[toomuchtodo]

From the Wired piece mentioned:

> The government indictment that triggered Lacey and Larkin’s arrests, United States v. Lacey, et al., includes 17 “victim summaries”—stories of women who say they were sexually exploited through Backpage. Victim 5 first appeared in an ad on the platform when she was 14; her “customers” made her “perform sexual acts at gunpoint, choked her to the point of having seizures, and gang-raped her.” Victim 6 was stabbed to death. Victim 8’s uncle and his friends advertised her as “fetish friendly.” The indictment accuses Backpage of catering to sexual predators, of essentially helping pimps better reach their target audiences.

Tough issue overall balancing free speech and legitimate consensual sex work against flagrant exploitation. My understanding is that even in jurisdictions with legalization and formalization of the work trafficking still occurs. No solutions to provide, Larkin’s suicide is still tragic and unfortunate.

[worik]

I live in a jurisdiction where sex work is decriminalised.

Trafficking does still occur. But it is a very small part of the scene.

The difference it has made to workers is huge. Once they were at risk from pimps, clients, and cops. Now if pimps or clients bother them they go to the cops, and the cops protect them. As they should.

As they do for shop keepers, plumbers, and computer programmers.

Make no mistake: Having a law against sex work encourages, and subsidises, trafficking.

[Vicinity9635]

>Make no mistake: Having a law against sex work encourages, and subsidises, trafficking.

Super dark take: Hey, it worked to make drugs more profitable, why not sex work?

I remember when it passed and pretty much every ordinary American was surprised and hadn't asked for it. It seemed to come out of nowhere with no news coverage that I was aware of and nobody was a fan.

[mkatx]

Black markets are dangerous and people are going to do it anyway. Albeit unintuitive, legalization and regulation is the way to go!

As an average American, decriminalized drugs and sex work for the win!

[s1artibartfast]

I tend to agree, but many people get so riled up on the topic that they forget that just because something is legal doesn't mean it's good and just because something is bad doesn't mean it should be illegal.

The legal system shouldn't be the single tool humans use to decide how to act. It should be a very High bar to prevent the most egregious and destructive Acts, not a tool for achieving optimal human behavior

[Brian_K_White]

No one ever denied that things happened. The difference was they actually worked against it.

The question to ask is, did the slavery stop without backpage?

Which means, (assuming the answer is no it didn't stop or even reduce at all) did the problem get better or worse by attacking backpage? Wherever the slaves are marketed now, is the owner working with police to discover and free them?

[maxbond]

From what I've read, it seems sex workers hold that they are safer online because they are able to directly manage their relationships with clients. This enables them to enforce vetting processes before they meet up in person (impossible in the street), and eliminate abusive middle men (pimps).

We could do better than Backpage, we could probably make abuse of sex workers rare rather than a cliche, but it would require decriminalization first. For instance, that would enable them to hire their own security, or to press charges against abusers (though that's is own can of worms of course). It's also usually the sex workers who are in a position to understand who is being trafficked and by whom, but they are unable to intervene effectively without institutional support.

[vorpalhex]

Bluntly, we tried drug decriminalization in the theory that decriminalization meant people could seek help. Instead of more people getting help, fewer did because the stick had been removed. [0]

We should ask, well, does sex trafficking happen more or less in areas where prostitution is legal? That'll give us a good indicator of the effects of decriminalization.

We have a great study on this [1]. Decriminalization makes sex trafficking WORSE - full stop. Prostitution means more sex trafficking happens, and crackdowns on prostitution successfully reduce sex trafficking too.

[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/07/oregon-...

[1]: https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-...

[clipsy]

> We have a great study on this [1]. Decriminalization makes sex trafficking WORSE - full stop. Prostitution means more sex trafficking happens, and crackdowns on prostitution successfully reduce sex trafficking too.

From the article[0] (NB: not the linked article, the actual research paper): "Among the currently available sources, the aforementioned Report on Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns (UNODC, 2006) has also collected and presented data on incidences of human trafficking at the country level; therefore the utilization of this report best serves the purpose of our study. The UNODC Report provides cross-country information on the reported incidence of human trafficking in 161 countries, measuring trafficking flows on a six-point scale."

There's a fairly serious shortcoming here in my opinion which I did not see addressed while skimming the research design; part of the argument in favor of legalization/decriminalization is specifically that trafficking victims will be more likely to approach the police for help. As such, one would expect an increase in sex trafficking victims identified in countries that legalize/decriminalize -- not because there are more victims, but because the victims that were already present now feel more comfortable seeking help from the state. As a contrived thought experiment, if you have a city with 100 sex trafficking victims and 50 of them would go to the police if they weren't afraid of getting arrested, legalizing sex work would seemingly produce 50 sex trafficking victims virtually overnight! But of course, in reality, those victims were already present, silently suffering and unable to get help for fear of imprisonment.

