Craig Newmark was all over Twitter on Friday, as he is most days, yakking about Android, re-tweeting about Bart Simpson in summer school, reminding his 24,000 followers to vote to end world poverty. He engaged with friends and strangers alike.
MC is still waiting to hear from him.
Newmark is the founder of the worldwide online bazaar Craigslist. MC is a 17-year-old girl who says she was repeatedly sold for sex through ads on Craigslist. In open letters published as newspaper ads, she has beseeched Newmark to shut down the site’s lucrative “adult services” section, which law-enforcement officials and advocates say facilitates prostitution and child trafficking.
“I was first forced into prostitution when I was 11 years old by a 28-year-old man,” she wrote. “I am not an exception.”
The sex-selling ads have been controversial for years, and after threats of legal action from 43 state’s prosecutors, Craigslist agreed to police them. But patience appears to be wearing thin, and the new scrutiny is creating a public relations nightmare for Craigslist and Newmark, once celebrated as the creator of an online Utopia.
This week brought increased pressure. Friday morning, MC’s “Dear Craig” plea appeared in a half-page ad in The Washington Post, along with the account of AK, who said she had been sold for sex by the hour at truck stops, 10 hours with 10 different men each night. Friday afternoon, a federal judge in South Carolina threw out a lawsuit in which Craigslist had tried to stop authorities from investigating whether it has a role in prostitution; and by Friday night, Connecticut’s attorney general had called for Craigslist to shut down its “adult section” site completely. Earlier in the week, CNN aired video of a reporter ambushing Newmark, who was unable to muster a response when confronted with ads that depicted girls being offered for sex.
