Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed it Underground

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut who sponsored the 2018 law, said in a statement that the sex trafficking carve-out was written to “change tech industry practices,” and that it had succeeded.

Any website that closed down because of the law, he said, “did so because it was knowingly facilitating sex trafficking or it was misled by critics of the law.”

But sex worker advocates point to changes on Craigslist, the classified site, and Reddit, the discussion board. Both sites removed swaths of content that referred to sex because the companies found it too difficult to tell whether people featured in the posts were being trafficked. Craigslist shuttered its personals section, for example, and Reddit closed forums called “Escorts” and “SugarDaddy.”

“Any tool or service can be misused,” Craigslist said in a statement at the time, explaining its decision to remove some ads in response to the law. “We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services.”

The company did not respond to recent requests for comment.

Mr. Kosseff said the moves by Craigslist and other sites demonstrated that even minor changes to Section 230 could alter the venues for speech online.

“Now, whether that’s good or bad, that really depends on what your goals are,” he said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/technology/online-sex-trafficking-law-big-tech.html?emc=rss&partner=rss