Cash/Consent: The war on sex work

Re:Cash/Consent: The war on sex work by dual_basis on Friday September 27, 2019 @09:17PM (#21097716)

On the other hand, I sort of worry about anonymously crowd-sourcing reputation like this. Putting aside the notion of sex workers for a minute, suppose you ran a site where people could report bad drivers by their license plate numbers. (I believe such sites exist.) If someone doesn't like you, they go on and file fake reports about you, and now you can't get a delivery job (etc). There have already been issues with more public entities on sites like Yelp which have caused people to lose their entire livelihood, and now you want to bring that sort of thing to individuals?

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Re:Cash/Consent: The war on sex work by jdc on Friday September 27, 2019 @09:23PM (#21097738)

You don't need to look any further than ratemyprofessors.com for a thriving and, more to the point, legal example of this kind of site. So if this practice is going to be illegal, can it at least not be industry specific?

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Re:Cash/Consent: The war on sex work by layoutIfNeeded on Saturday September 28, 2019 @02:47AM (#21098861)

The solution is easy: each report of bad driving must have a dashcam video attached.

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Re:Cash/Consent: The war on sex work by gjm11 on Saturday September 28, 2019 @09:18AM (#21100131)

That might work well for a site to report bad driving (though I believe most people still don't have dashcams, so it would hurt the effectiveness of the site a bit).

But, recalling what the bad-driving site was an analogy for, it doesn't seem like it would be appropriate for sex workers sharing reports of bad clients.

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Re:Cash/Consent: The war on sex work by erikpukinskis on Saturday September 28, 2019 @02:41AM (#21098848)

Are you saying that should be illegal? Doesn’t that seem like a violation of freedom of speech?

As it is, libel laws give you protection if you can prove the claims are false, and you can get civil damages if you show harm. What would you say should be legislated beyond that?

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Re:Cash/Consent: The war on sex work by luckylion on Saturday September 28, 2019 @03:41AM (#21099023)

When reports are anonymous, you'll have trouble suing for libel. When the output of the site isn't a stated fact ("person x did y"), but a "calculated probability" without actually producing any of the reports ... good luck proving that the probability of you recklessly driving is below 50%.

It's not an easy decision, but I lean towards "should be illegal if done anonymously and without proof".

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Re:Cash/Consent: The war on sex work by erikpukinskis on Saturday September 28, 2019 @12:21PM (#21101216)

So you’re saying if I wrote a post on NextDoor saying you were a bad driver (no proof) and putting your license plate that should be illegal?

Would it be a civil thing where you could sue me for some amount, or would you make it a criminal infraction?

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Re:Cash/Consent: The war on sex work by luckylion on Sunday September 29, 2019 @04:15AM (#21105837)

It's a thin line, but mostly I'd regulate the platform to not allow anonymous slander. Between individuals, it's most likely a civil issue, I'm not a huge fan of having criminal law creep into everything.

I'm pretty sure that "no anonymous slander" reduces the amount rapidly, so you end up with a bunch of legitimate accusations that people are willing to stand for because they can provide evidence. The whole "I don't like his hair, so I'm going to make up stories about him" stuff goes away.

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Re:Cash/Consent: The war on sex work by Spearchucker on Saturday September 28, 2019 @03:00AM (#21098895)

Well yes but reality might result in no cases because the victims cannot afford the legal fees, for example. It's a complex thing.

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