News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by mnm1 on Friday March 23, 2018 @04:23AM (#16656067)
> That said, I really wish that I could come forward with a solution to the online sex trafficking problem.

Start by legalizing prostitution and removing the black market. That won't end all trafficking, but will end a lot and will make it much easier to go after the remaining illegal black market as it's now been separated from the legal market. Comment about how people who don't learn are doomed to repeat history here. How many black markets for harmless everyday goods and services do we need to ban before the idiots in charge start to understand these simple principles? They're constantly talking about markets, but clearly no one in government understands the first thing about them. Or, more likely, doesn't want to.

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by pbhjpbhj on Friday March 23, 2018 @07:24AM (#16656886)
It's much easier to hide illegally activity that mirrors legal activity than it is to hide illegal activity where all the surrounding paraphernalia is direct evidence. Your assertion that legalisation of prostitution will lead to less trafficking of people seems naive to me - you create a larger market and allow people to easily hide.
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by emiliobumachar on Friday March 23, 2018 @07:54AM (#16657041)
You bring forth a compelling theory, but I don't think it's true. Compare the market for contraband or counterfeited booze and cigarettes, which "mirrors" legal booze and cigarettes, with the market for cocaine and heroin, where "all the surrounding paraphernalia is direct evidence".
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by pbhjpbhj on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:17AM (#16657179)
OK, go on, if someone is smoking an illegally imported cigarette it's nearly impossible to tell just by looking that there's been a crime. If they're doing a line you know within a small error margin without any investigation.

Why, because the former is hidden by the legally allowed behaviour.

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by mseebach on Friday March 23, 2018 @09:56AM (#16658133)
No, you can't tell if a given cigarette being smoked is contraband or not, but buying a pack of smuggled cigarettes is a very different experience from buying a legal pack.

When all brothels (escort services etc) are illegal, operators have very little incentive to enforce all sex workers being 18+, non-trafficed, getting regular medicals, whatever. Even a conscientious customer has very few options to check for themselves. If brothels on the other hand are legal, operators have every incentive to do this, and if anyone is looking for an illegal brothel (which looks very different from a legal one, just like the place you're buying smuggled smokes looks very different from a 7-11), this "paraphernalia" is direct evidence that they're looking for something bad.

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by TeMPOraL on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:32AM (#16657311)
Sure, but the question is about the relative sizes of the markets and the amount of involuntary suffering involved.
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by emiliobumachar on Friday March 23, 2018 @10:21AM (#16658415)
While I admittedly did not look up any hard data, I take it for granted that the cocaine market is much more of a public problem than the smuggled cigarette market. This flies in the face of your admittedly compelling thought experiment. Siblings have made some compelling points regarding why that might be.
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by emiliobumachar on Friday March 23, 2018 @12:25PM (#16659706)
Legal cigarettes cap the profits that can be had from illegal cigarette trade. With cocaine, you can charge 100x production costs. This creates incentives that are sure to produce an endless supply of dealers, regardless of how draconian enforcement is.
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by vivekd on Friday March 23, 2018 @03:08PM (#16661571)
It would probably also create a boom in prostitution - with the accompanying drawbacks. Job Cohen, the former mayor of Amsterdam lamented in crime organizations and human traffickers taking advantage of their lax prostitution laws
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by saas_co_de on Friday March 23, 2018 @06:42AM (#16656653)
> Start by legalizing prostitution and removing the black market

That would be to rational thing to do, but people aren't rational and they don't actually want solutions.

[dead]
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by golergka on Friday March 23, 2018 @05:02AM (#16656246)
You know that you can have consensual sexual relationships outside of marriage, right? They don't even have to be exclusive.

Seriously, dude, if you're a "hungry man", open Tinder or just go to a local hook up bar. Hooking up for a one night stand is trivial.

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by zeth___ on Friday March 23, 2018 @06:19AM (#16656554)
I look repulsive and my personality isn't much better. Hookups are quite out of the question. But it must be nice to be attractive and have enough money to go out clubbing.
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by barry-cotter on Friday March 23, 2018 @07:44AM (#16656988)
Stop being such a goddamned quitter. Go to r/pua or r/seduction, r/fitness and r/malefashionadvice and follow the advice in the sidebar. If all you want to do is get laid even with a repulsive personality it’s a numbers game and the highest value is in the PUA stuff. Having a body that works like it’s supposed to will both help you with getting some and your mental health. Dressing well is the least important. If you just don’t care about that go all Steve Jobs about it and wear the same outfit all the time, whether it’s a suit like Vonneuman or a tracksuit that fits.

And don’t put yourself down. Other people are happy to do it for you.

