In a Huffington Post op-ed, danah boyd argues that pressure to censor Craigslist, which recently resulted in the company's removal of its "adult services" section for users in the United States, actually "helps pimps, child traffickers and other abusive scumbags."
As a victim of violence myself, I'm deeply committed to destroying any institution or individual leveraging the sex-power matrix that results in child trafficking, nonconsensual prostitution, domestic violence and other abuses. If I believed that censoring Craigslist would achieve these goals, I'd be the first in line to watch them fall. But from the bottom of my soul and the depths of my intellect, I believe that the current efforts to censor Craigslist's "adult services" achieves the absolute opposite. Rather than helping those who are abused, it fundamentally helps pimps, human traffickers and others who profit off of abusing others.
Read the entire essay here.
