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Comment by credo | Hacker News Reader

Two days ago, almost all HNers agreed with Rackspace's decision to shut down PandaForm's website because of some user-generated content that seemed like phishing.Almost everyone (including me) was critical of PandaForm

So I find it interesting that all current comments on this thread are critical of CNN. A journalist's job is to ask tough questions. I haven't seen anyone refute the fact that a huge amount of sex trafficking (of minors and adults) hapens through Craig's List.

In the post, Craig talks about his "support for our troops and veterans" and his support for "Net neutrality". That support is great, but it is irrelevant when it comes to the question of sex trafficking of minor girls.

So why should journalists not ask tough questions of the founder of Craig's List ?

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There's a line between "tough questions" and "stupid questions." The reporter was pretty clearly asking the latter.

Something like "wouldn't it be possible for you to filter ads based on keywords that suggest illegal activities," or "couldn't you use the same techniques that other companies use to block spam to block illegal content" would have been tough questions. But she didn't ask any of them; instead, she asked a facile 'gotcha' question about a particular post, in an obvious attempt to get him to say something embarrassing.

It was a cheap, pandering bit of entertainment TV; if that's what 'journalism' has been reduced to, we ought to wish it a speedy death.

Here's the list, can you tell me which question you thought was stupid, and why?

1. Can people trust that children are not being sex-trafficked on Craigslist?

2. What are you guys doing to protect these girls?

3. [Craigslist says its screen these ads manually, but] look at this ad. It says young, sexy, sweet, and bubbly. Clearly here she writes $250 an hour. I mean what do you think she's selling in her bra and underwear? A dinner date? And she's in her bra and underwear?

4. Why do I have the responsibility to report this to you when it's your Web site?

(Disclaimer: I don't use craigslist, I've been to the site <10 times in my life, so I'm making assumptions about what's available to the end user in terms of reporting issues. If I'm wrong, I apologize in advance.)

In my opinion:

1 is unfair. You can't say with 100% certainty that any popular website is immune from something like that, so he can't say "yes". He certainly can't say "no" without making the site look bad. So how does he answer?

2 is unfair. If you ask about a specific ad, they can look in the system and say "that ad was placed on X, it was reported as problematic by a user on Y, we checked it on Z and reported it to the police." If you say in general "what are you doing about 'these girls'" then you're making him look bad by saying "I don't know 'which girls' you're referring to." Again, if you don't give him a chance to make a proper answer, then you're not really being fair as a reporter.

3 is similarly unfair unless he's at his computer and can give you the information. Obviously the post in question is crossing the line, but what do you expect him to do about it right then? If they manually screen the ads, then someone's not doing their job right, but can you say with 100% certainty that everyone at CNN is doing their job right 100% of the time?

Finally, 4 is unfair because if she'd actually reported the thing using the proper channels, then the post would have been gone before she'd have time to put together her story. But that would go against her interests, so it's much better to ambush him in person with an ad he's never seen before.

On the other hand, if the question is the less-personal and less-exasperated "why do you rely on your users to police your site?" then that's a fair question.

The underlying question for this reporter is this: Is your goal to get answers? Or is your goal to embarrass him for ratings?

(EDIT: replacing "stupid" with "unfair".)

I am totally acting as a devil's advocate here, I haven't dug into this enough to have formed a proper opinion:

The problem in this imaginary chain of events is "it was reported as problematic by a user on Y". What the hell is the user doing reporting it? Why aren't there dedicated staff?

These guys are reported to make $150 mill a year with just 32 staff. That they're not picking up on this shit is just plain negligence.

Just because we as programmers are used to dealing with huge data sets doesn't actually mean this problem isn't policable with a couple of people.

They could pay a couple of students minimum wage to vet all their adult adverts.

In the old days the vet would be in the phone call placing the order for an advert. Just because it's now all handled by a computer in the form of a web form so staff costs are reduced doesn't mean there's any less responsibility on the company. It's a cost. You pass it on to the advertiser.

And they're not doing it.

> What the hell is the user doing reporting it? Why aren't there dedicated staff?

Because that's how the site works. Period. It's a community-policed bulletin board. Is there something inherently wrong with that?

> They could pay a couple of students minimum wage to vet all their adult adverts.

There may be liability issues here. If they declare, "we are policing the site to get rid of all potentially illegal posts," and then they miss one, they could get sued by the victim.

CL itself explicitly says that for adult services, they have a manual review process for each ad that includes reading the ad, verifying a credit card, and placing a phone call to the number used to place the ad. They are not trying to get by on common carrier status.

The criticism is that these measures don't seem to be sufficient, that coordination with law enforcement has been piecemeal at best, and that CL does not invest more (or all) of the profit from these ads back into anti-trafficking measures.

