The “adult services†listing on Craiglist was removed late Friday from its U.S. based sites. Now they show censored instead. Welcome to freedom of speech and democracy.
How is it anything to do with free speech? They weren't ordered by the government to shut it down, they did it on their own... and it's their site. If I were to close the "Yahoo" section of this website, it certainly would have nothing to do with free speech. As far as end-users not able to post in that section on their site, it's still not an issue of free speech. Is it a violation of free speech if we delete spam here too? lol
If you mean they did it on their own, from technical point of view, by removing/hiding this category, I agree. But for sure not because they really wanted that. Craigslist has closed the adult services section of its website in the US, few weeks after 17 state attorneys general demanded it shut down the section. You are welcome to read their blog: http://blog.craigslist.org/2010/08/manual-screening-matters/ it expresses their feeling for the matter. BTW, 30% of CL revenue comes from these ads, so I really doubt any CEO will decide to drop their revenue by that number, just because he wants to. Deleting spam postings is totally different from demanding to close whole category!
Not really... There is no such thing as free speech on a privately owned site. They could shut down the whole site and it doesn't violate anyone's right to free speech.
I'm not referring to CL as the ones who damaged "free speech", but those attorneys who forced them to do so.
Still don't agree it has anything to do with free speech. Maybe it violates citizen's constitutional right to sell illegal services maybe? {shrug}
I'm here not to change anybody's opinion, but just raising an issue. I just know, that I'm not the only one who thinks like that: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Midmarket/Craigslist-Censorship-Sparks-Free-Speech-Debate-610151/ To your point of , this is where all the authorities should go and do their work. Right now, what they did is just gave opportunity to hundreds other websites to take over this category. And I'm sure CL will be back with this category.
It was kind of lame from CL to "censor" its erotic services section. All what people wanted is to get a grip on the adult content and fight e-prostitution. By this craigslist only confirmed its failure moderating those posts. Thank God the herpes heaven is finally gone but I'm sure the pimps are celebrating!
I don't think removing that section is going to solve the problem. All those posts will just migrate to the personals/casual encounters section.