I remembered that years ago Craigslist had been forced to shut down its adult services section, so I wanted to do a cursory look into that. Firstly, I searched our forum and found the Craig Newmark donation pretty interesting. https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1518256 and https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1526501

Craigslist was singled out largely for its fame and with no specific follow up intentions by the leaders of the persecution. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2010/09/pimp_mobile.html

The language used by "ringleader" Richard Blumenthal was pretty lackluster with a net zero of legal action to build on. He stated, "We hope that their example in doing the right thing will lead others to follow them." The public relations success helped him get elected to the Senate that year, but any critical thinker would realize that nobody would voluntary follow them without a legal threat.

At least Representative Jackie Speier, who led the congressional inquiry, had something a bit more assertive to say, "Child sex trafficking continues and lawmakers need to fight future machinations of Internet-driven sites that peddle children."

A term like "future machinations" puts the issue off. Also, it works poorly as a sound bite, so it probably just wasn't given much press.

Malika Saada Saar, currently working for Google (LinkedIn Profile), was the activist figure involved in the effort to shut down Craigslist's sex ads. It does not seem that she completed her stated goal of shutting down ads at other sites, but I haven't dug into that.

Naturally, all the child sex trafficking went elsewhere, even within Craigslist. The market simply redirected.

Right now, my gut says that Craigslist and Craig Newmark took the fall because they aren't direct players. That Newmark is taking on fake news, only now, of course is of particular interest, but it could just be prompted by the theoretical rope they've got on him.

I'm really compelled by the motivations of the three heroes, Blumenthal, Saar, and Speier. At the least, they were just using the topic to boost their careers -- always the norm in politics.

What a sad society we're building when we can't trust the good guys.

I have not even looked into Ebay, who directly benefits from Craigslist as a partial owner. They may have enjoyed some of that redirected market.

I hope that some of you have already looked into this.