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I don't think you're responding to the point. The point is that speech--methods of communication--are being restricted here, which hurts legitimate users and does not prevent anyone from performing these heinous acts.

The whole point of speech protections is that you have to allow people to say things you don't want them to say in order to protect the things you do want to be said.

Going after the speech here is a pandering waste of time that infringes on fundamental rights. The actual crimes here are what need to be chased after.

And the parent's point is a strong one -- why would you discourage criminals from using an open communication medium?? If we can't stop these people when they communicate openly how on earth are we going to do so if we drive them underground? Enforcement, police resources, whatever you want to call it is the issue here. Pushing the communication out of sight and pretending something has been done about the problem is the complete opposite of a solution, it makes people feel like something has been done while making the problem less visible and no more solved.

Commercial speech has always been regulated in the us.

I think it could be reasonably argued that a personals ad is not commercial speech.

So I fired up my VPN and TOR browser, went to the closest city's backpage site, and perused the "dating" as well as "massage" services section. There's clearly a lot of prostitution being offered. There's a feature where you can see all the pictures in a section at once. There's definitely young women there, some I would card if they were buying drinks, but none of them looked clearly like children, and none of the women were even dolled up to look under-age. It's hard to count the number of ads I looked at the pictures for because of the style of the view, but it was probably hundreds. I further searched for "amber alert" which returned zero results and "amber" which returned a single ad for a 40-something woman named Amber.

I believe you, that some of what you've described has happened, but it doesn't seem clear that this is a significant percentage of the ads. I question your depiction of Backpage's position on the issue. Did they refuse to take down a particular ad which obviously contained pictures of child rape? What really happened here?

You seem to have missed this paragraph:

> When Backpage lost some of the court cases they put in filters so the advertisers couldn't be quite so blatant. But Backpage also told the advertisers how to evade those filters. "Use words like 'Amber Alert'" they said.

This directly addresses your argument: backpage changed to make the child prostitution less obvious.

I specifically pointed out that I searched that key word and found no results. Even if that keyword has fallen out of use, surely something would've shown up in the hundreds of ads I looked at. I'm trying to be a reasonable person here. What should I do to validate OP's claims?

I even doubled down and looked at some actual accounts in court claims (articles about them). It says that backpage filtered searches for some key words associated with child sex trafficking but not some others, and not some misspellings of those words. Of course as soon as BP filters some words the criminals will start using others. What is the reasonable test here?

> What should I do to validate OP's claims?

Listen to Backpage. They don't attempt to deny that they publish these ads. They do claim that the first amendment and the Communications Decency Act mean they're blameless for doing so.

The fact that Backpage was telling advertisers how to avoid the filters is also widely accepted. In fact, it's worse: Backpage developed software to automatically change ads before moderating the ads.

Watch the video and read the Chairman's comments: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/he...

> Our report demonstrates that Backpage has concealed evidence of crimes by systematically deleting words and images suggestive of illegal conduct from advertisements submitted to their website before publishing the ads. And some of those ads involved child sex trafficking. Backpage’s editing process sanitized the content of millions of advertisements and hid important evidence from law enforcement.

> This story begins in 2006, when Backpage executives began instructing staff responsible for screening ads (known as “moderators”) to edit the text of adult ads to conceal their true nature. By October 2010, Backpage executives formalized a process of both manual and automated deletion of incriminating words and phrases in ads.

> A feature known as the “Strip Term From Ad filter” did most of the work. Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer personally directed his employees to create this electronic filter to “strip”—that is, to delete—hundreds of words indicative of sex trafficking or prostitution from ads before publication.

> To be clear, this filter did not reject ads for illegal activity. Backpage executives were afraid that would cut into profits and, in Ferrer’s words, “piss off a lot” of customers. Instead, the Strip Term From Ad filter simply altered ads to conceal signs of illegality. They put profits ahead of vulnerable women and children. The evidence is clear that Backpage deliberately edited out words indicative of child sex trafficking and other crimes from ads.

> The list of terms is chilling. Starting in 2010, Backpage automatically deleted words including “lolita,” “teenage,” “rape,” “young,” “little girl,” “teen,” “fresh,” “innocent,” “school girl,” and even “amber alert”—and then published the edited versions of the ads to their website. Backpage also systematically deleted scores of words indicative of prostitution.

> Backpage claims their staff reviews ads to avoid child exploitation, but these terms were stripped out before anyone at Backpage even looked at the ad. And when law enforcement officials came asking for more information about suspicious ads—as they routinely did—Backpage had already destroyed the original ad posted by the pimp or trafficker. The evidence was gone.

At least when it was semi-public coordinated police efforts could have tackled some of these prostitution rings. Now that these forums are being taken down the conversations will just move to other places which will be harder to observe.

There's a lot of money involved in crimes like this and I doubt the crimes will stop overnight for lack of marketplace. Just like when Silk Road was taken down and many more darknet markets sprung up to fill the void.

> At least when it was semi-public coordinated police efforts could have tackled some of these prostitution rings.

