Craigslist is a recent recipient of moral panic backlash. Once the “Craigslist Killer” was arrested for allegedly killing a young woman he met on Craigslist, state attorney’s general went into overdrive. They appeared on news programs ad nauseum to decry the evil of Craigslist’s adult services section. The end result was the site censoring itself to avoid the hassle. Lately we’ve had police warning about potential robbers lurking on Facebook to see when you might not be at home, and then stealing from you. There’s not been any evidence that this is an actual problem.

At best, these moral panics raise people’s anxieties for no reason. At worst, they can cause people to be concerned with the trivial, and neglect the real dangers out there.

State Attorney’s General have been hard at work over the last couple of years trying to get Craigslist to shut down their adult services section. Their work payed off yesterday when Craigslist elected to censor itself. Censor is the key word because Craigslist clearly believes this is censorship.

The section was originally setup for consenting adults, but became heavily used by those in the sex industry. Now if you’ve ever read the classified sections of publications like the Village Voice, you know this was already going on. Craigslist just made it easier for sex workers; and law enforcement. Craigslist routinely cooperated with law enforcement, and became a tool to ferret out those who were involved in human trafficking.

Now those types of crimes will move underground to places law enforcement can’t access as easily. So when special interest groups and state AG’s are patting themselves on the back, they should remember that helping victims of human trafficking just got a lot harder. Grandstanding may be good for politics, but it just hurts people in the real world.

His grandstanding moment du jour is the video game industry. He would like there to be more stringent laws regarding violent video games. He states:

“In the face of continued industry inaction–enabling unattended children to buy such games–states must preserve their critical right to protect children.”

What he seems to be ignorant of (or outright ignores) is the fact that the gaming industry has been doing this for years already. He even goes on to suggest that the industry take some cues from the film industry’s efforts to keep kids away from objectionable content. If he cared to get his facts straight, he’d realize it’s much harder to get a violent video game than to sneak into a rated R movie. Retail outlets like Walmart and Bestbuy already check the ID’s of customers purchasing rated “M” games.

This blatant grandstanding for votes is off-putting and gross. It plays into our cynicism, and erodes our confidence in government.