> And the CEO himself pleaded guilty to money laundering. I remember people here were coming out in droves to defend the company against big bad government when the site was first seized.
They weren't defending Backpage, they were condemning the power grab in the form of a law that was passed (but has not yet been signed) where they let this whole situation languish to make it easier to "sell" the new powers for the Government.
You are confusing the fight over FOSTA/SESTA/etc. with the fight over Backpage just like the people who pushed those laws intended you to.
If you actually listen to sex workers and people who were victims of trafficking, this is not the way to go. Law enforcement can be very unhelpful to sex workers and giving them more powers puts them in danger. Moreover, not having online platforms to screen customers and share information amongst themselves isolates sex workers and further endangers them, forcing them to engage in dangerous work on the street.
Here is a good link on this[0]. Here[1] is also a short interview of the author.
We're not just talking about trafficked adult women. Backpage is alleged to have facilitated a huge number of underage child sex trafficking transactions. Apparently, with some knowledge of what was going on.
Or they could look at the current guilty plea and the public evidence tied to it and come to a reasonable conclusion. That anecdotally some people are helped does not make up for the crimes committed against even more vulnerable members of society using that site. I disagree with the new law, but the site had to go.
Not speaking for the green account, but, yes, I think improving the economic standing of all people would go a long way towards getting people out of the sex trade or from entering into it.
Instead of making assumptions about the people you believe you're saving, it would help to actually listen to them about what would help them and what wouldn't. Above I share an article from a former sex worker. Here is yet another that cites[0] sex workers as well.
how does that link invalidate the parent comment? No more details on who is saying "backpage is good". And I almost guarantee sex-trafficked women aren't the ones defending it. So why don't we listen to the victims of the crime the bill is about: sex-trafficking. NOT prostitution.
The point of the FOSTA power grabs is to make it easy to go after sites providing arms-length escort information with no or only incidental connection to trafficking and with none of the ancillary (money laundering, etc.) offenses in the Backpage or MyRedbook cases.
SESTA seems mostly to function as a smokescreen for FOSTA (since it drives all the media attention to it and it's knowing involvement in trafficking requirement).
I believe there is a valid argument that giving sex workers a platform where they can advertise relatively safely improves their safety.
I, for one, did not really research Backpage that much and so was unaware of the reality of the allegations against them. For myself, I chose not to weigh in on the debate, even though I have the belief I stated above, because I didn't feel I had enough background.
Do you think backpage is actually less safe than working with a pimp? A place can be pretty bad and still preferable to the alternative if that alternative is bad enough.
14-year old prostitutes weren't willingly signing up on Backpage. They were still managed by pimps. It was the pimps who were on (and actively helped by) the site. They were literally given tips to hide real ages from profiles to keep law enforcement away.
> Backpage altered up to 80 percent of their ads before posting them online “by deleting words, phrases, and images indicative of criminality, including child sex trafficking.”
Effective demand has subsided. Some people who used Backpage will find another site, but for many finding one won't be worth the effort and they'll find another way to amuse themselves that evening.
Perhaps you're right. I didn't know Backpage was a thing until this news cycle, I guess I assumed that people who knew about it also know about other sites. Was this the only site online facilitating prostitution? Apparently not, since craigslist also shut down their personals section. Some of the stories by sex workers talk about using Backpage to network and vet Johns which implies to me that most users were regulars. I suspect regulars will not find something else to do this evening but will instead start by calling up past providers, rebuilding their connections, and likely end up on another site with even more features and less oversight operating on TOR.
> I didn't know Backpage was a thing until this news cycle, I guess I assumed that people who knew about it also know about other sites. Was this the only site online facilitating prostitution?
It was the big name. It was the only one I'd heard of other than craigslist, and I thought craigslist shut down that section years ago.
> Some of the stories by sex workers talk about using Backpage to network and vet Johns which implies to me that most users were regulars.
It implies most clients of the kind of sex worker who participates in these discussions were regulars. It wouldn't necessarily be the same for trafficked women and children which is the case we're actually trying to stop. And even if it is, presumably there's some level of turnover; making it harder for new people to get into unconsenting sex slaves is still a win even if it does nothing about the existing client population.
> likely end up on another site with even more features and less oversight
Sounds like no oversight would be better than the oversight backpage had, if all that oversight did was hide that ads for children were for children while still letting those ads run.
> operating on TOR
I very much doubt it. Tor is a massive faff to use; maybe some people will move to a hidden site but it will be a big barrier to entry if so.
I don't know enough specifics about this case or the industry to go much deeper into this. I don't know to what extent Backpage facilitated child trafficking or whether Johns are split between discerning and unconscionable groups who use different pimps. What I do know is that removing the middleman from a dark market while leaving the consumers, providers, and demand is often a high profile easy win, but rarely does much to curtail the actual problem. If Backpage execs were truly vicious scoundrels then fuck them, I'm glad to see them get theirs, but regardless it seems like a poor direction of our "stop sex trafficking" budget.
Also tor is as easy to use as downloading an installer, running it, and then using a modern browser interface. Anyone who is at the level of "installs their own software" is eligible, which may not be every last pedophile sex pervert, but likely the motivated ones.
You're drawing a false dilemma here. The question isn't "Was it possible for pimps to go on Backpage?" but "How easy was it to work without a pimp on Backpage versus on the street?"
That's the argument people were making — not that nothing bad ever happened where Backpage was involved, but that sex workers feel more required to put themselves in bad situations in the absence of something like Backpage.
Likewise, the argument that people who support the takedown are making isn't "it was possible to use Backpage for prostitution", but "Backpage themselves were actively colluding with human traffickers".
Maybe sex workers are less safe now that Backpage is gone, and that sucks — but it doesn't mean we let people working with human traffickers slide.
If you look back a bit in the thread, the idea that I was disagreeing with is that this proves people were wrong when they said Backpage made many sex workers safer.
I'm not saying we should let the Backpage people slide, but that the ideas "Backpage was involved in some very messed-up stuff that people should go to jail for" and "Backpage was better than the streets for sex workers on the whole" can both be true simultaneously.
They weren't defending Backpage, they were condemning the power grab in the form of a law that was passed (but has not yet been signed) where they let this whole situation languish to make it easier to "sell" the new powers for the Government.
You are confusing the fight over FOSTA/SESTA/etc. with the fight over Backpage just like the people who pushed those laws intended you to.