Feds Seize Backpage.com Website

Al99

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A Senate subcommittee issued a subpoena to owner Carl Ferrer on Oct. 1 2015 for production of documents, so this had clearly been under examination for sometime previous, a couple of years at least. Feb 29 2016, the Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental affairs put some teeth into that with a civil action.

January 10, 2017 --
The online classified website Backpage.com said it has suspended its adult ad pages, citing government pressure about the content being shared there.

In October, the CEO of Backpage.com, Carl Ferrer, was arrested in Houston and dozens of law enforcement officers then searched Backpage's Dallas headquarters, as we reported.

The California complaint alleged Backpage.com didn't just host ads for sex, some of which were trafficking minors, because the site helped advertisers write ads that would elicit clicks.
Backpage Shuts Down Adult Ads In The U.S., Citing Government Pressure

July 11, 2017 --
NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Washington Post reporter Tom Jackman about the discovery of new documents showing that Backpage.com, a website with classified ads, controls sex-related ads on its site. The company has claimed it does not control the ads people post.
https://www.npr.org/2017/07/11/536699811/documents-show-backpage-com-controls-sex-related-ads
 
I had not heard of Backpage before.
 
A pro-Domme I'm friends with was on there last year and lost quite a bit of money she'd paid for advertising. She was mad.

More recently, my ex was using the site to look for prostitutes.

Otherwise, I don't know much about it besides what I've read in recent news. I did read an article recently that said, that the site would run algorithms to remove certain key words from ads, such as "amber alert" or "cheerleader" (code for trafficked minors) and the article seemed to be saying that the programming would clean up ads of that language but let the ad go on and be posted, then.

My thinking was that if this was the case, then the owner of the site, the person(s) responsible, should absolutely be facing charges, because they were willfully and deliberately helping child traffickers avoid detection and continue to operate.

If, as many sex workers seem to be arguing, the site's ownership were actively engaged in helping the FBI track down and bust traffickers, by using the advertising platform as a sort of trap, and to provide evidence...then I feel the owners should be celebrated, not prosecuted.

If they were neutral in it, neither helping the bad guys, nor helping the authorities catch them...then I think perhaps steep fines, civil action, no more website, whatever.

But I think the bigger worry about FOSTA and SESTA is with regard to censorship and closure of other websites, not especially Backpage. Microsoft has changed some of their policies regarding "language" and "content" on X-Box Live for instance, and Outlook...what exactly does that mean? What about social media? What about porn sites? And will Fetlife survive and remain accessible to Americans even with the changes that they are implementing, long-term?

Stuff like that.
 
This is just lazy law enforcement, imo. The trafficking of minors will continue whether backpage exists or not. Meanwhile our society is regressing with this attempt to wipe sex from the internet.
 
This is just lazy law enforcement, imo. The trafficking of minors will continue whether backpage exists or not. Meanwhile our society is regressing with this attempt to wipe sex from the internet.

It really seemed to me like such platforms are a great opportunity to find and pursue and arrest traffickers. I don't understand why shutting them down is better than using them in that way, since traffickers will continue to operate regardless. Drive everything further underground, it just makes it harder to bust the bad guys, doesn't it?

But I've also always been all for legalization of prostitution among consenting adults. I think if you make it legal and provide better standards, practices and regulations, then everyone benefits. And that should (I would think) also detach it from other criminal enterprises, so giving less profits and opportunities to the black market dealers in general.

I feel like "muggle" society has this annoying tendency to feel that if you push something far enough out of sight, then so long as they don't see it, it won't exist. And that this is part of that.
 
The point of all this is never to prevent trafficking or protect anyone. It's to punish whores.

Shutting down or hampering sites like this is to punish women (and queer people and people of color who make up many, maybe most, of the folks who do sex work) for having sex that is not for procreation, not within marriage and possibly even enjoyable. It's about being superior.

Pro-life people who oppose birth control are another example of this dynamic. Birth control absolutely prevents abortions. But birth control allows for all kinds of sex. It doesn't trap women into having only procreational, married sex. It doesn't matter that no one ever has only procreational sex (not even the Duggars). It only matters that women 'like that' get punished or killed.
 
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