Craigslist is getting since years a lot of trouble about erotic advertisements. A year ago they changed their erotic service to adult service after a lot of pressure form the government.
Craigslist is one of the biggest classified ads websites. Most of the classifieds are free, but professional ads like adult services cost $10 which would give craigslist an estimated revenue of $36 million (according to advanced interactive media group).
It is unbelievable how conservative America is. I am coming from an European country and we do not claim to have the freedom of speech, but at least erotic ads are no problem. Prostitution is allowed in my country and have less sexual harassment and raping then in America where it is in most states not allowed.
People who want to find such ads will always find them, does not matter if craigslist is censoring them or not.
There are tons of other classifieds websites with adult service offerings out there.
People only need to go to google and find what they are looking for, you can even find special service through google maps.
Maybe we should shut down google too.
A lot of critics are saying that craigslist is helping to force women to do things they don't want to do. Please then censor google and Microsoft too. Both companies are helping men to find women who take money for sex.
Or maybe we start to rethink our point of view for prostitution, maybe we legalize it and make sure the profession is taxable. This would reduce the man who are putting pressure on the women to sell their body and would leave more money in the women hands instead of somebody else.
I don't really care, but I do care that we should be free to do things which we want as long it does not harm people or as long it does not promote to harm others or if it is unlawful (unlawful which sense).
We are getting in big trouble if we start to censor. Then we are not better than China or other countries which do censor the internet. Apple is already censoring their apps for iPhone and iPad because they can, which does not mean it is ok.
How do i know in the future that search results I get are objective and not censored?
How do i know the government or other institution is not controlling the information I get?
Freedom of speech in the United States is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and by many state constitutions and state and federal laws. Criticism of the government and advocacy of unpopular ideas that people may find distasteful or against public policy, such as racism, sexism, and other hate speech are generally permitted. There are exceptions to these general protection, including the Miller test for obscenity, child pornography laws, speech that incites imminent danger, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising.
But we don't have the freedom of read if we start to disallow to publish certain information in the internet.
When I watch TV, which is of course much more controlled than the Internet (because there are only a few hundred channels), then I see everyday blood, shooting, real or fake in a movie. It actually looks many times very real and brutal. This can be seen 24/7 on TV, which I think os a reason why a lot of kids are going crazy and start to kill others. But if a woman is taking a shower you will not see any breast or more. If it a full body shoot the woman might wear a bikini. Who in the world is wearing a bikini in the shower (some private channel would show a breast or more but these are expensive channels).
Can we stop sex ads? No.
Can we stop sex websites? No
Should we stop spending money to try to stop them? Yes
Should we use instead the money to fight against child pornography? And use the money to fight against raping? Yes, yes oh yes.
These are the important fights we have to choose, not to fight against a small company which needs the ads to survive.
And I think craigslist did want to make this point, they are basically saying (with the black censored bar) that they have adult service ads but they can't make them public because of the pressure from the government.
- Posted using My iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment