Other than volume? I'd say part of it is because they are the easiest ones to catch. Many don't screen making it simple to run stings.

I think that's definitely part of it. CL is like amateur hour. It's just a small step up from the SW world IMO.

Pressure from the media, and other whistle blowers. Everyone knew about CL, so everyone knew about CL erotic services. When they had that Craiglist Killer it gave them the perfect excuse to finally close it down. Even though the Craigslist Killer was not a serial killer, and the woman he killed was not from the erotic services section. CL was full of scams, and trash, and some pressure probably came from complaints about that. When people hear the CL is back up, the orginal complainers probably are pressuring the police again, and then the police respond.
Plus it is easy busts. Rather then following a girl all night on the street seeing if he can catch her in the act, they can arrange a sting operation and then scroll down the list of adds just as easy as using a phone book. The more arrests a cop has, the better he looks to his peers, the more succesfull charges he gets from those arrests, the better he looks to his superiors.

All excellent reasons. I also would add that CL is routinely used by non-hobbying folk to sell stuff and other non-hobbying classified advertising. Like the storeowner complaining about the SW in front of his/her store, others pick up on the erotic section as too in their face - hence "cleaning" feeds the righteous indignation.

I agree. Mother tells child to check CL for a new used bike, Dad walks past computer and sees oh so familar CL up on the screen and almost trips on his own feet. Many people don't feel comfortable with a site so known and used everywhere, to have such a dirty section to it, that had no control. The pictures were allowed to be as nasty as they wanted, the words were anything as long as they mispelled them or hid it they could say wahtever they wanted, and people got pissed. ex: C/U/M F)UCK ME! so now they see it back up and don't want that trash on the same page as child care and antiques.

yeah those are all factors for certain. i think part of it too is craigs arrogance he seems to get a charge out of telling authority to bite him in the ass.

that to. When he was accused of making money off the sex workers posting adds on his site for at the time $5 an add, he then had all the proceeds go to charity like ones for abused women and children. So when that did not shut them up, he said screw it! Changed the price from $5 to $10 and wrote out a statement saying that they were no longer promising all the proceeds from that catagory be donated.

It is a combination of non screening combined with mainstream reputation of CL.

It does seem that they have made an attempt to clean it up, the adds are much more discreet and modest then they once were, but for me, it is hard to tell the difference between the massage adds and the full service providers.

have you looked at the classified section of your local newspaper lately ?

i haven't
i dont know anyone who has

but i've heard it's practically nonexistent nowadays.

must be a HUUUUGE loss of revenue for the newspapers.
typically the newspapers are vehicles of publicity for politicians.

call 5 girls off eros and then 5 girls off craigslist and tell me if there is any difference in the screening process. .. .they target craigslist because eros isnt putting their precious newspapers out of business.

Good reasoning from everyone here. I hadn't looked at it from Ana's angle but it certainly makes sense. The newspapers have a lot of clout and they must be lobbying like wildfire in an attempt to get back their profitability. The owner of CL is a really interesting cat if you ask me. I read an article on him a few weeks back in which he seemed like he really doesn't care about making money...how do you compete with that?

yes he is interesting and he's very very smart.
do you remember when the erotic services ads were free ?

well craigslist was pressured by the media/police/haters to start charging a fee for the ads because of all of the underaged women using craigslist and they wanted to require a credit card be used to place an ad which would give some assurance that the girl placing the ad would be over 18 yrs old.

well i suspect that this was actually an attempt to set up the owner of craigslist on pandering charges because then "it could be argued " that he was profiting from the promotion of prostitution. it is doubtful that he wouldve been convicted but i believe it wouldve been good enough reason to slap him behind bars for a while until he could get cleared of the charges.

now, in a move that was sheer brilliance, the owner of craigslist caved into the pressure and agreed to start charging a nominal fee of $5.00 to be paid with a credit cared because he was also concerned about keeping minors from advertising on his site... HOWEVER, he would be hiring an accountant to handle the revenue from these ads and 100% of that revenue would be going to CHARITY.

