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Douglas MacMillan is one of the Ninja Hamsters at ADOTAS aka an intern. He previously spent several months working as a dutiful intern under the dictatorship of Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone, only to be set free by our own Kiran. He does not get Jaime skim lattes in the morning.

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Streetwalking in Silicon Valley: Has Prostitution Found its Place on Craigslist?

Written on
Mar 22, 2006 
Author
Douglas MacMillan  |
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Streetwalking in Silicon Valley: Has Prostitution Found its Place on Craigslist?

Questions like these inevitably lead to the same place: the Craigslist model has immunity from legal measures precisely because it is a user-generated, community space. In its Terms and Services, which every poster must agree to, Craigslist explicitly states: “You understand that craigslist does not control, and is not responsible for Content made available through the Service, and that by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent, inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise objectionable.” As the site’s operators defended in this recent lawsuit, and as they will continue to maintain as long as Craigslist is under attack for questionable content, this is a user-controlled commons, whose constant stream of content would be impossible to effectively screen by their San Francisco staff of 19 people.

Because there is no pre-screening process—every post that is written automatically appears on the site regardless of its content—Craigslist relies on its users to patrol the listings and flag material which may not abide by the site’s standards. While this method generally works well for censoring traditional types of solicitations—try as they may, corporate advertisers can’t get their postings to stay up—sneakier enticements like the ones posted by sexual solicitors in the housing section frequently fall through the filters of user-inspectors.

In researching this story, I posted a thread in the Craigslist housing discussion forum asking users what they thought about the matter. An overwhelming majority of them believed such sexual solicitations to be “no big deal.” “The girls who respond to these posts and sign the leases know what they’re getting into,” one user expressed. “Men have offered housing in exchange for sex since there has been sex and housing,” another observer posted. And yet another said, “The Internet is just a new broker of those arrangements.”

Although I’m concerned about the primitive and unsympathetic thinking behind these responses, I still believe there are many Craigslist users like me who see this practice as an unwelcome intrusion in my online experience. When I come across these posts, I become horrified by the idea that there are actually young women out there who have no other choice but to reduce themselves to such living arrangements, and disgusted beyond belief that there are men who will pay for it to happen.

What Craigslist needs is a group of its own users with a greater incentive to eliminate this problem. Just as in our offline communities, we can’t simply stand by and let sexual predators live in peace and prosperity among us while authorities do nothing. It is our job to single them out and mute their voice in the public sphere. Yet while there are many people who use Craigslist frequently enough to reap the immediate benefit of such intervention—a cleaner, more responsible, and more stable online community space—most people simply don’t care enough to take action.

If Craigslist is the champion of goodwill it is so often heralded as being, it should step forward and offer some kind of incentive program to motivate its users to help monitor content. Maybe their posts will receive automatic priority in search and classified listings. Maybe they will use handles which recognize their leadership position in the Craigslist community. Maybe their names will be entered into iPod giveaways and the like. Whatever it is, creating a reward for the good services provided by their own users will inevitably reduce the widespread complacency which allows outright requests for prostitution to appear and thrive online. Eventually, when law enforcement steps up its comprehension of the Internet, and Craigslist postings are no longer the mystery meat of advertising legality, we will be able to prosecute these dirt bags for the criminals they are—and be able to surf the web in peace while they serve sentences and fork over fines.





Reader Comments.

Nice piece, Doug. Based on the articles you’ve written and I’ve read, it’s my studied opinion that you’re the very best, notwithstanding any bias on my part, that is.

Posted by Nancy Wetherell | 3:24 pm on March 24, 2006.

News flash – Just as there are things on the internet that may “horrify” and “disgust” you, there are things in real life that do the same. If you’ve been turning a blind eye to these real-world activities, I’m sorry that craigslist has ruined your innocence. But prosecuting craigslist, or hiding it further, won’t change reality.

Criagslist has been so successful precisely because it allows people to post whatever they want. If you ban it there, it will only pop up elsewhere.

Posted by Sam | 10:49 pm on March 29, 2006.

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