Backpage Shuts Down Adult Ads in the U.S., Citing Government Pressure

In engineering and in governance, the "right" (optimal) solution can border on the impossible. Legalizing and regulating prostitution in the US in 2017 seems like one of those situations.

If you personally don't want to be the one to lead the culture war to make prostitution legal in all 50 states, could you explain why somebody else would find that an appealing job?

Keep in mind that leading a culture war means regular in-person harassment - in public, at home, when traveling domestically promoting your cause - until you die.

You would think that it would be helpful to leave Backpage alone, because the cops could use it to figure out who the child sex traffickers are.

The responsible thing to do with be to legalize and regulate prostitution for the safety of the sex workers. That would be responsible thing to do. To bring what's going to happen anyway under control so you can properly police for minors, rather than worry about people who choose to sell themselves.

How did that work for the silk road? I remember the same arguments told about it but never followed on it.

Given an option Cops will always knock the easier door. Cops use civil forfeiture against old grandma living on fixed income rather than a rich lawyered drug dealer.

Like bullies law enforcement is cowardly too and likes to beat up the soft target.

I heard a facetious comment that shutting down backpage was just a way to encourage sex workers to develop better computer skills.

One of the interesting things about the Internet is that it creates communities that are interstitially embedded in "real life" communities and there is an opportunity friction between the mores of the two. Makes it challenging to have "community driven laws".

No, if you read the senate complaint, backpage employees actually EDITED posts to make them less obvious advertisements for illegal activity. And that clearly breaks safe harbour.

They were cleared of all charges AKAIK. This is just in response to the Senate report.

And because women involved have no police protection as long as this is illegal. They will always be the most vulnerable members of society afraid to get help.

People don't listen to logical arguments anymore.

Although the act of soliciting prostitution is illegal, what exactly is so wrong about this really? Backpage appears to have provided listings that allowed consenting adults to engage in business with one another.

Perhaps they just need to stop their mole-whacking game?

I've played whack-a-mole. I got to keep hitting moles. I didn't particularly want to eliminate the moles - because then I'd have to stop hitting them.

P.S. The "massage" page currently on Backpage seems to just be veiled prostitution that suddenly got more posts starting today. So maybe it's not even on to the next site, just elsewhere on the site.

It's only a matter of time until somebody manages to implement an easily-monetizable decentrialized CMS website that synchs the content across multiple nodes. There would be a lot of technical challenges like syncing accounts and managing decentralized moderation, but still - between piracy and prostitution and the like, there's a lot of money to be made hosting illegal content, and if law-enforcement crushes it where they find it then the obvious solution will be to develop a system that's impossible to shut down because it mirrors itself to new hosts trivially.

One would think that the govt has learnt something or two from the Prohibition and the war against drugs.

And most likely the next (or the one after that) will be run by someone outside the USA, either in a place where cooperation with US authorities is unlikely or where prostitution is legal and thus any extradition requests (if anything got that far) would be less likely to be honored.

Heck, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the next one run out of Russia, particularly if clients had to do some form of registration to get full access. Out of all the users you might get a few interesting email addresses worth tracking long-term, and you might even get reused passwords or at least a password pattern for some of those.

Must be a real hassle trying to shut down activities between consenting adults when there's an economic reason and no moral case. See recreational drug use.

Well, I mean, if they did in fact get rid of it all, then they would not have a job to do anymore and then would be laid off. So......

Not as long as their are federal grants to get their hands on.

What legal process -- or specifically, what court case(s) -- are you referring to? My understanding was that the owners had beat pimping charges [1] using a CDA defense, and I didn't know what else they still have to contend with.

[1] http://reason.com/blog/2016/12/10/backpage-leaders-beat-pimp...

Backpage offered prostitution arrangements. Sugar babies, in spite of what people think, aren't prostitutes. It's just that girls that don't sleep with their sponsors tend to lose their sponsors.

Also, think about what type of men can have sugar babies vs. what type of men engage in regular prostitution and there's a class based argument that emerges.

Biggest difference seems that sites like SA emphasize ongoing arrangements as opposed to explicit pay for play individual meetings.

Window dressing.

Sugar babies are wealthier and whiter?

The California investigation which resulted in the CEO of Backpage getting arrested (along with two major shareholders, interestingly enough) "was prompted, in part, by reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children of thousands of instances of child sex trafficking through Backpage." [1]

Backpage's management was hiding behind the 3rd-party provisions of the CDA (and the usual last-defense-of-scoundrels, "free speech" absolutism) but were helping to edit and revise ads [2,3] to conceal obviously illegal activity. Thus they were complicit in it.