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by zeth___ on Friday March 23, 2018 @07:50AM (#16657021)
If I can meet biological needs like eating by paying some one and not having to hunt and farm, why shouldn't I have the option of doing the same with sex?
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by barry-cotter on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:16AM (#16657171)
I’m not saying you can’t. If you want to, go for it. But feeling that you are charmless and ugly is unpleasant even if you can buy sex. Even if you never want to have sex with someone you’re not paying I’d give the same advice to any man who felt he had a poor personality and physical experience. These are problems that are at worst, and I do mean worst, ameliorable.
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by sah2ed on Friday March 23, 2018 @07:18AM (#16656847)
> I look repulsive and my personality isn't much better.

If you tell yourself those things often enough, which frankly sound like what other people have said about you in the past, eventually you start to believe them as fact.

Both looks and personality can be improved upon, even if you are on a budget.

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by vixen99 on Friday March 23, 2018 @07:54AM (#16657046)
Perhaps the commenter was merely making a point but no doubt your advice is invaluable.
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by kofejnik on Friday March 23, 2018 @05:37AM (#16656376)
> Hooking up for a one night stand is trivial.

Glad you've been lucky, but don't make assumptions from data set of 1. It's trivial only for the most attractive and charismatic males. OkCupid has published some nice research on it

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by komali2 on Friday March 23, 2018 @05:53AM (#16656439)
Luckily charisma can be learned and overcome all but the most outlying unattractive.

But yea prostitution is the world's oldest profession for a reason - sometimes people just want a transactional sexual encounter. For money, one can have no "equal parts" requirement - no need to reciprocate. It's not for everyone (or for me) but I can understand the attraction.

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by downandout on Friday March 23, 2018 @06:47AM (#16656675)
Hooking up for a one night stand is trivial.

That is true for maybe 3-5% of the human race. Some people can indeed easily attract casual sexual partners in a matter of minutes or hours in almost any environment. But the vast majority of the population cannot. That’s why prostitution will never go away, regardless of how many laws are passed trying to limit it.

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by tajen on Friday March 23, 2018 @07:16AM (#16656838)
Yes I know, but there’s a massive societal expectation that it’s ok for a woman to beat her boyfriend if he cheated on her, even if it’s not married.

And “cheating” is up to the solipsism of the woman to decide, anything between kissing and looking at a girl on the street and thinking about a woman is considered cheating, at least because society believes the woman at face value.

So no, casual relationships are, depending on the subject, no different from marriage, juges recognize men as fathers even in casual relationships, and there’s no way today to make the contract clear with a woman today. Hence, prostitution would contractualize the casualness of the relationship and it’s not allowed today.

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by golergka on Friday March 23, 2018 @07:40AM (#16656966)
It all depends on how do you agree upon this. I've been married, and I've been in open and polyamorous relationships, and difference is enormous.
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by syshum on Friday March 23, 2018 @05:13AM (#16656286)
.
Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by pjc50 on Friday March 23, 2018 @05:22AM (#16656325)
> prevailing concept that "consent" can be revoked AFTER you have consented

No, it can't; but what does happen is people taking "she didn't complain" as evidence of consent rather than evidence of coercion into not complaining.

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by Frondo on Friday March 23, 2018 @10:28AM (#16658492)
Of course it can. Someone might want to have sex with you, and consent, and then they might want you to stop, and remove consent for you to continue.

Continuing sex with someone after they tell you to stop, no matter what they said before, is sexual assault.

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by tajen on Friday March 23, 2018 @07:07AM (#16656786)
Well, yes it can. You have to dismiss massive amounts of male testimonies to say that consent has never ever been removed after the fact.

Reasoning recursively: To dismiss males’ testimonials, you’d need to take girls’ words at face value, which, in itself, demonstrates that girls’ words are taken at face value by a lot of people in society, hence the recurring massive problem of false convictions.

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by pjc50 on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:09AM (#16657127)
The idea that there's a recurring massive problem of false convictions for rape is bizarre. In most countries it's extremely difficult to get alleged rape prosecuted in the first place and the conviction rate is low. I'm not going to dispute that it might have happened in some cases but it's a comparatively rare problem.

(Also, I'm going to assume you're not a native English speaker - the contrasting group nouns should be "men" and "women" not "males" and "girls")

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by syshum on Friday March 23, 2018 @09:38AM (#16657931)
>The idea that there's a recurring massive problem of false convictions for rape is bizarre

You are talking convictions, the OP seems to be talking Accusations and where the latest trend is to gain a conviction in the court of public opinion and to inflict punishment outside of a judicial system

Re:Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response t... by mLuby on Friday March 23, 2018 @09:17AM (#16657723)
This parenthetical is an odd leap. Perhaps it was meant to suggest that the author (who is certainly fluent in, if not a native speaker of, English) shouldn't use the word girls to refer to women?