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Craigslist Clampdown? Bring Your A-Game, Fellow Pervs
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Craigslist Clampdown? Bring Your A-Game, Fellow Pervs The fact that Craigslist shut down its Personals section recently won’t have much of a direct bearing on Senior Sizzle and other Senior Sizzle sites. But think of it as foreplay when it comes to the moral and legal questions this site and its users will soon face. Craigslist shuttered the section in the wake of the U.S. Senate’s passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, or FOSTA. The legislation will "subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully," according to a statement you find when you click on Craigslist’s personals pages now. In layman’s terms, that means a web site can now be held responsible for crimes victimizing users of the site. It’s hard to fault law enforcement and legislators for trying to do something – Craigslist had become a Petrie dish for all manner of sex crimes, many serious. But legislation of this sort can easily have consequences beyond those intended. Whether that's a good idea, and whether it will have its intended effect, remains to be seen. While have been incidents of sex trafficking, most of the contacts initiated there were between consenting adults. While many of those meetings involved money, that’s not sex trafficking, a far more serious crime, wherein the provider is forced into sex. There are some key differences between Craigslist and sites like Senior Sizzle, of course. Practicality was the main one: if you were looking to get laid right now or that night (or morning, or afternoon), Craigslist has for decades been the place to go. The lovely and lewd ads were pervy and plentiful, but most of all potentially prompt. That’s not the goal of most Senior Sizzle members, at least not most of the time. Another was accountability, since the ongoing monthly fee, usually paid with a credit card, provides at least a degree of traceable legitimacy, though cases of fraud are not unusual. Some Craigslist users will probably migrate here, which may require increased vigilance on the part of the site’s operators, which already strictly enforce its no mentions of money policy, even when its implied, as in phrases like “sugar daddy.” Those Craigslist refugees will pay monthly fees like us, too. It won’t be a big deal for most of us. And sex and tech have been intertwined for a long time. Remember when the VCR brought porn home and made stars –at least in the privacy of our bedrooms—out of many of us? Even the automobile’s popularity was said to have received a big boost in the U.S. from couples anxious to head into the countryside and hit high gear. Online titans like Google and Amazon have for years been battling regulators over how much responsibility they should bear for evil deeds that their product makes possible or facilitates. So far, they’ve held the line by enforcing their own code of conduct. But as the recent Facebook revelations proves, self-policing cannot be counted upon. The more significant concern is the great unknown as we, our politicians and the world’s cultures try to keep pace with technology’s impact on such basic human natures as sex. And it will leave the upheaval caused by driver-less cars in the dust. And what will happen in say, 10 years, when virtual reality will allow online partners to “touch” each other via sensory signals? Sex robots are already startlingly and more than a little creepily, life-like. The moral and legal questions those and other advances will bring –are heinous sex crimes simply fantasies in the virtual world?– are mind-boggling. You’re probably ready to click back to the comforting lists of horny folks flirting and looking for fun, and I’m with you there. But be aware that the Craigslist clampdown is just the beginning when it comes to seismic shifts that technology will bring to sexuality.  |
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