It's unfortunate, because there's probably a place for a responsibly-managed online clearinghouse for adult services. But there's no indication that the management of Backpage was attempting to offer that; they were hiding under a veil of 'free speech' when it suited them, while at the same time profiting from activity they should have known was illegal (and beyond illegal, morally repugnant even to those of us who take no issue with what consenting adults do between themselves and find prostitution laws outdated and sexist).

[1]: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/07/497006100/...

[2]: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2016/1007/Backpage-CEO-...

[3]: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/re...

What makes you think the people posting backpages ads aren't trafficked as well? The reason we don't have "street pimps" isn't that backpages got rid of them; it's that we don't really have street anything anymore --- it's economically irrational in a world where even the poorest among us have smart phones.

Also would seem that it would be a good idea to know the 'street corner' that the pimps are on (backpage) so it's easier to find, trace and prosecute them. Seems a cost effective 'lead generation' technique for law enforcement.

Backpage does not mean no street pimps. The average profile of a sex worker in the US is a young runaway who begins dating a slightly older man. He takes care of her in a way her family like never did and eventually convinces her to sell herself, becomes her pimp. It's a very rare sex worker that elected to start completely in her own.

Because the owners are most likely US based. That makes them still targets for law enforcement, regardless of where the site is hosted.

There is a gap in the market for someone outside the US to offer such a service, but ideally that country has no extradition laws to the United States, nor should the owners of that website ever chose to visit the US.

Gambling sites outside the US have experienced exactly this: https://www.cato.org/blog/uk-gambling-ceo-arrested-us-airpor...

The solution is to build a system in which people who are forced into sex slavery are able to be identified and helped and their traffickers prosecuted. The current system, which assumes that every sex worker is there by force, muddies the waters heavily and ensures that people are not going to get the individual support they need to get out of sex work.

I know a number of independent sex workers as part of my communities, and for the most part they do it because they consider it less demoralising than working at McDonald's. (Sorry, but that's the truth - sex isn't sacred to some people, and being somewhat independent, being able to choose their clients, not being subject to wage slavery, and being able to keep the proceeds of most of the value they provide is appealing to them.)

Yes, there's a large amount of sex workers who are there by force, or perform sex work because they're ineligible for benefits and can't survive without it. But criminalising sex work doesn't actually help those people in the slightest, in much the same way that criminalising drugs doesn't help addicts. They're going to keep doing it because they're forced by their circumstances to, and in fact it prevents them from getting the help they need, on top of adding another socially unacceptable label which can make it difficult to access housing and other necessary services.

Criminalise pimps and traffickers all you want, they're the scum of the earth. But support sex workers.

The problem with this argument is that I can compare it easily to any job a person doesn't want to do. This argument is usually formed with circumstances surrounding the action, but not the action itself (abduction, coercion, lack of choice, rapes, drug addictions).

There are also people that argue because there is a transaction of money that it is coercion.

Again, easy to compare this to any job a person doesn't want to do but has to in order to survive (no matter how well paid). Given the alternative to have the thing they want for free or working in whatever form for what they want, many would choose free. Many work to obtain what they desire or what they need to survive.

When I'm in this line of thought I wonder which is better? A pain felt acutely, physically and emotionally. Or one that the masses encourage, are numb to, accepted as way of life, dragged on for 40+ years.

Let's not pretend it is as simple as that. By your own logic, of the options "Prostitute and feed myself" and "do not feed myself", they should only be allowed the latter.

Not all states have adequate alternative options as you yourself pointed out. You don't solve coerced prostitution by banning prostitution, they are already being forced to do it so they have no choice anyway. You solve coerced prostitution by solving the various coercions. By giving them adequate alternatives. Be it food programs, housing or other state care. Be it drug rehabilitation or cracking down on pimps and traffickers.

Banning prostitution would be like punishing slaves for working for free. Similarly, banning prostitution for the sake of stopping coerced prostitution is taking away a line of work many individuals are perfectly happy and proud to do.

You are making the all too common and incorrect assumption that banning an in-demand good or service is a good way to prevent it from being bought and sold.

