“Family Friendly” eBay classifieds
An interesting Facebook page recently came to our attention, dedicated to the proposition that one can literally “stop human trafficking” by using eBay’s “family friendly” classifieds instead of craigslist.
eBay touts the advanced filtering technologies eBay employs to “make sure all of our categories and content are family-friendly,” technologies it no doubt applies to the “broader eBay Classifieds family including Gumtree, Marktplaats, Mobile.de and Loquo, which extends the reach of eBay Classifieds to more than 20 countries.”
As a practical example of eBay’s “advanced filtering” and “family friendly” classifieds, we’ve been shown some ads currently live on eBay’s Loquo.com classifieds site, which features thousands of paid ads offering various sexual acts in exchange for money (NSFW). The highly explicit photographs included in the following example ads depict young Asian females engaged in unprotected sex, along with rates and a listing of specific sex acts (in Spanish) on offer. DO NOT CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINKS UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO VIEW HARD CORE PORNOGRAPHIC IMAGES OF UNPROTECTED SEX ACTS!
(NSFW) Ad Example #1 (NSFW) ……… (NSFW) Ad Example #2 (NSFW).
Ad Example #2 had been viewed by more than 10,000 users when the screen shot was taken. Appended to each “eroticos profesionales” ad is a lengthy explanation of how to get more “exposure” by paying additional fees to eBay. Linked below is a screenshot of such upsells, like “visibility pack”, “bump up”, “top ads”, “thumbnail service”, and “highlight a listing.” DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK UNLESS PREPARED TO VIEW HARD CORE PORNOGRAPHIC IMAGES OF UNPROTECTED SEX ACTS!
(NSFW) eBay upsell information page (NSFW).
eBay acquired LOQUO in the Spring of 2005, as part of Meg Whitman’s classifieds acquisition strategy, at a time when its “eroticos profesionales” section was present, but with few ads or pictures. Changes would soon be afoot however, and Meg crowed about the growth and profitability of LOQUO on eBay’s Q2 2007 earnings call.
Today, 5 years into eBay’s “family friendly” management of this now very large business, and with eBay well aware of all the protective measures craigslist has implemented, there is no sign of eBay manually reviewing ads for content, instructing users to report suspected trafficking or exploitation of minors, or providing contacts for legal authorities or NGO hotlines. This despite the President of Spain calling for an advertising ban due to trafficking concerns in Spain. eBay does not appear to be doing phone verification or supporting parental control software either.
Some have scoffed at all of the industry-leading protective measures craigslist has taken with respect to adult services ads over the years, including a stringent manual screening process, and policies and procedures aimed specifically at combating exploitation and trafficking. It’s worth remembering what you get when all these measures are omitted. eBay’s LOQUO is a prime example. Here is another.
Meg Whitman didn’t mention eBay’s paid hard-core pornographic ads offering unprotected sex acts for sale to eBay investors when talking up the growth and profitability of LOQUO during eBay earnings calls, and I’m not aware that subsequent management has done so either.
Similarly, there is no reference to eBay classifieds depicting unprotected sex for sale with potentially underage and/or trafficked persons on the Stop Human Trafficking by Using eBay Classifieds Facebook page.
Nor is there any mention of the countless millions in eBay pornography sales revenue that earned Meg the nickname “Porn Queen.”
Oh well, nevermind all of that. Won’t you stop human trafficking by using “family friendly” eBay classifieds?
August 16th, 2010 at 9:31 am
The world’s oldest profession is also the source of the world’s oldest ads. It’s hard to stop, and Whitman should not claim to have worked to stop them when she made no apparent effort to do so.
My bigger concern is that under Meg, the Safe Harbor department (which presumably she established) was gutted 4-5 years ago, depriving defrauded eBay buyers from recourse. In addition, the contact numbers were removed from the site, making it exceptionally difficult to get help. For the sake of saving a few dollars, eBay enabled widespread fraud against its users.
August 16th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Thanks for the links. I didn’t know those websites existed.
August 16th, 2010 at 10:40 am
Well said
August 16th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
My main question for ALL of the owners and CEOS of sites like Craigslist and Loquo is WHY HAVE SEXUALLY EXPLICIT ADS AT ALL? Since you control every single aspect and every single category of your sites, why not just OMIT these categories completely? WHO ARE THEY SERVING? And do those people really need to be served by your sites?
Would Craigslist fail without these sites? Would it be a worse community without them? Or a better one. I feel pretty confident that a stronger argument could be made for the latter than for the former.
Is it censorship to simply OMIT a category that YOU put there in the first place? I think not. Craigslist makes this kind of decisions all the time. What categories, what sub-categories, what cities to serve, etc. So, why not just get rid of the PORNO and stick to the categories that, without argument or fanfare or debate, obviously serve the broader community–without harming anyone?
