According to CNN, Craigslist has announced that they will be getting rid of their notorious personals section indefinitely. The company announced today that it will comply with a new Senate approved bipartisan legislation known as the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act.
This new bit of legislation is currently awaiting Donald Trump's approval, and has effectively created an exception to Section 230 of the 1996 Decency Act, which effectively allows victims of sex trafficking to sue the websites that assist in their abuse.
The House version of this bill was endorsed by the White House and received unanimous support amongst voters. Online companies are now expected to protect users from "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable" content. Critics of the original Communications Decency Act have claimed that this bit of legislature has been used as a shield to protect websites from being held accountable for human sex trafficking on the Internet.
A spokesperson for Craigslist has admitted that "any tool or service can be misused," noting how the company cannot "take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. Hopefully we can bring them back some day."