[0]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065

[s1artibartfast]

Furthermore, pretty much all of these studies avoid any quantification of the benefits. Women employed, the money that they made, the number of people that stayed out of the criminal justice systems, and even satisfied customers.

Of course there will always be questions of induced demand, assuming that that's bad and may increase trafficking. That doesn't mean that there's not tools and policies that can combat trafficking in a legal system. For example, citizenship requirements for prostitutes and a death penalty for traffickers would probably go a long way

[vorpalhex]

I don't think making money or satisfying customers offsets the harm of kidnapping someone and selling their body.

[s1artibartfast]

I obviously dont either, in a 1:1 exchange. When the ratio gets sufficiently large, I think that can change, especially when the alternative also includes kidnapping and sex trafficing.

[Brian_K_White]

What is the draft for military service?

I don't mean in countries where every single person does the same short term, I mean when there is a war and we grab all the fit young men.

It's hardly any different. What really is being defended by all those draftees? Not our lives, just our way of life.

Everyone else agreed that those smaller number of people fed into a meat grinder was worth everyone else's ability to own a car and a house and elect their own mayor.

[vorpalhex]

Except we also track the journey of sex trafficked victims.. and they mostly travel to regions with little law enforcement presence.

Unlike murder, we can just ask the victims.. which the UNODC does.

> More impunity, more victims: Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are convicting fewer traffickers and detecting fewer victims than rest of the world. At the same time, victims from these regions are identified in more destination countries than people from elsewhere

UNODC Human Trafficking report, 2022

[maxbond]

This is pretty silly, prohibition has been an obvious failure in both drugs and sex work.

Firstly, it's a human rights issue, people ought to be able to engage in the commerce of their choosing with only reasonable restrictions. Prohibition is an unreasonable restriction, enforced according to a set of puritan morals that are no longer even popularly held. After all, alcohol is more addictive and more harmful than many schedule 1 drugs. We're not enforcing any kind of consistent moral principle here, we're hewing to the arbitrary views of people who are long dead. I personally do not find prostitution compatible with my moral sensibilities (I'm a prude, I'm just a libertarian prude), so I don't engage with it, but I'm not interested in prosecuting those that do any more than I'm interested in criminalizing pineapple on pizza.

Secondly, that study doesn't show that it made trafficking worse. It showed that it increased inflows of trafficking. Of course traffickers will prefer open markets to closed ones, that doesn't establish a causal relationship whereby increased openness lead to more net trafficking. What this shows is that prohibition makes trafficking happen in someone else's back yard.

Thirdly, you're linking to a 2014 article about a 2012 study, which is ancient as far as an academic paper goes. Is there really no more recent study? Browsing Google Scholar is evident that this is an active area off research.

Here's a 2021 one I skimmed to cherrypick an article that finds decriminalization more effective ("Although it seems that partial decriminalization has greater benefits with fewer disadvantages, it is not without defects."): https://brieflands.com/articles/ijhrba-106741.html

Why should I find your article more authoritative? (I'm looking for a survey article on the subject presently.)

Fourth, once you've prohibited something, it's next to impossible to intervene to make that market safer. If we want to find the traffickers, we're going to have an easier time in a lit market then a dark one.

Lastly, I'm just more inclined to listen to sex workers and trafficking victims about what they would help than to look at descriptive statistics. Statistics are cool and useful, but predictive mental models and lives experience is a better source of policy. Statistics is better able to tell us that something isn't working than what that something is, why it isn't working, and what should be done about it.

[themitigating]

Thirdly, you're linking to a 2014 article about a 2012 study, which is ancient as far as an academic paper goes

Has there been some new release of prostitution, like a 2.0 where they updated the security to prevent abuse?

Stupid joke but nothing has really changed in that realm of things where a study that isn't that old would be invalid.

[maxbond]

> Has there been some new release of prostitution, like a 2.0 where they updated the security to prevent abuse?

This is the wrong question. A better one is, "has the way prostitution and sex trafficking relate to the internet changed?", but the correct one is "does a 2012 article reflect the current understanding in this field of research?"

[themitigating]

2012 isn't really pre internet though, right?

[rayiner]

> Firstly, it's a human rights issue, people ought to be able to engage in the commerce of their choosing with only reasonable restrictions

You’re starting with a libertarian premise most people don’t accept. The vast majority of the world accepts that it’s proper to restrict individual freedom even to protect people from themselves. Society has a role to play to help people make good choices and to make it hard for them to make bad or dangerous choices.