Making prostitution illegal doesn't stop it, it just pushes it underground where it becomes a massive revenue stream for organized crime and the state is powerless to regulate the industry and protect its workers. To top it off, the increase in price caused by illegality becomes a strong incentive for human traffickers, making worse the problem you were trying to solve in the first place.

> This is a Very Good Thing.

I disagree, my opinion is based on the economics of drug prohibition [0]. I agree with your sentiments about the industry itself but the challenge is that the more prohibited a service like this is the more profit there is to be gained for providing it.

With that thought in mind it's guaranteed that new services already exist attempting to take over the abandoned space. The reason I think this is bad is because the likelihood is that these new services will be less ethical than backpage.

I'm inclined to think using backpage to identify sex traffickers, minors, and pedophiles would have been more effective at actually making a difference in the victims lives.

My belief is that actions like these just hide the behavior from public view allowing political pressure to be reduced without actually resolving the problem.

[0] http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/d...

> there is also a huge population of people that are trying to feed themselves, or their kids, or their addictions with very few options to achieve those ends.

Should we shut down strip clubs? What about coal mines? Factory jobs where people lose digits and limbs? Service industries where people are overworked and underpaid?

The approach you are advocating is incorrect because you are only targeting the symptom and not the solution to the problem. Now you have two problems, one of disenfranchised people (who are now criminals) and one of people wanting to exchange money for legitimate services who are forbidden to. If you instead permitted and regulated the industry but protected those who work in it, you'd be in a far better situation.

These people need help. They are often addicted to drugs, mentally ill or come from an abusive past (or all of the above).

The idea that making something illegal will help these people is misguided. Presently the women are offered no protection of the law, they are often harassed and targeted by police over Johns. They often face threats of violence and rape (and more than threats) with no recourse of the law.

What is needed are rational harm reduction policies and bringing sex work into the light under the framework of protection under the law.

If someone has a single option to feed themselves/their kids, and you remove that one option, how is that an improvement?

Being for free speech is like being for motherhood. It's not exactly the brave stance that lots of people make it out to be. It's just that they don't have to put anything on the line to have a maximalist free speech position.

Just reading all of the libertarian pseudo-economic analysis for this post is pretty painful. It's kind of telling that prostitution keeps being described in terms of employment or work. Left out are the social and psychological implications/causes/side-effects of prostitution.

I'm actually on the side of legalizing prostitution, and I generally support any policy that makes the lives of sex workers safer or healthier...but you are spot on about Backpage.

They have been knowingly participating in and fostering this behavior but have tried to keep themselves at an arms length from a strictly legal sense. It's a lie and they have participated in spreading a great deal of misery because they couldn't find another way to make money.

So, because "do this or be in pain" might be coercive, your solution is to remove the "do this or", so it's just "be in pain"?

I'm genuinely unsure how removing an option is helping the situation, if you're not going to provide a solution at the same time. It just sounds like you'd rather they suffer than do something you find distasteful.

Want to know how it's not a very good thing?

Backpage gives a marketplace to everyone. This is both negative and positive. It supports sex trafficking, but it also supports individuals who need sex work to survive, and provides them a small amount of security.

In the neighborhoods near mine in the upper east side of Baltimore, there are two particular regions for sex work: trans people and poor people in general.

It is obvious that trans people are a high risk population for violence, and so they often turn to online sites to help weed out potential bad actors. Without these sites they are forced to walk the streets more, where they will come into violence, either just by accident, or by individuals or gangs who control territory.

The poorer neighborhoods, and neighborhoods controlled by gangs, maintain a stranglehold on prostitution in their given territory. Online sites allow either motels or private homes to be used to avoid running afoul of restrictions by these gangs.

It is also safe to assume law enforcement will have more excuses to take advantage of sex workers now that they will be more visible & vulnerable. (If you find that suggestion offensive, my city is well known for corruption in both prisons and law enforcement)

There are organizations working to help protect sex workers in most major cities in America. Please feel free to reach out to them for detailed information on how these events affect sex workers and what you can do to help.

> Beyond the obvious example of people forced into it by violence, there is also a huge population of people that are trying to feed themselves, or their kids, or their addictions with very few options to achieve those ends. That is not liberty.

Couldn't you same the same for work => slavery?

> Beyond the obvious example of people forced into it by violence, there is also a huge population of people that are trying to feed themselves, or their kids, or their addictions.

Any you are exactly WHO to tell them it is not okay to do this or that with their OWN body ???

If the problem is sex slavery the solution is licenses and inspection.