Craigslist Will Always Be There for Hookers

Remember how Craigslist dismantled its “Erotic Services” section last week?  Well its time to check in and see how prostitutes are coping in the new age of a no-whore Craigslist.  Pretty well, it turns out.  According to a real-life prostitute:

Maureen says that there aren’t any real checks in place under the new system—Craigslist merely charges more per listing and takes longer to post them to the site. “You just can’t say what you offer anymore; now everything is offered through massage service,” she told Ars.

So: costs more, is more ambiguous.  Congratulations law enforcer people: you just made Craigslist even shadier.  

The Erotic Services section used to be rife with listings containing nude or semi-nude pics and explicit descriptions of the available services. To those who have ever seen it—or the back of practically any local magazine over the last several decades—it’s obvious that these listings ultimately amount to the exchange of money for sexual gratification. The new “adult” section (link NSFW) barely changes this. Instead of $5 to make an Erotic Services listing, those who provide adult “services” now must pay $10 and have each post reviewed by a Craigslist moderator before it’s posted to the site.

With the result being:

“The changes have really scared clients,” she said. “People are scared that there is a cop behind every post. It has changed the type of clients from businessmen to back down to the blue collar worker that you can’t really count on.” Maureen went on to insist that some of these new clients aren’t just flaky—they also don’t seem as uniformly safe as the buttoned-down business types. “I do feel like it’s more unsafe,” she concluded.

Well Maureen, I hate to remind you that when you went to prostitute school, it was made very clear that there are certain occupational hazards in your line of work, such as being in extremely vulnerable positions with complete strangers and having to interact with poor people.

Source: Ars Technica.