Craigslist to Lose Part of Its Charm by Limiting Sexual Ads

The largest classifieds website Craigslist has been known for a huge and popular “erotic services” section where prostitutes and various sex-related businesses can post advertisements for their services on the site for free and without any obstacles. Earlier today Craigslist has agreed with 40 state attorney generals to take measures intended to limit sexually explicit ads posted by its users.

Earlier this year the attorney general of Connecticut sent a letter to Craigslist on behalf of 40 states. In the letter he demanded that Craigslist removes such ads from the site and enforce some rules to prevent their postings in the future. It took Craigslist and attorney generals a whole series of conversations to see which ads actually cross the line and take measures not to have such ads on the site in the future.

Back in March Craigslist initiated one measure to prevent appearance of illegal material in the ads - they requested all the posters to the “erotic services” section to provide their real phone numbers. After an ad is submitted, an automated system calls the provided phone number and reads a validation number that the advertiser will have to type for the ad to actually appear. Obviously this measure was mainly intended to fight spam bots automatically posting sexual ads on the site.

But today Craigslist has promised to broaden such activities by introducing new measures to further limit vendors of erotic services: from now on they will have to both provide a valid identification and pay a small fee ($5-$10) for each ad with a credit card that will serve as another identity verification tool. Not to be accused of generating an extra revenue stream for the company with these already unpopular measures, Craigslist will be donating the money it receives to charities, including those fighting child exploitation and human trafficking.

The idea is that a very rare prostitute will be actually willing to identify herself and provide some additional personal information to be able to advertise her services on Craigslist. Instead they will probably simply migrate to other sites that have less traffic but are targeted at exactly this type of services only.

The irony is that people who actually rely their businesses on Craigslist to advertise sex-related services already know how to handle it all to look innocent and not cause any suspicions. What’s more, as Ars Technica suggests, they may even find that these measures will make their businesses more comfortable on Craigslist as the amount of spam postings will be reduced and potential customers will find them easier in a fewer number of ads in the section.

Judging by the comments on the blog posts about this decision, users of the classifieds site feel that this is not about protecting children or helping fight prostitution (even if legally Craigslist is not liable for what these users do on the site) and instead claim that this is an invasion of privacy and is nothing but an attempt of law enforcement authorities to demonstrate the power and teach websites that they’d better behave if they don’t want to face legal actions.