They are coming for porn next.
I wonder how long reddit NSFW subreddits last.
The argument that porn leads to more sex trafficking is a false equivalence, faulty comparison and false analogy. You could argue prostitution being illegal instead of legal contributes to more sex trafficking.
I think keeping legal porn and making prostitution legal help as it is something that is always in demand, fighting it makes it more unsafe in underground markets.
Things people will do no matter if it is illegal or legal that harm noone and is consenting adults or something you do to your own body, it is better to have it in a mainstream market so it can be more easily regulated and ultimately safer than black/underground markets.
People pushing these laws think if you have a law the activity stops, yet it only makes it worse and more dangerous. Same with abortion, same with drug wars, same with abstinence education over sex education, basically any moral laws beyond civil rights does not work to change behavior and can make it worse.
For proof of this see alcohol prohibition, the 18th amendment and then the 21st when they realize their mistake. You could also argue the drug wars falls under that. You could also argue that there would be LESS human trafficking if prostitution was legal.
We probably need a 'Right to Body' amendment that protects what you do with your own body, prostitution and drugs would fall under that ending illegal prostitution making it legal and ending the longest prohibition ever in the drug wars.
Except in Backpage's case it knowingly facilitated sex trafficing of children, and they wen't out of their way to frustrate law enforcement efforts to investigate those crimes.
The same type of people that use that logic also want to surveil everything you do like you are a criminal 'for the children' or 'for your safety'.
It is a trojan horse that is falsely tarnishing one thing by associating it with a truly bad thing.
False analogies are bad like all people with guns are part of school shootings and it is their fault, or people that look at porn are supporting sex trafficking, or people that don't want to be surveilled are hiding something. You probably do some things that someone used for bad somewhere, should you stop doing it because they did something bad with it?
Civil rights and protections are important because of this attitude by authoritarian people.
Eventually there will be no freedoms left if somewhere somebody uses something for bad rather than good so everyone loses that right.
It may be a fallacious analogy, but your argument is definitely a straw man. Nowhere in this case is porn even mentioned.
Equating porn with sex trafficking is a KNOWN tactic of people / orgs against porn to say it contributes to 'sex trafficking'. Groups like this say it all the time [1][2]. There are also large religious/authoritative groups behind the push and funding. Really it is about gaining more control over you to limit your freedoms.
> Pornography is in and of itself a form of sex trafficking [1].
> They teach that there is no acceptable amount of porn to watch; anyone who consumes porn is considered an addict. Utah’s new anti-porn resolution contains language that echoes the Mormon church’s doomsday predictions: “Pornography equates violence towards women and children with sex and pain with pleasure, which increases the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, child sexual abuse images, and child pornography,” the resolution reads. “Pornography use is linked to lessening desire in young men to marry, dissatisfaction in marriage, and infidelity.” [2]
The only strawman are those setups. Groups are pushing these types of laws all over the country in especially authoritarian states/orgs.
It freaks me out some are moving back to a crazy conservative view of sex/humans almost scarlet letter-esque, shaming, culty, very controlling and authoritarian view over your own body and mind.
[1] http://humantraffickingsearch.org/the-connection-between-sex...
[2] http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/04/20/utah_declare...
Here is an example of the deceitful language and assertions that you are championing:
"Internal correspondence also suggests Backpage believes it is better that child sex trafficking take place on its website than elsewhere. In 2011, in response to a request from the Seattle Police Chief to require photo ID whenever a user submits a photo for an ad, Padilla expressed doubt to Ferrer and Hyer that such a system would be useful—it might create a “false sense of security.” But he went on to add the following:
And even if an age verification was a deterrent to someone hoping to post an ad on Backpage to traffic a minor, it doesn’t mean they’re going to stop trying to traffic a minor. It only means they won’t be doing it on our site, where Backpage, NCMEC and law enforcement are in the best position to put an actual stop to the crime."
And another:
"The record also contains substantial evidence that, as a matter of policy, Backpage often chose to err against reporting potential child exploitation. As the Subcommittee reported in connection with its November 2015 hearing, in June 2012 Backpage instructed its outsourced third-party moderators only to delete suspected child-sex advertisements “IF YOU REALLY VERY SURE THE PERSON IS UNDERAGE.” In a similar email, a Backpage supervisor instructed internal moderation staff: “Young ads do not get deleted unless they are clearly a child.”"
The whole report about "knowingly facilitating" sex trafficking is about them acknowledging the possibility that some people may be using the site for sex trafficking(which is just reality), and then questioning the demands of activists to ban a broad spectrum of ads because they may be related to child sex trafficking.
Backpage was, quite clearly, trying to maintain its business of prostitution ads. Trying to somehow link them to "child sex trafficking" is disingenuous.
All of which, if true, is already illegal and always has been. Which is why Backpage was shut down before FOSTA/SESTA was signed into law, and why there was already an active case against them, because they already lost immunity under the CDA.
SESTA and FOSTA have as little to do with sex trafficking as the PATRIOT act had to do with patriotism.
USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) was labeled as being about terrorism in the way that SESTA was labeled as being about sex trafficking.
That's ...exactly what I'm saying? It was nominally "about" patriotism - patriotism being presented and viewed in contemporary discourse from 2001 as the binary opposition to terrorism, in more ways than just legislation.
Terrorism is broadly an act of political violence against the state, and patriotism is broadly a demonstration of support for the state. The PATRIOT act invoked the rhetoric of one to nominally fight the other, although in practice that was just an excuse.
I'm curious about other apps as well. Snapchat in case people aren't aware is used very heavily for prostitution and porn.
Twitter to a lesser degree but I have noticed it is also used a lot for this.
Interestingly google pay is the most popular payment provider that is used for this. I wonder why snap cash isn't used.
What about guns though? There's hardly any shootings in Europe, and guns are -generally- basically illegal there.
That's not porn.
It's being accused of that, but it was probably targeted merely because it facilitated prostitution; MyRedbook.com was previously seized by the Justice Department, without any accusation of knowingly facilitate anything other than adult consensual sex trade (there were claims to the media by incestigators that “massage parlors” pimping minors used the site, but not that the site operators were knowingly facilitating that.)
Please do read the report I've linked. It's very clear that Backpage knew that ads for children that had been trafficed were being placed, and that Backpage was helping those ads to be placed.
Haha I knew this would strike a nerve here. The truth is, your modern "no porn" movement isn't coming from the religious right anymore. So now that the typical scapegoats are out of the picture, you are left with actually having to sit and think for yourself. You think an evangelical started /r/nofap?
There is a lot more to porn than just professionally recorded porn (which btw, is one of the most audited industries, since it's very easy way to score some points with the electorate for a DA to go after shady stuff happening in such a studio).
Here's a thought: let consenting adults do what they want with each other.
I have no problem with you nofapping (or joining AA, or whatever), and I'm happy for law enforcement to prosecute actual sex trafficking, but let the rest of the law-abiding/consenting individuals do what they want.