Also, you’re incorrect about the prevalent morals. Even in the US, women—who bear the lion’s share of the cost of prostitution—oppose legalizing by a large margin (50% to 30%): https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-me.... And of course the overwhelming majority would still say it’s a bad or immoral choice, even if they agree someone should be allowed to make that choice.

[maxbond]

> The vast majority of the world accepts that it’s proper to restrict individual freedom even to protect people from themselves.

As do I, and I said as much (I'm not a capital-L Libertarian, I meant it as an adjective). I argued this exceeded reasonable bounds.

I'm surprised to learn it's that unpopular, but I am comfortable arguing an unpopular position.

[clipsy]

> women—who bear the lion’s share of the cost of prostitution

Prostitutes bear the lion's share of the cost of prostitution.

[thaumasiotes]

> Even in the US, women — who bear the lion’s share of the cost of prostitution — oppose legalizing by a large margin

That's not a surprise. Amazon bears the cost of Wal-mart's operations and would probably like to outlaw Wal-mart too.

[rayiner]

I think a fairer analogy is worker protection laws. Workers understand how other workers can be coerced into accepting unsafe working conditions and think it’s okay to limit individual freedom to take that pressure off the table for all.

[dragonwriter]

> women—who bear the lion’s share of the cost of prostitution

What “cost of prostitution” do women who are not prostitutes bear?

The cost of criminalization of prostitution is clearly born primarily by prostitutes who are disproportionately women, but the vast majority of women are not prostitutes.

[rayiner]

Being coerced and pressured into prostitution. Most women aren’t prostitution, but any woman can be the victim of efforts to coerce her into prostitution, often as a result of earlier sexual abuse: https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11907/

[AnthonyMouse]

> You’re starting with a libertarian premise most people don’t accept. The vast majority of the world accepts that it’s proper to restrict individual freedom even to protect people from themselves.

Do they? The argument I always see is that it's to protect society from them e.g. imposing costs on the healthcare system.

[vorpalhex]

Well I quoted a Harvard review of a Swedish study, and yours is an Iranian study that seems to have no peer review. Also your metastudy uh, agrees with mine:

> The last critics would be that full decriminalization has not resulted in reduced trafficking victimization, but led to growth trafficking inflows

> Lastly, I'm just more inclined to listen to sex workers and trafficking victims about what they would help than to look at descriptive statistics.

Have you.. talked to any trafficking victims? Any sex workers? And, why do you think a sex worker has the ability to write prescriptive legal policy? Drug addicts would like drugs to be legal, oil barons would like there to be no natural protection laws, prostitutes would like prostitution to be legal.

And what do you think has changed about sex trafficking and prostitution in 11 years?

> Fourth, once you've prohibited something, it's next to impossible to intervene to make that market safer.

Right because you squash the market. Decriminalization of drugs failed because the count of addicts soared and so did ODs. You have less sex trafficking when it is riskier to engage in any prostitution. This isn't rocket science. Arguing your trafficking victims should get better health care is worse than just having meaningfully less trafficking victims.

[maxbond]

> [Y]ours is an Iranian study that seems to have no peer review.

Fair enough. (I intend to find a good & recent survey paper still but chores have come up, so it'll have to wait a few hours.)

> Have you.. talked to any trafficking victims? Any sex workers?

Not personally no, I only know what I've learned of their positions through articles I've read and documentaries I've seen. Why, have you?

> Drug addicts would like drugs to be legal, oil barons would like there to be no natural protection laws, prostitutes would like prostitution to be legal.

Why are you equating prostitutes with oil barons of all things? This seems like a list of people whom are often viewed poorly, and I can only infer the rhetorical function here is to tar prostitutes through association. Which makes me doubt the sincerity of your concern.

> And what do you think has changed about sex trafficking and prostitution in 11 years?

I'm sure the state of those things as they relate to the internet has shifted, but not importantly what I was suggesting was the understanding of this field of research has probably changed dramatically in 11 years.

> Right because you squash the market.

What market has ever been squashed by prohibition? Alcohol wasn't. Drugs haven't been. Prostitution hasn't been.

> Arguing your trafficking victims should get better health care is worse than just having meaningfully less trafficking victims.

There won't be fewer trafficking victims, or other sex workers who are victims of abuse, we'll just have disclaimed responsibility for them by declaring that it's illegal and excluding them from polite society. The abuse we'll continue, and the comfortable can pretend it doesn't exist because it's been brushed under the rug.

