Now That Craigslist Censors Content Where Will That Info Go?

March 27, 2018

Short honk: I read in Newsweek (sorry, The Daily Beast) this story: “The New Law That Killed Craigslist’s Personals Could End the Web As We’ve Known It.” Like many write ups, the main point for The Daily Beast write up strikes me as:

Under current law, the site can’t be held legally liable if someone uses veiled terms to solicit commercial sex—aka prostitution—through the Craigslist personals. But FOSTA will change that, opening up Craigslist (and every other digital platform) to serious legal and financial jeopardy should it accidently “promote” or “facilitate” prostitution.

What happens when censorship forces some content producers to find other communication channels? The research for my “Dark Web Notebook” suggests that some content producers will shift to hidden services; for example, peer to peer, encrypted chat system. Others will turn to the information leaking Dark Web. And a few will become innovators, cooking up new communication confections to dodge authorities.

In my upcoming lecture for some lawyers at a well known government agency, I emphasize that the cyber enforcement task is going to become much more difficult and quickly.

There are some fixes, and if you want to talk about this options, write darkcyber333 at yandex dot com for more information. (Yes, I have a nifty video conferencing system and a PayPal account.)

Stephen E Arnold, March 27, 2018

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