Underage prostitutes marketed on Internet:
This is a great article from the Sacramento Bee about child prostitution on craigslist. Again it’s not worth quoting the article much because doing to so would insult the journalists who worked on it but I will give you two quotes that will get you to read the entire article.
The first is just the opening sentence of the article…
If she tried hard, 14-year-old Jasmine could have sex with nine men a day. She’d start posting ads online at 2 or 3 p.m., in time to set up appointments with early commuters.
And as usual the craigslist big wigs had their usual non-response…
Jim Buckmaster, craigslist’s CEO, wrote in an e-mail to The Bee that “there is nothing more gut-wrenching to our staff … than to hear that our site has been abused to exploit a child.”
He said craigslist bans illegal activity and urges users to watch for exploited minors. Staff recently implemented new measures, including verifying phone numbers. The changes have reduced the volume of erotic services ads by 80 percent, he said.
I guess we have to go through this again.
First off if it was so gut-wrenching to craigslist they would do away with the erotic services section. Secondly again ‘users’ policing the site obviously doesn’t work. Like I’ve said many times before the users of the erotic services section aren’t going to flag any of the ads and users who use craigslist for normal stuff aren’t going in to the erotic services section to flag illegal ads. Lastly craigslist’s new measures may have eliminated 80 percent of the erotic ads but it hasn’t eliminated the problem of child prostitution on its site.
Stop patting yourself on the back Jim, you’re part of the problem, not the solution.
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