Additionally, it absolutely does matter if we can provide services. For the example of drug use, the appropriate healthcare (eg Narcan, needle exchanges, treatment for addiction) can make a night and day difference for survival. Sex workers would be safer if they weren't stigmatized and so more likely to be believed if they ask for help, if they were able to operate in the open with hired security and vetting processes, etc.

[vorpalhex]

Good high quality research repeatedly says that cracking down on prostitution reduces sex trafficking.

Sex workers are not safer if they are less stigmatized, they are more likely to have bad outcomes. You can't make a soldier safer by hugging them, you can't remove intrinsic risk by saying nice things to someone.

And yes, the drug market did get smaller under prohibition, as did alcohol under prohibition, as does prositution. That prohibition is not fully effective doesn't mean the inverse is effective.

Oregon tried decriminalization and their OD rate has grown 4x more than everyone elses. 4x more people have died because someone didn't want to follow research.

[mistrial9]

you are not wrong, the counter-prevailing theory is related to "Harm Reduction"

over centuries consider cities and their populace. Those who practiced strict morality laws led to slum cities where there was nothing but vice, whereas mixed cities past a certain size that licensed bars or theater or taxi-dancing or whatever the action was.. might have different outcomes over time for the population. The character of the police force and others wielding turf-territory might be different over time as well.

As the population grows its hard to imagine purity as a real reaction to public health, whatever your moral compass might be.

[pessimizer]

This will always be an issue, but we don't run around shutting down and suing Monster.com because they allowed ads for unsafe construction jobs or financial firms that engaged in illegal activity.

You want to encourage this stuff to all run through the same site, and to give police carte blanche to poke around that site wherever they want (as long as their customers civil liberties are preserved, due process, etc.). A site that would keep good records (and inform their customers what records would be kept.) That sort of thing.

Instead, it just got driven back underground. Nobody is checking IDs underground.

[Teever]

So when's Mark Zuckerberg getting arrested for all the crime that happens on his platform?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> and legitimate consensual sex work

What is legitimate consensual sex work? For those of us who don't transact with prostitutes, all we know about this is a stream of narratives we've seen on tv and in film. Julia Roberts falling for Richard Gere, or Maggie Gyllenhall refusing to have a pimp "manage" her.

Yet, I remember reading one account of a porn actress, who despite signing all the paperwork, waivers and contracts and such, later claimed that every single act felt like rape to her.

Even when there are no pimps or sex traffickers, many claim that they feel coerced by circumstances. Exploited by their clientele.

On top of that we have to deal with ever-evolving ideas about what consent even means. That one cannot properly give consent if one party is more powerful than the other (and how could that ever not be the case, when one is a man and the other a woman... does not plain strength count as power in that scenario?).

In one episode of Californication, Fox Mulder's sitting there mocking a man that showed up with the hooker, calling him a pimp, asking where's his feathered velvet hat, and the guy drolly explains "I'm just here to make sure creeps don't try to beat up the girls".

It's very unclear whether there is such a thing as legitimate consensual sex work, or that humans are even capable of formulating a reasonable definition of consent that would satisfy idiot frat boys and feminist activists both. To call this "tough" is world-class championship understatement. It looks absolutely intractable.

[giraffe_lady]

It's the same consent I and probably also you have with working for money: coerced into it by the threat of penury and/or state violence. I choose the best of the options available to me, based on the other constraints in my life. As do sex workers.

They are subject to the same coercive pressures, and their constraints are individual to them as everyone's are to themselves. Consent is simply the wrong framework for understanding decisions made under life and death consideration. In the same way a machinist's anger at their on the job maiming is righteous, a sex worker can consider any or all encounters to be rape. Just because they've chosen to be there doesn't mean they want to be.

[s1artibartfast]

>On top of that we have to deal with ever-evolving ideas about what consent even means. That one cannot properly give consent if one party is more powerful than the other (and how could that ever not be the case, when one is a man and the other a woman... does not plain strength count as power in that scenario?)

This is essentially the problem. There is no positive definition of what consent is - only an arguments about what consent isn't.

People posit that consent cant co-exist with power imbalance. Because no two people are identical, nobody is perfect, and nobody is omnipotent, consent can not exist at all.

The term has been reduced to meaningless and eventually a new word will be coined for sober choices made free from threat of violence and deceit

[flangola7]

You've obviously never had so much as a single friend who was a SW.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Was it obvious because my entire comment laid out how I only know this stuff from fiction? Or did you dig deep and use your Nostradamus powers to read it from my brain telepathically?

[flangola7]

This is your opportunity for introspection, not childish snappy retorts.