August 16th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
@ jared,
The site serves everybody, it doesn’t discriminate and that’s a good thing by the way.
Yes it would be censorship to ’simply omit’.
August 17th, 2010 at 9:39 am
I’m getting a message that LoQuo is not available in my country (US). Is loQuo choosing not to serve the data to my IP address, or is my ISP filtering it? Either way: censorship is uncool.
August 17th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
When a private company like craigslist chooses to omit certain categories it’s called exerting their 1st Amendment rights. It is only censorship in the technical sense, but not the political sense.
Basically, craigslist is free to do as it pleases as long as it’s legal.
August 19th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
and actually, in terms of legality, isn’t CL immune from wrongs committed by their users under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), as established in Dart v. CL, 2009?
August 25th, 2010 at 8:58 am
Prostitution irritates me. Sorry but it does and Im happy to see the stuff go. The spam is unreal. I block most spam out of my inbox by blocking just two words, “teen” and “free”.
No joke these marketers are out of control. They dont just set up shop and wait for customers, (and they would not have to wait long) they splay themsleves all over the place just begging, blind and mindless about who they are marketing to. No other industry acts like that. Advertising is generaly targeted to appropriate venues.
From what I can see the human race isnt at a maturity level where it can handle sex on the Internet, because the sad fact about human sexuality is, if you can take an inch…
I know where to go for sex gear, its not online. Cant beat rl sex, the only sure way to know everyone is adult and consenting.
CL, if you lose the adult ads, I will just love you all the more for it.
August 26th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Maxine, that’s not censorship. The fact that The Gap doesn’t show porn while people are shopping for jeans is not censorship. Their business model doesn’t include servicing peoples sexual proclivities in that way. Again, that is not censorship. An example of censorship would be this site refusing to post my comment because the name I chose might be insulting. THAT would be censorship.
And btw, discriminating can be a good thing, too. For instance, in my restaurant, I would discriminate against and refuse to serve people who brought their children or even other adults in to the restaurant wearing choke chains and dog leashes. THAT would be a good thing.
August 27th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Craigslist and any other website/newspaper/magazine will never get rid of sex for sale ads because they are an enormous MONEY MAKER. Period. End of story.
August 30th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
The problem is the amount of dollars (or euros) all those ads mean.
There’s a newspaper in Catalonia, Avui, that removed sex ads few years ago and it meant an important lowering of incomes.
September 1st, 2010 at 12:18 pm
@ Jared
Your idea seems good on the surface. Unfortunately it doesn’t work! You see, what happens/would happen is this. If you eliminated adult services, you would get escorts posting in the Casual Encounters. If you eliminated CE you would get the same people posting in the personals. If you eliminated personals you would get the same people posting in Therapeutic ads, or elsewhere on the site.
As a Christian man, if I wanted to go look at the personals (I don’t, because I am not single, just as an example) and find a like-minded woman, I would like the ability to do so without seeing escort ads.
When you have a service like CL (or Ebay or any others) that reaches so many millions of people, you are going to have sex ads, both sex for sale and sex for free. The fact is that in those millions of people, there are a lot of people that want to buy sex, so the sellers of sex will find a way to reach them.
Craigslist has done fantastic things to make sure that these ads are compartmentalized, reviewed, and violations of law reported. The chances of inadvertently seeing an advertisement for sex on Craigslist are nil, because CL has created these categorizes.
September 4th, 2010 at 11:39 am
it’s so sad when big corp pushes the agenda. Those Ebay pics are unfortunately the backdoor dealings of “do as I say, and not what I do” politics that you’ll get when you vote for “Meg” in November.
Meg will be for the bottom line, and she won’t leave your sexual needs alone when trying to churn up cash for the insanely out of control spending that California has incurred. I dollar, without blood, is a dollar earned.
I do not have the answer for California’s problems…..there is just too much greed and political buying going on in Cali to stop anything. California has 53 House of Representatives in Congress……53. I don’t care how big California is, THAT is just too many opportunities(53) for someone to have a sympathetic ear and bounce checks. I mean politicians want votes, and if the politician isn’t held responsible for their actions, checks will be written…..damn the cost!!!! So sad…… so phuq’n greedy, makes me sick.
September 4th, 2010 at 11:43 am
I will admit that I do look for a date every now and then, mostly “then”, but that is it. I have never been to the adult services section, but today I saw something, from Denver, that made me stop. I felt like that Native American, back in the 1970′2, when he saw litter, and he shed a tear. Here is what I saw…..If you look on the “services” part of craigslist…you’ll see those letters that I really, really think is the first step in controlling the masses, and pushing the agenda…..C-E-N-S-O-R-E-D.
