Craigslist had worked with attorneys general and law enforcement officials to educate and encourage users to report suspected trafficking and exploitation.
The website also featured law enforcement contacts as well as reporting hotlines and manually reviewed every adult service ad before it was posted, Powell said. Craigslist had also required phone verification, credit card authorization as well as a fee to post an adult service ad, Powell said.
But Craigslist has been caught for years in a murky legal fight that centers on how much responsibility the company bears for its ads, said Jonathan Zittrain, professor of law and computer science at Harvard University. Prosecutors can argue Craigslist is an intermediary to the crime of prostitution, but such cases are hard to prove.
A prosecutor must prove that Craigslist knew an ad was a solicitation for prostitution, and ads on Craigslist are typically vaguely worded, Zittrain said. But, in , under pressure from 40 state attorneys general, Craigslist started requiring posters to provide a working phone number and pay a fee for placing an ad in the adult services section.
Several months later, Craigslist adopted a manual screening process in which postings were reviewed before publishing.
