There is something to be said for making a discouraged activity harder to do.
Yes, it pushes these people underground but in a sense that is good as it makes it harder for them and harder to access them. In return it’s not much harder for authorities to infiltrate and there’s less non-illicit activity to filter.
You are operating under the premise here that what youtube/reddit have banned is something illegal and immoral. Reddit literally banned forums for posting good deals they found for firearms and accessories online. And youtube is banning channels that feature people enjoying their completely legal hobby enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people.
No, the problem here is that governments and large institutions are using truly evil things to convince people to ban completely innocuous things for commercial reasons. This is online gentrification for the corps. And for government, using kids/terrorism/communists is the oldest trick in the book to violate the rights of their citizens.
We can talk about that too. In the original article's context you have government regulation using the tiny, mostly irrelevant threat of 'human trafficing' in order to justify imposing their moral standards on people who don't stigmatize sex like all those old religious farts in congress do.
But really it's not even about that. "Think of the children" is and always has been a cover to simply expand federal power.
If the goal of this is to improve the mistreatment of women and not a thinly veiled attempt to enforce one's morals on others, then it is categorically "bad." Let's look at this another way. Say you're a sex slave who was just beat up by your pimp. Would you go to the police and admit to a decade of prostitution? Sure it may reduce the amount of prostitution going on, but for those who are in the "industry" this only makes things worse for them. All the power is now back in the hands of the pimps and gangs again.
If you push legitimate activities away from legitimate sites, you run the risk that normal users will be driving towards sketchy services, and either accidentally uses a service that crosses a line or discovers illicit activity is ongoing and decides to partake.
Because there is less overall abuse? If you make something legal you will increase the number of people who are concerned about the legality of their actions which will reduce the overall percentage of people participating who are NOT concerned about the legality of their actions. I would expect the percentage of abuse to go down in that situation, but it doesn't mean that you've actually reduced abuse.
(On the other hand if the activity is legal, it is easier to report abuse. In which case it is the ability to report abuse that is reducing abuse--not the legality of the activity.)
Given the law was in response to abuse of marginalized women sexually in these services (well written or not) that’s not a very good argument in this case.
Both are underground: this is about removing east of access to the service not legal vs illegal services
To remove the layers of abstraction: what it does is force prostitutes to rely on people who can skillfully market while avoiding authorities, aka pimps. What it does is massively increase the power of middlemen in a situation where two consenting adults could conceivably have an exchange of goods and services where neither felt particularly exploited.
It probably does shrink the market, but that just makes the prices rise, maintaining the attraction for middlemen with a larger portion of a smaller pie. Whereas pimped women end up with a smaller portion of a smaller pie. This lowers the attraction of the profession for willing providers, leaving a void to be filled by the unwilling.
The internet has been good to prostitutes. At the the camgirl level, pimps (as camsites) have largely withered away to competing technical service providers, providing nearly indistinguishable commodity platforms competing on features and cost. No reason why this law won't be going for that, either. I'm sure some women on those sites are locally pimped, or follow up private shows with email contact and physical meetings. One occasion would be enough.
Yes, it pushes these people underground but in a sense that is good as it makes it harder for them and harder to access them. In return it’s not much harder for authorities to infiltrate and there’s less non-illicit activity to filter.
Not perfect, but it’s not always bad.