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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Silicon Valley profiting from prostitution rackets and child abuse.

5 replies

Gentlemanjohn · 10/09/2017 09:59

Beggars belief.

www.theguardian.com/law/2017/sep/07/online-sex-trafficking-backpage-bill-communications-decency-act

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DJBaggySmalls · 10/09/2017 10:53

Free speech can't protect criminals involved in sex trafficking. or its not free speech. The sex trafficking victims are silenced by it.
I'm so jaded when it comes to the US legal system. They cant seriously believe the only choice is between the US system and that used by totalitarian states.

Gentlemanjohn · 10/09/2017 14:03

Part of the problem is that everything that happens on the internet is classed as speech or expression. So if there are any government attempts to regulate it, there are howls from the libertarian right but also certain quarters of the left that this is the evil government taking away our rights to..er...watch women being abused or book prostitutes. The online world is somehow exempt from all the normal rules that everyone accepts in the offline world. For instance, if I argued that sex traffickers should be allowed to advertise in shop windows, then I'd be judged insane. But if they're advertising online then this is seen as almost reasonable, and any attempt to stop them viewed as an act of Chinese style state totalitarianism.

But then, sexual 'freedom' has always been a fetish of the left. While they are quick to condemn any other predatory capitalist industry, the sex industry is always exempt, because everyone (men, mainly) is free to express their desires as they wish, and turn sex to profit where possible. You can just imagine all these hip, Californian, NYT reading techies who are oh so liberal unless anyone wants to stop women and children being abused and therefore deprive them of all the millions they're making from all the clicks it drums up.

Can't say I agree with much of what Dworkin wrote, but she was right to say:

The new pornography is left-wing; and the new pornography is a vast graveyard where the Left has gone to die. The Left cannot have its whores and its politics too.

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QueenOfTheSardines · 10/09/2017 14:47

backpage's actions around this should absolutely be prosecutable, surely.

They didn't just provide a platform that allowed users to post stuff, they actively screened the ad wordings to help the advertisers disguise what they were doing, and in order to do that they knew which terms to leave / were needed to show that the person being advertised for sex (rape) was a child, but to take out anything obvious that would ring alarm bells for someone not in those circles.

I haven't kept up recently but i'm not sure I ever read an excuse from them as to why they did it.

Gentlemanjohn · 10/09/2017 15:17

I haven't kept up recently but i'm not sure I ever read an excuse from them as to why they did it.

Money will have something to do with it.

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Gentlemanjohn · 10/09/2017 15:30

This explains things a bit better.

www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/opinion/google-backpagecom-sex-traffickers.html

Google's objections seem to stem from a fear that the new legislation would imperil the freedom of the internet. If Backpage.com are made responsible for what's published on its platform, then their fear is that Twitter etc will become subject to similar accountability. As I say, it goes back to this principle of a free internet.

But if these platforms are used to facilitate the abuse of women and children then they should absolutely be cracked down on like a ton of bricks.

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