It's generally accepted among researchers that the Internet makes life easier for people trafficking sex, and harder for law enforcement to investigate those crimes.

This is especially the case in something like Backpage, where they had a policy to not report to law enforcement, and to provide incomplete information to law enforcement.

Backpage was claiming to be a dumb pipe. They weren't. They were giving advice to advertisers about which words to use or avoid. They knew advertisers were selling rape of children, they told those advertisers how to do it. And so when they made reports to law enforcement they had to withold some information - the bits where they'd helped the pimps - because that showed they were not dumb pipes.

From what I've read about Backpage, prostitution actually moved back to the street, where it happens to be much easier to police.

But drugging, kidnapping, and raping is already illegal. Arrest the people offering the service. How is this not clear? So much the better if they advertise themselves as maw breakers. Surely I’m missing some nuance.

People were advertising on Backpage. Backpage wanted that money, and wanted them to continue advertising, and so Backpage gave advice to these gangs about how to advertise in a manner that reduced law enforcement attention. By giving advice about editing the ads and by not keeping the original ads, Backpage made it harder for law enforcement to take action. Backpage (and look, osme HN users too) suggest it's better to have the ads on Backpage where Backpage can report to law enforcement. But that didn't happen, backpage had a policy of not reporting these ads and complaining about staff who did report them.

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/download/backpagecoms-knowing-f...

Here's the contents page:

---begin---

FINDINGS

I.

Backpage Has Knowingly Concealed Evidence of Criminality By Systematically Editing Its “Adult” Ads.

Backpage Began Editing “Adult” Ads On An Ad Hoc Basis.

Backpage Automatically Deleted Incriminating Words From Sex Ads Prior to Publication.

Backpage Moderators Manually Deleted Incriminating Language That Company Filters Missed.

Backpage Coached Its Users On How To Post “Clean” Ads for Illegal Transactions.

II.

Backpage Knows That It Facilitates Prostitution and Child Sex Trafficking

Backpage Knows Its Site Facilitates Prostitution

Backpage Knows Its Site Facilitates Child Sex Trafficking

---end---

This wasn't a couple of ads.

> By Backpage’s own internal estimate, by late-2010, the company was editing “70 to 80% of ads” in the adult section either manually or automatically.

Backpage didn't cooperate with law enforcement.

> Backpage also knows that advertisers use its site extensively for child sex trafficking, but the company has often refused to act swiftly in response to complaints about particular underage users—preferring in some cases to interpret these complaints as the tactics of a competing escort. Backpage may also have tried to manipulate the number of child-exploitation reports it forwards to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Law enforcement couldn't see the original unedited ads.

> This practice raises questions about Backpage’s purported cooperation with law enforcement. Although Backpage often responds to grand jury subpoenas and other law enforcement requests for documents about criminal activity, including by providing copies of advertisements in the adult section, it may well have provided only the edited version of certain ads—without providing the original user-submitted content or disclosing that an ad may have been altered. Even if the original text of the advertisement was not retained, documents indicate that Backpage did keep records tracking each time a Backpage moderator viewed and/or edited an ad. There is no indication, however, that Backpage has included such information in subpoena responses.

They had a policy to not report ads to law enforcement.

> The record also contains substantial evidence that, as a matter of policy, Backpage often chose to err against reporting potential child exploitation. As the Subcommittee reported in connection with its November 2015 hearing, in June 2012 Backpage instructed its outsourced third-party moderators only to delete suspected child-sex advertisements “IF YOU REALLY VERY SURE THE PERSON IS UNDERAGE.” In a similar email, a Backpage supervisor instructed internal moderation staff: “Young ads do not get deleted unless they are clearly a child.”

> In a similar exchange dated July 11, 2013, Vaught took issue with a moderator’s decision to report an ad to NCMEC due to “inappropriate content” and the moderator’s belief that the person in the ad “look[ed] young.” Vaught explained that she “probably wouldn’t have reported this one.” 268 The moderator responded that the girl or woman in the ad “looked drugged and has bruises”— obvious indications of trafficking—which led her to send the report. Vaught replied that the person in the ad did not look under 18 years old, adding that “[t]hese are the kind of reports the cops question us about. I find them all the time, it’s just usually you who sends them [(to NCMEC)].” Basing reporting on the appearance of the individual advertised, alone, may result in underreporting, however; as NCMEC has noted, “it is virtually impossible to determine how old the young women in these ads are without an in-depth criminal investigation. The pimps try to make the 15 year olds look 23. And the distinction of whether the person in the ad is 17 or 18 is pretty arbitrary.”

But Backpage also refused to take down images when the person in the image asked for it to be taken down.

> And in February 2010, a detective emailed Backpage to alert the company that a 17-year-old girl who tried to get Backpage to take down an advertisement of herself had been rebuffed: According to the detective, the girl “tried asking for [the ads] to be removed but was told they couldnt [sic] be until enough people reported her as potentially underage.”

I mean, people on HN are outraged about these laws, but they're a direct result of the terrible human beings at Backpage who chose to profit out of the kidnapping and raping of children. The least HN can do is read the fucking documents.