Type the words “craigslist” and “prostitution” into Google’s News Search and you’ll get dozens of results from just this month. The Naperville Sun of Illinois quotes a police official saying that sites like “Craigslist might be at the root of a recent surge in prostitution at Naperville hotels and motels.” In New York, ABC writes that prostitutes use Craigslist to peddle their services and even include $25 discount coupons. In a large prostitution sting in Seattle, the Seattle Times reports that Craigslist “is a vehicle for promoting prostitution” and describes a “complete subculture” that exists on the web site (complete with pet names!).
Of course, you’ve probably seen or heard of this problem yourself. Craigslist is a very popular site and this could be just a small minority of users, right? Compete.com, a web site that tracks Internet traffic, recently published a startling blog post about Craigslist. In every single one of the eight major cities studied, more visitors came to Craigslist for Erotic Services than any other category. Stephen Bagg writes that “erotic services consistently garners .. almost always twice as many [visitors] as the next ranking category.” Not far behind? The equally risqué Casual Encounters category, where people seek sexual encounters with others.
Now it must be noted that we at Metromole are far from moralists. The last thing we want to do is tell people how to live their lives (we’ve got plenty of people trying to do that already). However, illegal activity has the tendency to become a virus, inviting more illegal activity, scams and thieves. And these same scams and thieves are popping up on Craigslist on a daily basis as a kind of no holes barred free for all. It seems inevitable that as the gap widens between erotic services and other illegal activity and just about everything else, Craigslist will soon become too congested with sex to coherently offer anything else.
Metromole understands the potential for smut to taint and ultimately infect an online classifieds site. That is why we strictly prohibit salacious postings. They diminish trust amongst users. If you’re looking for an antique oak desk, Metromole is the place for you. So while we prefer to do all our buying and selling on Metromole, when lunch time approaches you may see us scanning Craigslist for a no strings attached sex romp with … wait, we’ll save that for the experts.
Posted by metromole 
