Before I go to most restaurants, like any other responsible and tech-savvy smart phone owner, I always check their Yelp page. I’ve successfully avoided severe diarrhea multiple times thanks to loyal Yelpers who have yelped warnings with multiple exclamation points about that grilled cheese place down the block and how their special will take several hours of your life even if you chase your sandwich with a chug of Pepto-Bismol. So why not apply that same theory to prostitutes? I doubt an escort will induce diarrhea (you never know), but why not let the people review their local sex workers like a restaurant? Because a sex worker is like an entrée, right?
Eccie.net, a Texas-based escort review site, isn’t novel in its service. Escort review sites have been a thing for a while, with names like Adultfax and The Erotic Review, rating prostitutes like any other service has become so ubiquitous that almost every major city in America has one specifically catered to its local escorts. Eccie.net, however, has come under investigation by Texas authorities for its potential for illegal activity because duh.
“Some of these websites have actual legitimate ways of means and services that they produce,” said ICE Special Agent David Marwell, “So having these websites, looking into this aspect of the websites, doesn’t necessarily make the entire website seizable or being able to close it down.” That seems to be the problem with most escort sites in general, with heavy references to prostitution but no explicit mention of the exchange itself.
Texas state senator Leticia Van De Putte is attempting to bring down the site and others like it by targeting individual posts and linking them to cases of human trafficking and prostitution. The bill she’s currently pushing through the state senate would aid in slowly shutting down escort review websites that undoubtedly result in prostitution.
In the meantime, Eccie.net is up and running, and its owners, whoever those sinister venture capitalists are, have yet to be named or prosecuted.
[CBS DFW]
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