You can pick up the Business Insider story here if you want
to, but the basic idea is simple: since personal “adult services” like
prostitution are legal in many parts of the world, and since business people
are the primary demographic targeted by such services in the first place, a
number of individuals involved in that “business” sector have started listing
their services on Linked-In. Of course, most of the listings on Linked-In that
mention prostitution directly are from law enforcement, medical, criminal
defense law or governmental personnel who deal with the criminal aspects of the
business, but apparently enough escort services and massage therapists
advertise on the site to push matters into the grey area. What makes this story
remarkable is that Linked-In is trying to suppress such listings…
Craig’s List has been having problems, both customer
relations and legal, with services of this type for years now, and has actually
attempted to eliminate the “Adult Services” category on their site more than
once. Unfortunately, none of their efforts at suppressing these ads has had any
effect on either the popularity or the profitability of such services. As a
result, those individuals (and organizations) selling sex on Craig’s List have
just changed the euphemisms they were using for prostitution and continued on
as escort services for lonely business people who are only in town for a few
days, massage therapists who work in the nude, or dating services for people
who don’t mind paying to get laid. There is no possible way for Craig’s List to
eliminate all possible euphemisms for sex services from its site, and even if they
did they would have no way to identify apparently legitimate businesses that
are merely a front for these (or any other) criminal enterprises…
If anything, Linked-In has it worse, both because of the aforementioned
legal sex services and also because their business model is predicated on
retaining a professional, businesslike image. Crag’s List and the other
Internet bulletin-board sites make no pretense of professionalism; you can sell
a sack of fertilizer you made at home or offer your new fertilizer gift pack (“Smith’s
Can ‘O Crap!”) without any pretense of reaching out to a community made up
entirely of businesspeople in expensive suits. Adult escort services – or even
genuine call-girls – would probably raise the tone of many transactions carried
out on some of those sites. But there’s no way anyone is going to pay the
(outrageously high) rates Linked-In demands in order to gain access to an
online community frequented by “undesirable elements” – let alone try to put
those charges onto their expense account…
But while the motivation for trying to keep such businesses –
and professionals – off the Linked-In service is obvious, what the company
intends to do about it is not. Criminals in general are not known for their
willingness to adhere to company policy; companies that already operate in a
legal grey area are unlikely to be impressed by a private company trying to
tell them what to do. And anyone who runs a search on Linked-In using those
particular key words probably already knows that such individuals and
organizations are represented on the site. I’m not saying that Linked-In should
just give up and let anyone who wants to do business over their service do so;
I’m just suggesting that a strongly-worded policy is unlikely to have any effect
on the outcome…
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