September 4th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
I read today that CL has done away w/it’s “Adult” section yet I still see the “Personals”. So What did CL do away with? I think the disgusting porn which was blatent on CL NEEDS to be done away with. Kids can easly access anything on CL and CL is such a Public site that there should Not be anything Even close to a sexual nature on CL. There are enough “Smut” sites without CL being one. Also, I thought it was Free to put an ad (that word is spelled with one “D” for all you uneducated fools out there) on CL yet the story about CL doing away w/the Adult section claimed CL made 30% of it’s money off that Adult section. CL, Keep your site a Decent and safe and clean site,PLEASE!
September 4th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
The world outside of San Francisco can’t handle adult services. But we can.
September 5th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Meg (a.k.a. the hidden “porn queen”) is the biggest hypocrite of all - extreme right wing, doesn’t give a damn about anyone except herself and drives everything she touches into the ground. She damn near killed eBay with outright lies during her last conference call to investors, oh, and shortly before she left eBay to become a “wannabe” politician. Personally I think her and Carly Fiorinna are having an affair. But I could be wrong. But I can state that, under 1st Amendment and satire, although it would not surprise me if it was true. In any case, she outright lied about the company’s health, which caused them to shortly thereafter dump Skype. I am one of the shareholders and let me tell you, they don’t respond to shareholders at all. I am now going to be left no choice but to get the FTC and the SEC involved because they didn’t respond to simple shareholder inquiry.
So think about this - if a company is so used to lying to the shareholders, why would they be any different to the general public? The “Queen” trained the “corporate leftovers” well. They know no other way. They are brainwashed. And now, without much success, they are trying to brainwash the public by pretending to give a damn about these issues. But rest assured, if they dumped all the porn fodder they make revenue on, my stock would now be worth about 2 cents.
September 5th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
By eliminating the adult services and gigs section, CL is a lot worse, because now those ads are everywhere else!!
I enjoy porn and things like that, I’ve even starred in a few productions, thanks to craigslist, but it’s much better to just have those categories.
Kids will look at porn either way, it doesn’t matter what CL does. Studies show, sex offenders/rapists have looked at porn the LEAST while growing up.
So if parents are sooooo afraid of their curious hormone-driven kids of seeing something, you might want to educate yourself and parenting skills.
September 5th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
What amazes me is the stupidity of singling out Craigslist. Here and in the many places I’ve traveled the yellow pages have escort ads. The weekly (and sometimes daily) newspapers have escort ads. Many cities have local escort “review” newspapers. On the web there are dozens of escort ad and escort review sites…and those sites advertise on the radio! And all that’s escort specific; as far as our children stumbling across porn I’d guess Craigslist is among the mildest sites on the net…there must be at least tens of thousands that are more explicit.
I’m no fan of escort ads, but they’ve been around for at least decades in one media or another, they will not go away any more than prostitution will. And I’m very afraid of the slipery slope of censorship.
To me it’s very simple. If you don’t like the adult ads, don’t read them.
September 7th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Until the government separates church and state and utilizes the tax base of an unstoppable sex trades Craigslist offers a relatively benign alternative.
Perpetrators of crime can be traced through emails. Had the “Craigslist Killer” chosen to find prostitutes through the street or through agencies finding him may have been more complicated
Thinking one can diminish the sex trade by censoring ads on Craigslist is analogous to trying to stop people from eating meat by banning Big Mac Burgers It has been going on for a very long time and there are plenty of alternatives.
September 8th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
When one chooses to censor for any reason it is a hypocritical approach to control someone else.
A lot of folks have given up the remainder of their lives to stop censorship. Those that try to censor do not have the right to choose what the rest of us see or hear regardless of the so called “reason”.
Prostitution will never go away. It’s been here since the beginning of mankind and used everyday. Sometimes, it’s even called “Marriage” as women always want something in trade.
September 10th, 2010 at 11:03 pm
[…] craigslist blog » Blog Archive » “Family Friendly” eBay classifieds Meg Whitman didn’t mention eBay’s paid hard-core pornographic ads offering unprotected sex acts for sale to eBay investors when talking up the growth and profitability of LOQUO during eBay earnings calls, and I’m not aware that subsequent management has done so either. […]
September 23rd, 2010 at 12:10 am
Man this whole IP ban on loquo.com is pissing me off. I use the site from time to time to find (english) teaching jobs in Spain, now because of hypocritical politics, I cannot access it anymore. I couldn’t care less about human traficking and sex selling. I don’t use the site for that nor do countless other us visitors to the site. What about us? Burn in hell ebay. Burn in Hell!