The fight to end sex trafficking may not immediately call Craigslist to mind, but the online advertising site reacted immediately to newly passed legislation aimed at curbing sex trafficking online. As a result, Craigslist personals are gone. The company announced it would shutter all its "Personals" sections after Congress decided this week that third-party websites do share some legal responsibility where sex trafficking is concerned.
We can't take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. Since the s, websites with third-party advertisers have invoked "CDA ," which was passed during the Great Depression, as legal cover for content posted by advertisers that might be illegal.
Human rights activists have been raising the alarm about CDA over the past decade. The law has been used to shield companies from legal liability for the child victims of sex trafficking who may be advertised on their sites. The documentary I Am Jane Doe follows several court cases brought by child sex trafficking victims against Village Voice Media, which hosted a website that accepted ads for sex. In every case, across multiple states, these sex trafficking victims ultimately lost because of CDA This isn't the first time Craigslist has shut down part of its site in response to concerns about sex trafficking.
The company's director of customer and law enforcement relations, William Clinton Powell, appeared before the House Judiciary Committee in In response to over a dozen calls from state attorneys general to shut down the site's "adult services" section, Powell told the committee, "Craigslist discontinued its adult services section on Sept. Sex advertising is a big business for Backpage, which is a Craigslist competitor. That site, which was the focus of I Am Jane Doe , still runs sex ads and has made hundreds of millions of dollars doing so.
It's estimated that 90 percent of sex trafficking victims are advertised on Backpage. Critics argue that sex trafficking victims will now be advertised on a larger network of sites, making it harder to find the children being abused.
