Craigslist 'Censored' Section appears as Adult Services removed

The Craigslist Adult Services section has become the new Craigslist Censored section. If you go to Craigslist for a locality, and look for the Adult Services section in its normal place, you instead see a stark black-and-white "censored" message.

The Adult Services section was once the Erotic Services section. Following the publicity involving multiple incidents, including Cook County, Illinois Sheriff Tom Dart announcing that his office had sued Craigslist for facilitating prostitution with that section, and the case of the "Craigslist Killer," the site changed the Erotic Services section name to Adult Services, and promised to moderate the section to prevent prostitution ads.

Recently however, a large group of State Attorneys General (Arkansas, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia) sent a letter to Craigslist stating that the site is not sufficiently blocking potentially illegal ads promoting prostitution and child trafficking. Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley released a separate letter on the same day to Craigslist.

Those letters were "delivered" less than two weeks after the suicide of Philip Markoff, 24, the "Craiglist Killer," who was charged with the fatal shooting of Julissa Brisman of New York City and in the armed robbery of a Las Vegas woman, both of which occurred in April of 2009 in Boston, Mass. hotels. The encounters were "facilitated" by Craigslist.

It's unclear if the removal of the Adult Services site is permanent, or temporary. If permanent, after all, why not just remove the section. Instead, it appears that the non-clickable Craigslist Censored section is both a stopgap measure, and a poke at critics.

Craigslist originally held it was impossible, given the size of the site, to police all ads. This is the same stance eBay has taken when sellers on its site sold questionable goods. Earlier, days after the AGs' letters were sent, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, said the following "Is moving advertising around our best hope for addressing these harms?" he said. "Then the ads fall under personals, and how long before the demand is that we shut down personals? And where do those ads go next? What other sections of our site would they like us to shut down?"

Notably, in case you're traveling and looking for some fun, the Craigslist Censored section only appears to be in U.S. sites.

This story was first posted as "Craigslist 'Censored' Section Replaces Adult Services Section" at HULIQ.com, by the same author.