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posted by martyb on Friday March 23 2018, @01:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the The-best-laid-schemes-o'-mice-an'-men-[an'-Congress]-Gang-aft-agley dept.

In Passing SESTA/FOSTA, Lawmakers Failed to Separate Their Good Intentions from Bad Law

The U.S. Senate just voted 97-2 to pass the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA, H.R. 1865), a bill that silences online speech by forcing Internet platforms to censor their users. As lobbyists and members of Congress applaud themselves for enacting a law tackling the problem of trafficking, let's be clear: Congress just made trafficking victims less safe, not more.

The version of FOSTA that just passed the Senate combined an earlier version of FOSTA (what we call FOSTA 2.0) with the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA, S. 1693). The history of SESTA/FOSTA—a bad bill that turned into a worse bill and then was rushed through votes in both houses of Congress—is a story about Congress' failure to see that its good intentions can result in bad law. It's a story of Congress' failure to listen to the constituents who'd be most affected by the laws it passed. It's also the story of some players in the tech sector choosing to settle for compromises and half-wins that will put ordinary people in danger.

[...] Throughout the SESTA/FOSTA debate, the bills' proponents provided little to no evidence that increased platform liability would do anything to reduce trafficking. On the other hand, the bills' opponents have presented a great deal of evidence that shutting down platforms where sexual services are advertised exposes trafficking victims to more danger.

Freedom Network USA—the largest national network of organizations working to reduce trafficking in their communities—spoke out early to express grave concerns [.pdf] that removing sexual ads from the Internet would also remove the best chance trafficking victims had of being found and helped by organizations like theirs as well as law enforcement agencies.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Friday March 23 2018, @11:06PM

    by Marand (1081) on Friday March 23 2018, @11:06PM (#657300) Journal

    It's probably not a coincidence that it's also a win for the big businesses that want the internet to be a consumption-only TV 2.0. I read the article and some of its follow-up links, and one of the concerns here is that this begins chipping away at immunities granted by Section 230, which protects platform owners from liability over most user-generated content. Every new exception added makes it that much riskier (and more costly) to allow user content at all, leading us slowly to a largely read-only internet where sites like SN, reddit, and /. are too risky to run.

    I say "largely" because huge businesses could still manage without Section 230 by employing moderator teams and strict "offend nobody" content policies; user content would technically still exist that way, but in a bland, milquetoast form, sanitised for the lowest common denominator. Which is precisely the sort of content corporations and advertisers tend to want and encourage already, so eroding the protections of a law that helps their smaller competition is a win for them.

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