Craigslist appears to have surrendered to heavy pressure over the erotic ads posted on its website by shutting down its adult services section.
Craigslist, which has been under scrutiny for years, pulled the section off its website in early September. The Internet has become a new threat to the fight against prostitution as well as child exploitation, said Karen Bell, chief deputy district attorney for San Bernardino County. The coalition was authorized in Ryan Calo, a senior research fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, said ads for sexual services could become harder to monitor if they begin migrating back into the personals.
In an Aug. The business will likely shift to other adult sites, perhaps based outside the United States. Getting such ads removed from other sites is the next goal, said Malika Saada Saar, executive director of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, a group that has been involved in pressuring Craigslist to block adult services ads.
In May , postings at Backpage. When Craigslist removed its adult-services section, postings at Backpage spiked again. Senate candidate, said Tuesday that several state attorneys general sent a joint letter to Backpage and asked that it drop its adult services section. Backpage officials quickly responded and said it would not close the adult-services section. In a blog posting, Backpage officials wrote that it would not drop the category because it had increased efforts, including working with law enforcement officials, to block ads promoting prostitution and child-trafficking.
It is our sincere hope that law enforcement and advocacy groups will find helpful partners there. John Duffield, who worked five years ago as a detective in the vice unit for the Ontario Police Department, said Craigslist was the most popular Internet site because, at the time, it was free. We would know which ones were new, which were local. Pimps will face higher charges on other websites.
