"Undesirable Activity"

They’re willing to go as far as they can get away with going.

Pretty much what GMD said. Or, they'll go as far as the courts allow.

The problem with any plaintiff bringing a suit is that they will potentially be painted as pro sex trafficking. That will have a chilling effect.

“1984”is almost here !

It is funny that you mention Betty Crocker. The Hostess site was shut down last week for that exact reason.

the prudes and morality police are at work with their censorship of the common man...

We can't win. If it's not the bible thumpers then it's the ultra fems that want to put the sex trade away forever.

Whatever happened to Liberty? I say that two people should be able to do what they want as long as both are of adult age and both are willing participants. How fucking complicated is that? Anything that gets between those two is nothing but someone trying to impose their beliefs on others and restricting the freedom of the couple.

Feel free to go after traffickers....but don't shut down the entire "industry". Just like with the gun argument. Trying to get rid of all guns won't stop the illegal activity, and you're taking away a freedom/right from people who've never done anything wrong. Focus on the wrongdoers and leave everyone else alone!

“Whatever happened to Liberty?”

It’s been on life support since Roosevelt. And every President and Congress since Johnson have been doing their best to ease the plug out of its socket, hoping no one will notice.

Ironic that America chooses to hamhandedly censor what americans see following the China and Russia model vs.the open nature of our European allies. While of course the premise of human trafficing nobody can reasonably disagree with but it is being clearly used to fulfil an agenda to supress and drive underground prostitution in general. This drives desperate people into the arms of pimps/human trafficers that will market their product vs. convincing them to change their ways and work at burger king This is not good for women at all.

America is too good for this and unfortunately our

...future liberties are at risk for those who know whats best for you.

To paraphrase Ben Franklin - When you give up freedom for security you loose both

Reading an SJG post is an "undesirable activity"

"Reading an SJG post is an 'undesirable activity'"

No. That's waterboarding via text.

It’s crazy right now. It seems like a broad based attempt to kill many sexual freedoms - using the new anti sex trafficking laws to do it.

They’ve drawn a line in the sand (regarding sex trafficking) and they’ve taken several huge steps over it.

I’m hoping this witch hunt dies down shortly - before it kills (or scares) more of the sex industry out of business.

" It seems like a broad based attempt to kill many sexual freedoms - using the new anti sex trafficking laws to do it. "
____________
My opinion is not as strong. It's hard to know how much trafficking occurs on Backpage -- but Backpage shouldn't be raking in hundreds of millions of dollars and turning a blind eye. Whatever fraction of trafficking goes on, Backpage is profiting on someone else's misery.

FOSTA is a bad bill that goes too far, but something should be done. Maybe, instead, there should be a uniform set of rules that all sites must follow to police their sites. SA has tools for self-reporting, as an example.

How can BP know just from an ad that someone is being trafficked?

RandomMember - I’m still unsure of how far they might go with this bill. They should do all they can - to stop trafficking. However, it seems there might be considerable collateral damage left behind.

^^^ I don't know what the solution is. Self-reporting tools might help a little. Maybe some of the profits should go to LE efforts.

@Random I don’t really have a dog in this fight because I’ve never used BP or TER I have done the SA thing once or twice seems to me there were plenty of pros there so the self reporting is a crock in my opinion. If there are pros on the site they potentially can be trafficked same as anyone else.

^ good point. The money gotten from the efforts should go to LE as well as to help survivors.

I follow a lot of adult performers and sex workers on twitter, and there is a very real concern/freakout that all sex work is on the chopping block. First it's craiglist amd cityvibe, then it's porno, and will surely go after strip clubs as well. You cam already see the morality police setting its sights on legal prostitution in Nevada.

This is the issue. In the current political climate, we're perfectly happy to label any news we don't like as "fake news", regardless of whether or not it's actually fake. This is something that both liberals and conservatives do, but equally refuse to believe that they do.

Similarly, people seem to have no problem with labeling anything they personally deem 'dirty' or 'obscene' as "sex trafficking" if it gets them closer to the end goal of eliminating it.

Similar to the "fake news" thing, this is a bipartisan problem.

The only thing to do is support candidates who see the problems this law created and vote out any politician, regardless of party who voted for this and is unwilling to admit it was a mistake. And if one of us happens to be in a position to run themselves even better.

I think the powers that be here, are busy on a power and/or cash grab.

+Law Enforcement officers and agencies want spotlight to advance their careers
+Congressmen want power and money, donor cash, and votes from their energized bases
+Large pre-internet indusries and companies like Hollywood and Oracle, want a filtered internet
+If anyone will attack and try to shut down Tuscl, it will come from Yelp, since yelp is sort of a competitor to Tuscl in reviews space.
+Megacorp donors don't care, if anything, women who can't hoe & whore anymore, could turn to vanilla jobs, and the megacorps will get more willing $12/hr female workers.


The real sponsors of this bill -- probably Hollywood and the rest of the analog companies -- are looking for a filtered internet. And they finally go it!

reference:
"Hollywood's Behind-The-Scenes Support For SESTA Is All About Filtering The Internet"
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/201803…

-->" Indeed, our post earlier about Senator Blumenthal's bizarre email against a basic SESTA amendment from Senator Wyden to fix the "moderator's dilemma" aspect was quite telling. He falsely claimed that adding in that amendment -- that merely states that the act of doing some moderation or filtering doesn't append liability to the site for content they fail to filter or moderate (which is the crux of CDA 230's "Good Samaritan" language) -- would create problems for Hollywood. Indeed, a key part of Blumenthal's letter is that this amendment "has the potential to disrupt other areas of the law, such as copyright protections."

But that makes zero sense at all. CDA 230 does not apply to copyright. It doesn't apply to any intellectual property law, as intellectual property is explicitly exempted from all of CDA 230 and has been from the beginning. Nothing in the Wyden amendment changes that. And... it does seem quite odd for Blumenthal to suddenly be bringing up copyright in a discussion about CDA 230, unless it's really been Hollywood pushing these bills all along, and thus in Blumenthal's mind, SESTA and copyright are closely associated. As Prof. Eric Goldman notes, talking nonsensically about copyright in this context appears to be quite a tell by Senator Blumenthal."