"Sex Buyers Beware" ABC Nightline 6/28/2017

Discusses busting of customers using online prostitution websites including the Seattle Review Board owners arrested for felony promoting prostitution and "website users caught in the dragnet." Also "felony pimping charges for posting reviews on a website."  

This included Microsoft and Amazon executives there were estimated to have been spending $30,000 to $50,000 a year for prostitutes from online review sites.  

Various current websites named with screen shots. The usual Farley fake research and the usual all prostitution is abuse arguments but also a positive side.  

The “Nightline” team met one Seattle-based sex worker, Maggie McNeill, who criticized the shutdown of the review websites, saying they provided a valuable vetting tool for her in booking clients.

McNeill, who also runs a popular sex work blog, said that she believes the shutdown of these boards interferes with free speech, and to shut them down is a disservice both to sex workers and to those exercising their right to free association online.

"While the controversy over review websites will continue, District Attorney Valiant Richey said he is working to eliminate sex buying altogether, calling prostitution “the oldest oppression.” He travels across the country, telling other prosecutors about demand-side prostitution prosecution and encouraging them to take on similar cases.

“The one way we can try to eliminate it is by helping men realize that this isn't serving them either,” he said. “In a survey of sex buyers, three-quarters of buyers said they wanted to stop. It would be a great step forward in reducing nation-wide exploitation if these review boards did not exist.”

Reader comment:
Review boards can and do protect sex workers and our clients by providing a resource for additional information. Sex workers often have service-provider-only spaces where they can vet clients on these boards. Clients can also vet us. Due to the criminalizing of consensual sexual transactions, none of us can report abusive behaviors.

If you would like the sex trade to be more transparent -decriminalize sex work.

If you want to be credible, talk to those of us who are reviewed and involved, and not biased prohibitionists like Melissa Farley (She was excluded as an expert, due to bias, in the Canadian courts in the Bedford Decision)

The vast majority of reviews and ads are for people who are doing sex work and want the additional exposure to boost income. Sex work is work. Stop wasting time & resources monitoring and criminalizing us.

Long summary that follows the newscast at http://abcnews.go.com/US/inside-fight-online-prostitution-review-boards/story?id=48308991

The newscast replay will probably be online soon.