Evidence indicates that lawmakers don't care about victims in a meaningfully helpful way. They absolutely crave the power/cash that anti-trafficking rhetoric brings.
A competent press would examine the history of trafficking laws and report the actual outcomes - instead of parroting the PR that pols hand to them.
Lawmakers were warned that shuttering Backpage would harm LEO efforts to rescue trafficking victims and they passed SESTA/FOSTA anyway.
The law has been used exactly one time.
> I was specifically referring to your claim that They absolutely crave the power/cash that anti-trafficking rhetoric brings
Is your assertion that lawmakers do not crave the power/cash that comes with anti-traffic rhetoric? If so, why do you believe that?
> TechDirt isn’t exactly a reputable, well-researched newsgathering organization.
That's an interesting opinion about one of the few news orgs that actively documents their analysis in every article (inc court filings), consistently targets all administrations (inc popular ones) - and (unlike most news orgs) isn't at all known for parroting Gov/Corp/LEO PR w/o contextual or historical analysis.
> Genuinely curious, not crapposting.
okay
I’ll stipulate to that. But it’s a pretty long logical leap to deduce from the fact that they heard a lot of opinions and made a (perhaps incorrect) judgment call that they don’t care about sex trafficking victims.
Also, linking to other news sources and commenting on them isn’t “newsgathering.” That’s just operating a blog. If they perform their own investigations, then my opinion might change.
Before passage: LEO warned lawmakers and those lawmakers minimized and gaslighted their expert concerns - concerns voiced by the exact people in the best possible position to know.
After passage: LEO exampled the harm done by FOSTA/SESTA and how the law was further endangering sex trafficking victims. In response, lawmakers crowed about the success of the law - w/o offering anything at all that might indicate success.
Creating a law that further harms and endagers sex trafficking victims while pretending the opposite - this seems like a fairly stellar example of not caring about the well being of sex trafficking victims.
It is one thing to claim that we are passing laws in good faith that end up not working as well as we hoped. It’s quite another make unsubstantiated claims that people are acting in bad faith.
They're not accused of acting Immorally, which would be taking action with mal intent. They're not trying to increase child prostitution. They're not trying to enable it. They're not looking to abuse children themselves.
They're accused of being psychopaths, not criminals.
I don't understand how the default position can be anything but that politicians indeed act amorally. There is a very long history of politicians enacting laws specifically to hide prostitution, not to stop it. There is an equally long history of people asking them to do so. Society definitely wants prostitution. Society also wants very vulnerable prostitutes, well hidden from view.
I think you may be confused. The articles' consistent and well done sourcing is a solid opposite of rumor-mill behavior.
> It is not a reputable source for anything and the owners make no qualms about it.
Obviously not true as even a casual read will attest. As evidence I offer the site, in partial or it's entirety.
TechDirt has been on a backslide in readership for years, primarily from it's crappy "we just post what we hear" nonsense. What you see now is a rebranding (eg* "free speech") which has served them better than the previous snicker journalism that they are known for. The fact that they have seemingly well-sourced articles is incidental to the past, which you seem wholly ignorant enough to assume was a quality source.
*It does seem to be working as other sites are increasingly linking to it.
From this article:
> “We assume it’s a great thing that Backpage closed down,” Stefanie Jeffers said. “And it is, because it’s horrible that Backpage existed and so much trafficking occurred through the users of Backpage. But I do think that it comes with its dangers too.”
> Jeffers, the founder of the nonprofit Grit Into Grace, works with women who are engaged in street prostitution in Indianapolis to help them get out of the life. She says Backpage’s closure came as a shock to the women she talked to.
I don't get why you're hung up on whether TechDirt is reputable or not, just read the actual article?
You know what FOSTA/SESTA did? Push it deeper underground.