Yeah, good point. That invalidates the second half of my argument.

I wonder though about the interview segment with the law enforcement guy. Wouldn't they prefer CL just post everything and not vet the posts for possible illegal activities? I mean, think about it: it's a public forum where people are willing to outright advertise the illegal activities they're willing to provide. It sounds like a law-enforcement wet dream.

So not really a user of craigslist -- may have found an apartment a few years ago, but never visit it. Here's my response:

1. It's impossible to say that about anything. Can you trust that children are not being sex-trafficked at walmart & mcdonalds?

2. This is a good question.

3. Asking him to speculate on an ad is stupid. She could be a stripper or something else, hell now I'm speculating... maybe that was the only picture she had

4. This relates to number 2. If they say that they scan those that have been reported by users since there are a lot more users than staff then it's everyones responsibility. If you see something that's wrong you should report it. In much the same way we don't expect pg to review every post and news story -- there is a way for us to report by flagging.

1. I "trust" that WalMart and McDonald's at least aren't willingly making money from sex-trafficking. If a representative of one of those companies were asked the same question, I'd have zero problem with them saying something like "we do whatever we can to stop it". CL gets paid for these ads and claims to police them. It's a different standard.

3. Head on over to CL and tell me how hard it is for you to find a similar ad that's clearly for prostitution. It's a completely fair question, even if it does have a surface similarity to unfair gotcha-style questions.

4. I addressed this in a cousin comment.

People complain about sex-trafficking and prostitution on Craigslist. But CL didn't invent or newly-enable any of it. It all just concentrated from local newspaper classifieds. And I guarantee that CL is doing more to vet ads than any newspaper ever did.

Clearly, CL is going above and beyond their legal requirement to vet these ads. Any article of substance on the topic will lay that out plain as day.

So why do you feel it necessary to imply that you can't "trust" them, or that CL is willingly profiting from prostitution or human trafficking?

It all just concentrated from local newspaper classifieds.

Would you grant that sufficient concentration would make it a different class of problem?

Clearly, CL is going above and beyond their legal requirement to vet these ads.

Okay, so what? Nobody serious seems to be claiming anyone from CL should go to jail. The only argument I've heard is that whatever CL is doing isn't working, and they need to do more to actually address the problem. People certainly have the right to make this argument, don't they?

So why do you feel it necessary to imply that you can't "trust" them, or that CL is willingly profiting from prostitution or human trafficking?

If it's true that CL is willingly profiting from sex ads, and it's true that sex ads on CL are a primary tool of sex traffickers, and it's true that CL knows this, how is it not then the case that CL is willingly profiting from sex trafficking? I'm not saying or implying that it's their goal or their desire to do so, but the bottom line is that they are, and they could be doing more so that they aren't.

  > 4. Why do I have the responsibility to report this
  > to you when it's your Web site?

Because you're a human being?

How is seeing an ad for underage prostitution, and not reporting it because "it's someone else's responsibility," any different then seeing an assault in progress on the street and claiming that it's the police's responsibility to get involved in that, and not yours?

If someone just ignores a murder/assault/robbery in-progress we would think of them as an asshole, so why is this reporter different? Because she's a journalist?

Craigslist charges money for these ads and claims it manually reviews them. Presumably the person walking by a murder/assault/robbery isn't witnessing a crime the perpetrator asked and paid the owner of the alleyway for permission to commit.

So that completely absolves her of responsibility? If she sees an underage prostitute on the street does she forgo calling the police and complain to the pimp that he didn't do a good enough job of checking if she was underage or not?

This is not to defend Craigslist, but to say that if she didn't report the crime to anyone she is just as guilty. Just because she is a reporter following a 'hot story' doesn't make her any less responsible for ignoring a crime that she could have helped to prevent. I don't like the idea that since the ad was posted on Craig's site, then he is responsible for it, but someone that actually saw it and knew that something was awry, and did nothing can take some sort of moral high-ground.

You're taking it for granted that she didn't report the ad, though the question doesn't necessitate that that's the case. Even if she didn't, though, her guilt doesn't absolve Craigslist, and it doesn't make the question invalid, though it probably could be worded better.

I specifically used the example with the pimp to try and convey the idea that I'm not absolving Craigslist of anything. In that example, you wouldn't absolve the pimp of all blame for putting the underage child on the street-corner.

I don't have a problem with a reporter asking hard questions. I have a problem with reporters who are more interested in getting video that makes the reporter look heroic, than they are in getting answers to tough questions.

Anyone seen any evidence this reporter made any attempt to continue to ask those questions at a later time. Or did she stop the interview the second she saw Newmark looked bad at the same time she yelled the questions once.

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