Craigslist told Congress Wednesday that it had permanently terminated its Adult Services section in response to criticism that it was facilitating child exploitation and prostitution. And it was criticized by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a group with whom it had worked, which characterized the shutdown as "progress" and said the classifieds site hadn't provided it many leads. In written testimony. They required people who took out Adult Services ads to provide a working phone number and valid credit card information, he said.
The company also manually screened all ads in Adult Services and reported abuses to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. As for members of Congress, they made it clear they were happy that Craigslist shuttered its services, and wondered if there wasn't a way to pass a law to criminalize running an online classifieds service, given that the current federal law protects online services from civil liability for what users post online.
Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee said that as a progressive and a backer of the First Amendment, she was in a philosophical dilemma about sites like Craigslist that allow prostitution ads, adding, "My position is, 'Shut them down. Since Craigslist's Adult Services section was shut down Sept. In separate written testimony, Craigslist's outside attorney Elizabeth McDougall.
But in his testimony, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children CEO Ernie Allen applauded the closing of Craigslist's adult-services section, saying that while the company had rejected , ads since coming to an agreement with the center, it had only reported cases.
Allen later added that the government ought to find a way to criminally prosecute Craigslist or other services, since the immunity under the law is only for civil matter.
