This is ludicrous on its face. Backpage obviously wasn't earning any meaningful amounts of money from child prostitution.
There's a lot in the indictment to suggest that they don't take child sex trafficking seriously as a problem. They joke about it ("entrapment.com"). They take meetings and disregard the information they're given. They're on the record declining to adopt things they say are "good ideas" because they don't have enough "P.R. value". I think the balance of information we have strongly suggests that Lacey and Larking just DGAF.
This is the problem I have with the Standard Internet Discussion on Backpage.com. It invariably focuses on the harm reduction argument. I'm prepared to buy the harm reduction argument! But someone responsible needs to run that site; the people who actually ran it belong in prison.
If it's so clearcut, give us the article numbers and let's talk about specifics. The indictment is easy enough to read.
This whole subthread is starting to sound like the McMartin Preschool case.
No actual crimes were committed and there were no victims. In this case the facts are entirely pedestrian and the victims real. It seems pretty clear that people were abused. The only real question is how guilty are the people running Backpage.
Since they were running a page selling people and seemed at best disinterested in not selling children I'd say very. If you sell produce you acquire along with customers money the obligation to ensure that the produce you sell is safe and doesn't cause your customers to die of food poisoning.
If you sell sex it seems people selling children for sex is a foreseeable risk that they did at best NOTHING to mitigate.
I'm not sure why some people seem apt to defend them.
If you want some proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the proprietors of BackPage.com committed the crimes they are accused of, that's totally fair, and that's also what the criminal justice system is supposed to produce as an end result.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17815396
It does in fact completely validate your position, although I guess you know that.
Are you guys really suggesting that open child prostitution is so prevalent in the US that it could possibly make up more than a fraction of a ‰ of backpages business? That sounds completely asinine to me.
These guys were literally drowning in money from normal escort ads, why on earth would they want underage escort ads?
And to answer your question, Yes. Do you have much familiarity with the various systems in which child sex trafficking happens in the US? If not, that ignorance may be a huge factor towards the dissonance you're displaying.
Surely att, sprint and others know that their lines are used for kidnapping, drugging and advertising sex, I don't think that makes them or backpage part of those ills. You propose they chose to cooperate with traffickers and make it sound like it was an A or B choice. I propose it is possible to cooperate with hookers and law enforcement at the same time, and from what I have seen, maybe that is what happened, not at all what you are implying.
Do you claim to know how much Backpage was "truly cooperating with LE" ?
As someone who has reported internet postings to LE and spent hundreds of hours trying to push similar info to various agencies, let me assure you that what many might imagine could happen when a site reports bad postings to whatever agencies, not many of them get a warrant and swat team to swoop in the next day. In fact they often don't do shit about it.
I this comment you post quotes about "Backpage has automatically deleted from ads before publication include... ... “amber alert,”" and in another comment on this page you state "Backpage were telling advertisers to use phrases like "amber alert"."
You seem to be very confused on these particular issues.
That's not what happened. Backpage knew children were being kidnapped, drugged, and advertised for sex on their site. They had some choices: cooperate with law enforcement to help stop it happening; do nothing; or cooperate with the kidnappers to earn more money. They chose to cooperate with the traffickers.
> At the direction of CEO Carl Ferrer, the company programmed this electronic filter to “strip” —that is, delete—hundreds of words indicative of sex trafficking ( including child sex trafficking) or prostitution from ads before their publication. The terms that Backpage has automatically deleted from ads before publication include “lolita,” “teenage,” “rape,” “young,” “amber alert,” “little girl,” “teen,” “fresh,” “innocent,” and “school girl.” When a user submitted an adult ad containing one of these “stripped” words, Backpage’s Strip Term From Ad filter would immediately delete the discrete word and the remainder of the ad would be published. While the Strip Term From Ad filter changed nothing about the true nature of the advertised transaction or the real age of the person being sold for sex, thanks to the filter, Backpage’s adult ads looked “cleaner than ever.” Manual editing entailed the deletion of language similar to the words and phrases that the Strip Term From Ad filter automatically deleted—including terms indicative of criminality
If Backpage were truly cooperating with law enforcement they would have reported these ads before stripping the wordds, rather than stripping the words and then deleting the original ad.