ROFL

of course that is all just my speculation but i am a lil bit in love with whatever his name his cuz in my opinion, he totally beat them at their own game and HE STILL IS. i hope he runs for office one day and i'm sure he's going to and then he'll be spanking thoses asses again.

23 surveys have so far submitted by escorts who have been involved in a sting, the response to the question "what website was your ad on"

ter - 2
eros-3
cl -4
bp - 3
escorts.com -3

village voice
online
paper
raided
local forum
no answer - 3

now, we frequently hear the media reporting about the latest stings on craigslist but when was the last time you heard a story about the sting on backpage or eros or escorts.com ? i realize that 23 surveys is not exactly a huge sample to draw conclusions from but i think we can clearly see that several other sites have almost as many sting operations as craigslist but i've NEVER heard the media report on the escorts arrested off of the other sites.

personally, i do not know anyone who has been arrested off cl.. most of the girls in arizona are busted on bp and a few i know have been busted off eros.

now, ask yourself why does the media ONLY focus on the busts made on craigslist..
possibly because "the media" has an agenda.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

the erotic services section of craigslist is by far the site's biggest draw... the media wants to scare people away from using it because ........... craigslist is putting "the media" out of business.

escorts.com, eros, ter, backpage -- these websites are not a threat to "the media"

( i know it's like conspiracy theory #63 --whatev - )

This information was helpful.

If those numbers hold up across a wider sampling that would make escorts.com the sketchiest site ever.

ive never had good luck with it, ive never been robbed however ive been double booked more times then i like to about from calling ads on that site.

Certainly not a know-it-all, but need to be careful with the numbers. The following is intended for example purposes only, I made up the total ad numbers to make a point. The 3 busts off escorts out of 1000 ads is .003%. Take the 2 busts off TER and say 100 ads is .02%. Obviously, in this fictitous example TER is riskier than escorts.com.

Not busting anyone's chops - so many other variables come into play such as provider business practices, geography, etc. The numbers are a very good start, but in this case, more info is really needed to make a legitimate comparison.

Anna's subjective commentary on CL is one with which I would personally agree, but I am easily swayed by conspiracy theories

Stay safe y'all!

absolutely correct... chicago le likes to hit eros ... arizona le taps backpage (i think thats because that newspaper is very very anti-sherriff joe and thats his way of returning the love)

my point is: ALL the sites get their fair share of le attention but only ONE site gets media attention... .. i've NEVER seen any headlines about a sting on eros or on any other site except for craigslist

by the way coyote, i actually do get lots more info including everything you mentioned but it just wasnt pertinent to this post. .. its all on the survey site in my siggy

i think you might be reading things sideways ?

escorts.com, backpage and eros --- 3
craigslist -- 4

but actually i just discoverd that village voice is backpage so that puts backpage up to 4, making it even with craigslist.

but i just did an interesting search on google -- keyterms: backpage prostitution sting --6,630 hits
on the first page of hits, all the news articles were reporting on stings where both backpage and craigslist was used.. . .

keyterms craigslist prostitution sting -- 145,000 hits ---

so even if my #s are taken from too small of a sample to really tell us which sites are targeted more, we can see that there's probably not going to be a significant difference between craigslist and backpage however, there is a HUGE discrepancy in the reporting.

which makes people scared of using craigslist.

Down here in Miami, New Times is backpage (hard copy), it looks almost just like Village Voice.
I post ads on Backpage sometimes, but I dont keep an ongoing ad.
So I appreciate this info.
Ana thanks so much for this info. I'm going to read a few articles now.

Perhaps the hard on is related to all the sexy pictures?

Because it's like shooting fish in a barrel and cops are inherently lazy. They have a hard-on for BP, too. They're also quite fond of Eros Guide.

Maybe Back page is more of a target because you can pick it up on every corner plus you can get to it through the internet.