Small ads sex trafficking: the battle against Backpage

Backpage sound pretty evil here, any argument about prostitution can be ignored entirely:<p><i>Backpage was focused on getting as many ads posted as possible. It instructed moderators to edit ads and strip out the code words used by pimps to indicate that the person in the ad was a child.<p>Words such as “Lolita”, “fresh” and “amber alert”... were edited out and the ads posted.<p>In one subpoenaed email believed to be from Backpage management, moderators were instructed: “If in doubt about underage: the process for now should be to accept the ad”</i><p>(I added formatting for clarity)

Nice of them to not even bother including any of the sex workers&#x27; rights groups who can talk about the facilities for making safer arrangements that backpage provided or about how rare actual child enslavement is and how often they&#x27;re found because the customers report them because that wasn&#x27;t what they wanted to pay for.<p>This is basically a PR piece for the puritan&#x2F;radfem lobby that hates sex workers on principle and has allied itself with NGOs whose budgets depend on vastly inflating the problem and ignoring the fact that under the current system law enforcement are usually more dangerous to the workers than anybody else :(

&gt; “I called Backpage dozens of times asking them to take down those photos, that my daughter was just a child and that what had been done to her was a crime,” says Kubiiki. “They refused and said if I didn’t pay for it, they couldn’t take it down. In the end they just stopped returning my calls.”<p>Man, I get the argument for free speech, but at least donate the profit from those listings to charity, and respond with empathy &amp; take listings down when the actual mother calls you. He&#x27;s already been arrested - literally nobody benefits from it staying up.<p>That&#x27;s still a place I wouldn&#x27;t want to be in, but at least you can argue a couple benefits like e.g. being able to catch some of the traffickers that would otherwise have gone deeper underground.<p>&gt; Kubiiki’s anger at Backpage grew and grew.<p>Historically, creating Warmaiden mothers whose life goal is to take you down ends badly. It&#x27;s the only reason the Senate even cared about the issue.

Mary Mazzio:<p>&quot;...But the thing that shocked me most about making this film was that those guys who ran Backpage, back in the day they were rabble-raising libertarians, yet, at some point, my view is that maybe the money became so outrageously intoxicating, perhaps there was this notion that the sale of children was simply collateral damage.”<p>I&#x27;m a little unclear about what she was expecting. To my knowledge, libertarians are not find of enforcing their morals on others.

Should not cops, like, read this website too and do a raid everybody they seen someone offer themself nearby while looking teenage?<p>The major problem in our society is that police and detectives cost us a lot of money but basically do nothing. The only thing really saving us is that people of XXI century are unbelievably benign.

The core of the problem here is the fact that prostitution is illegal. If you legalize it, you can regulate it, and take steps to prevent human trafficking and child prostitution. The vast majority of clients will happily go through the legitimate channels and buy from licensed providers. A small minority will continue to trade in children through shady services, but the smaller volume will make it much easier for law enforcement to tackle.

Everything you create online has abuse potential, I found that out the hard way with the whole streaming webcam thing. But it is how you deal with that abuse potential that makes all the difference, these guys appear to have done that in the most cynical way possible: by allowing their website to be used to commit terrible crimes against minors with internal policies explicitly geared towards enabling.<p>This should not - in my opinion - stop at a fine or some kind of slap on the wrist but should be factored under aiding and abetting and should come with jail time for those involved. If that&#x27;s what it takes to get people to take this stuff serious then so be it.

Backpage actions look bad and it may very well be that they deserve a serious fine or prison time for the management.<p>However, it was not through Backpage that their child was abducted. Instead, without Backpage, they might have never gotten their child back.<p>As a father, if Backpage is closed, I wouldn&#x27;t feel any safer for my kid.

&gt; America’s largest classified website, was to buy a fridge. The second time she sold some clothes.<p>I&#x27;ve never heard of backpage as anything <i>but</i> prostitution. Are there regions where it won out over Kijiji and CraigsList for buy and sell classifieds?

&gt; But the thing that shocked me most about making this film was that those guys who ran Backpage, back in the day they were rabble-raising libertarians, yet, at some point, my view is that maybe the money became so outrageously intoxicating, perhaps there was this notion that the sale of children was simply collateral damage.

Really services like Backpage make the work if finding kidnapped people much easier. This has been going on long before there was a backpage.com site, but before the internet these women were forced to walk the streets and the likely hood of this woman finding her daughter back in the 1980s would have been almost nil. It&#x27;s a double edged sword but if I were in law enforcement I would see Backpage as a valuable intelligence asset.