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from the too-risky-to-keep-running-the-dept-generating dept.
In response to the passage of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), Craigslist has removed Personals sections for U.S. users:
Classified advertising website Craigslist has closed its dating ads section in the US, in response to a new bill against sex trafficking.
The bill states that websites can now be punished for "facilitating" prostitution and sex trafficking.
Ads promoting prostitution and child sexual abuse have previously been posted in the "personals" section of Craigslist.
The company said keeping the section open in the US was too much of a risk.
In a statement, Craigslist said the new law would "subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully".
Reddit also took the opportunity to ban a number of subreddits (list not exhaustive), including some like /r/escorts, but many more broadly related to "transactions for goods and services".
Also at Ars Technica and The Verge.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MostCynical on Tuesday March 27 2018, @05:41AM (14 children)
Your hat is either too tight, or too loose.
Controlled reproduction helps people out of poverty.
You use the term "progressive" to mean something it doesn't.
You attibute outcomes to unrelated policies, AND you think a contract can be enforced by ... a contract, without any.. compulsion. (Do you find yourself amazed when people rip you off, or just wish they'd signed a contract with you, or is there some reason you can be ripped off by someone when you have a contract? What is wrong with contracts that they don't work now, without arbitration, courts and lawyers?)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @05:52AM (13 children)
A contract necessarily specifies the means of enforcement; such enforcement is therefore, by definition, voluntary—the parties to the contract agreed to such enforcement in advance.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Tuesday March 27 2018, @05:59AM (12 children)
And what happens when the bigger/larger/better armed party decides to.. ignore the contract?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @06:12AM (11 children)
I don't understand why you think you've got a better solution.
Basically, you're exhibiting Stockholm Syndrome.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday March 27 2018, @07:22AM (9 children)
People in dispute go to court, where judges make decisions, which are enforced with fines, which are themselves suppored by impounding or garnishee orders, which are enforced by sherrifs of the court, also with threats of imprisonment.
No contract, on its own, can support that infrastructure, especially when one party opts-out of a contract.
I didn't suggest a "better" solution, neither did you. Pointing out that "government", in this case, works, seems to confuse you.
It is up to you to explain how contracts without enforcement would work.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @07:24AM (8 children)
Why do you keep with this straw man? It's already been explained to you.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday March 27 2018, @07:29AM (7 children)
No, you have repeatedly claimed that all contacts can self-support, through whatever arbitration is written in the contract.
What you haven't explained is what happens when one party, say, with its own army, refuses to pay/deliver on their side of the contract.
What is the person who didn't get their stuff to do? "Use the contract" to give paper cuts?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @07:32AM (6 children)
What is your point? Are you saying that a possible failure of the agreed system implies that we should just say "Fuck it. Let's government."???
You are saying that your government-based society is the failure mode of my contractual society. You exist in failure.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday March 27 2018, @07:45AM (5 children)
Every contract has "failure clauses", usually called "disputes"
These specify how the parties will resolve any disagreements.
Yes, government is the "failure" mode support, just like error traps in code.
You still have not specified how disputes would be resolved, when that is what government, judiciary, etc *does*.
There has to be a failure mode, because humans are sneaky, lying bastards, especially when they think they can get away with it, and corporations ar even worse.
If you can write bug-free code, it will still crash eventually. Perfect contracts can still be ignored.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:06AM (1 child)
Government doesn't solve this problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @03:59PM
Government does solve this problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @04:12PM (1 child)
have you not heard of smart contracts?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @05:55PM
Will we need smart guns that only operate when a smart contract says they can?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @05:48PM
I prefer to imagine that this is just a troll trying to collect internet trophies, in this case getting every user of the site to argue against the stupidity of "series of contracts". The troll coooould be serious, but given the simplistic responses it is clear there is no real reasoning beyond blind faith in "market forces".
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 27 2018, @05:24PM
You are pointing at a real problem, but so is the grandparent, and ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
There is always the problem of the enforcement agency deciding to act in it's own behalf rather than in yours. Always. Historically what happens without a central government is lots of small war lords who, if they stabilize, turn into monarchs. In some ways this isn't any worse than the current structure, and in others it's considerably worse. I think the rule was something like one king out of four will be a good king, one king out of four will lead us into disastrous wars, one king out of four will be a playboy, and one king out of four will be an idiot. The benefit is that the bureaucracy tends to be minimized. A secondary benefit is that most of the kings don't want to control your private life. Democracies tend to be much more intrusive. But this can also mean they aren't really interested in enforcing your contracts. This is one of the reasons that police were a late development. Another, of course, is that without rapid transportation and sanitation large cities are inherent death-traps. (Every continuation of this I tried veered into only tangentially related topics. Society is a complex lattice of interconnections.)
But contract enforcement always depends on someone with superior power doing the enforcement. It can be the government, it can be the gang lord, but somebody. Back when personal honor was the excuse is was general social knowledge, but in an age of information overload even extreme dishonor tends to be ignored for the sake of convenience. And it may also depend on limited mobility. In the 1800's US West it was always the outsider who sold fake goods or acted as a confidence man, but in a city with lots of mobility and good communications, how do you recognize the outsider? The old enforcement mechanisms don't work.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.