “Yelp of the sex trade” where men rate their experiences with trafficking victims, shut down advertisement boards in the United States, NightShift shut down to review policies, VerifyHim shut down its “newsreel,” Craigslist personals section was shut down, Reddit’s prostitution-related “subreddits” were marked private and the site instituted new policies banning the sale of sex acts and drugs, Google reportedly deleted its publicly shared commercial sex-related advertising, WordPress.com reportedly removed its commercial sex-related advertising sites, Paypal reportedly disabled advertised accounts for commercial sex-related payment, Rubmaps, Erotic Monkey, and USA Sex Guide had extended maintenance periods over the weekend, suggesting upcoming changes due to the new law, Microsoft is issuing new Terms of Service effective May 1st covering all of its platforms, including Skype and Xbox, to urge users not to use the services to share pornography or criminal activity.
The sex trafficking sites Cityxguide and Backpage were reportedly seeing a surge in use by sex traffickers as the other sites shut down.
Backpage was the subject of the Netflix movie I am Jane Doe by director Mary Mazzio and producer Alec Sokolow which demonstrated that judges and state attorneys-general were powerless to prosecute traffickers because of a clause in a 1996 law called the Communications Decency Act. Tech giants like Google fought Wagner’s bill, claiming the 1996 law gave them immunity, before finally succumbing to pressure last November.
The two new bills amend the 1996 law. FOSTA passed the House on February 27th. The Senate passed SESTA last week.
“FOSTA-SESTA set out to establish a meaningful criminal deterrent, so that fewer businesses would ever enter the online sex trafficking industry,” Wagley said. As a result, sex traffickers have been calling Wagner’s office to demand other venues open up.
“Criminal sex buyers have been arguing that they should have the right to buy sex,” Wagley said. “There are 3,142 counties/county equivalents in the U.S., and prostitution is legal in only two of them. And even in those two counties, the promotion of prostitution—at which FOSTA aims—is illegal.”
Congressman Wagner addressed the UN Economic and Social Council high level panel on trafficking last year asking Americans to urge their representatives to support FOSTA, which she co-sponsored. Wagner told UN diplomats that the “Internet has become a red-light district,” and that it was time to shut down online trafficking. The event was co-sponsored by the Group of the Friends of the Family, and Civil Society for the Family, which is co-chaired by C-Fam, publisher of the Friday Fax.
These websites contributed to the abuse and trafficking of women and children. But its also true that there always will be prostitution and the argument for these sites was that they took prostitution off the streets. I wonder if, now that these websites are shutting down, we’re going to start seeing more hookers on the corner. That would be a bad result.
Yeah...thats ALL prostitutes. Women are incapable of making the decision to have sex for money on their own. Look I’m not the biggest fan of prostitution but theres better ways to fix the problem than extending government control over the internet. Like fixing marriage so that it actually makes sense for men again instead throwing the dice on losing half their money and years of involuntary celibacy (since modern society celebrates wives not being intimate) for no real benefit.
So called conservatives should think long and hard about why they are marching lockstep with extreme feminists on this same issue.
The Nile.
Those that learned all they will ever know about how to be dignified...from Ozzie Osborne.
There has been a lot of action shutting down human trafficking during the Trump administration.
Generalize much? Or just a radical Libertine?
But that kind of thing happening here *is* difficult for me to imagine.I'm not claiming that women and girls aren't abused...*badly* abused...in this country but "trafficking"? I'm not so sure.
Do you think those women and girls are all doing it of their own free will? Making it easy for the pimps and slavers to find johns doesn’t help the problem.
From Craigslist’s “Missed Connections” section, Best Of:
Graveyard Vigilante Slayer - w4m
I knew we were meant to be the moment you said Hillary Clinton was a lizard person. I didn’t care that you liked wearing socks with your flip flops, or that you like to dress in all black leather. I didn’t judge you for being #Team Edward, or Bernie. Truth is, you make me laugh to the point my chapped lips bleed.
As I lay at night awake writing in my pink and purple “My Little Pony” journal, I snuggle up to my waifu pillow and wish it was you. I vision you standing there with your Fabio hair blowing in the wind. In one hand you have a hammer and in the other is a pack of vagina dental dam.
You will probably never see this..... But if you do,ride off with me in the sunset on my George Jetson mop. Come live a life together on a farm, breeding horses simulation style. I will never force you to drink shitty drinks like Budlight. And we can have pet rats and train them to do cool tricks.
Thats the same as gun control logic. There are bad guys using guns to kill children so all gun possessors are going to kill children. I think most people even here would not agree to busting down doors to prevent gay people from having sex as much as they oppose government sanctioning of SSM. Therefore as much as we deplore it its not the governments business to keep people from privately slipping each other a fiver for sex. I also find it hilarious how this is the hill people are willing to die on. Conservatives are utterly inept at preventing government funded transgender nonsense and nearly everything else but will stop at nothing to help militant feminists persecute pathetic lonely heterosexual men from being able get the only nookie that they can. Kind of like how many churches spend all their time fighting against each other while being completely useless against the rising tide of secularism.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, so if a web site is responsible for actions beyond their control is the phone company liable if two people discuss illegal activity over a phone? Or is the government asking these companies to now spy on all their users to verify they are up to no good?
:)Suck it up Obozo.You got the ball of wax now so don’t complain.
Not at all. There is a right to keep and bear arms and there is an amendment prohibiting involuntary servitude (that includes forced sexual slavery).We should be doing everything possible to rescue those women. Eliminating advertising for prostitution is a step in the right direction.
Yep. At some point over the last decade or so, hookers became the victims.
No doubt the majority of the folks profiting from these website operations are Democrats.
lol, again with the completely evidence free idea that ALL prostitution is forced and all women are dainty upright moral creatures who would never even entertain the thought of entering into the worlds oldest profession, where some can literally make thousands a day, voluntarily. The Naivete is simply staggering. You must binge watch Pretty Woman all day long with the liberals who think all women are pure powerless damsels to be rescued from evil men.
No one EVERY said that ALL prostitution is forced. But enough of it is to be a concern.
ever
Craigslist personals was pure porn. It was used for hook ups of all ages and in my opinion dangerous for youth. I am so thankful they shut this down. I was shocked it wasn’t illegal before. Glad Trump is cleaning this up. GOP would have never stopped this otherwise.
I must live in a different world down here. Most married people I know are fine, no feminism, and no one is trying to rip off the other half. In my youth, there were different places, and unfaithful men, and unhappy relationships ended. I’m contently married 19 years now.
Life is not perfect for anyone I know, however, the best is made of what you have. Men here on FR talk of years of involuntary celibacy, and women experience that too.. if men have prostate issues, it is not a one way street. Not a reason for divorce by no means.
My longest friend locally will be married forty some years, and celebrates two new grandchildren the past couple years, happily. None of us march with feminists...we are basically traditionalists at heart. Whatever bad experiences came in our lives, we picked up and fixed our lives. And no one took anything from anybody to do that.
So either we live in a vacuum, or something is going on out there, that we do not realize!
I pray that joy comes in your life, and you find that right person who is ‘the love of your life’...just don’t lose her over wrong thing!
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