I'm down on them. I see a lot of cases involving use of Craigslist for child abuse. And a ton of it is for prostitution, too, which is not much less abusive as an industry.

I don't get why Craigslist doesn't want to get rid of the adult sections. They can't do without?

I don't get why Craigslist doesn't want to get rid of the adult sections. They can't do without?

Craigslist charges $10 per ad and $5 per re-post. This NYTimes article cites a revenue estimate of $36M for adult services.

Anyway, I suppose whether or not you think Craigslist should allow adult services ads boils down to your view on prostitution.

The ads just move to a different section. Do you believe that these ads are really for therapeutic massage? Here's another ad in the travel/vacation section.

It's silly to pick on craigslist; I can open my local phone book (the physical one) and see 3 pages of ads for escort services.

On the one hand, Craigslist almost singlehandedly destroyed the Newspaper Classified Ads, so the Print Media (and anybody who still loves the Print Media) has a massive grudge against Craigslist.

On the other hand, the "Adult Services" ads were part of Craigslist's way of being counter-cultural, edgy, dangerous (hey, every 'Alternative' newspaper has poorly disguised sex ads - so there's another part of the Print Media losing business to Craigslist). But there comes a point where it gets too dangerous. And if they're fighting on principle, it's not a good looking place to stand their ground.

If I recall, the original idea of charging for Adult Services ads when most everything else was free was to provide a minimal barrier of entry (if anybody was doing anything really illegal, they wouldn't want to be traceable via the financial records). But it's a funny thing when you start charging for something for reasons other than a revenue source. In time, you inevitably start treating it as a revenue source. So, was Craigslist still fighting for it on principle? Yes and no.

Internet. It's serious (monkey) business.