It’s a challenging strategic issue.

Considering the large percentage of people in this space that were using BackPage, I think the answer to your question should have been whenever they had proven so effective at busting the pimps posting on there that usage had gone down significantly. As I said, I’d have automated the process, even the production of warrants to get text messages/emails associated with a given ad. Have software fill in the blanks on a template warrant with all the necessary legal language and details about BackPage, auto-email that template to an on-duty detective and have them review, print, sign, and submit it to a judge. Have the software record all the ads in a database and prioritize cases by the number of ads a given email/phone number appears in.

One agency like the FBI could have created the system, then given it to all local law enforcement agencies across the country for free so that they could carry out the process locally. They could have nabbed thousands of pimps and sex traffickers this way.

would it be less unreal if you didn't consider the goal to be actually stopping sex trafficking etc, but to set precedent eroding freedom of speech and online service provider protections, under the guise of "for the children" and "obscenity"?

I was in the Las Vegas airport a few weeks ago. When I went to the bathroom, on the inside of the stalls, the Las Vegas Metro Police had placed notices with a phone number saying that help for victims of human trafficking is available. I noticed several billboards around town with the same message. If this has become such a widespread problem that law enforcement has resorted to trying to contact victims in airport bathrooms on their way into town, then they need to step up efforts nail the pimps and traffickers. This shutdown of BackPage was a big step backwards in that effort.

The assumes the law enforcement is sincere in its effort. Actual story could well be:

1. Put up ads everywhere seeking to help victims so as to convince the average person the problem is huge.

2. Pass sweeping repressive measure allowing unselective seizure of sex-ad websites.

3. Profit through increased funding, influence and programs (no ??? needed).

Are support people necessarily victimizers? Is someones driver automatically their pimp? Is the realtionship better or worse if it was transacted through an app?

If someone hosts child pornography on an AWS hard drive; should Jeff Bezos go to jail for it?

There's a lot of subtlety here.

And a government that is manifestly and overtly corrupt has no business enforcing morality on people.

Our public policy needs to somehow control incentive structures of these organizations. For example, the War on Poverty has spent trillions, with no measurable reduction in poverty. The War on Drugs, Prison State, Military Industrial Complex. And it appears to be even a cultural problem: CNN tells us we need to maintain an economy of killing innocents in order to keep jobs[1]. So many things are backwards.

In other words, perhaps public policy needs to fundamentally change the way it establishes and preserves government entities, in order to ensure their incentives align with their purpose.

1 - https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried-...

For the USA, there is an endemic problem with all law enforcement and there is various serious documentation about this. That is not to say that the USA is the worst, there are many other countries that have a much more deadly situation. However, for a country that is supposed to be the leaders of the free world, it is rapidly getting the reputation of being third world in this matter.

When other countries warn their citizens not to have interactions with any US law enforcement then you should realise that there is a serious problem in the USA.