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.
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