On the one hand, I don't think prostitution should be illegal.
On the other hand, it's not clear whether marketplaces like backpage bring the black-market closer to the light of day & make things safer for sex workers, or if they amplify demand to the point where suppliers have incentive to find new sex workers using more and more coercive methods.
Or do you think of something more like a doctor's office with security cameras, a receptionist, online reviews?
Because it seems modern, legal prostitution is a lot more like a medical service, similar to how veterinarians calm a cat in heat [1].
The Backpage version, where they knowingly facilited ads for children who'd been kidnapped, drugged, and were being raped for money, is a bad idea.
It's really fucking weird reading this thread and seeing so much support for backpage. I hope it's because people don't know what Backpage were actually doing.
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Backpage%20Report...
All that said, I'm reading especially "Findings (II.B)" and I'm not really convinced that child sex trafficking was really an intention with the site; at worst, it sounds like they weren't super aggressive about dealing with it (which, itself, isn't great).
From those pages:
> Backpage itself reports cases of suspected child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; in some months Backpage has transmitted hundreds of such reports to NCMEC.2
...
> NCMEC paid Backpage $3000 to host ads for eight underage girls, including one 13-year-old girl advertised in hundreds of cities across the United States; NCMEC later claimed that the image of the 13-year-old was posted online instantly and received over 30 calls within seven minutes of going live. Although Ferrer disputed NCMEC’s claim in an internal email a week later, asserting that the ad triggered a fraud alert and was removed from the site in less than two minutes, he admitted: "NCMEC posted 8 underage pics. We have not found all of them."
Were these photos of girls who were clearly underage? Depending on photo content, it can be practically impossible for the average person to correctly guess a subject's age, or even just whether or not they're a minority.
NCMEC even says as much:
> 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."
This is either damning -- if the photos were the sort that the average person could immediately identify as underage -- or kind of a skeezy move by NCMEC.
Andrew Padilla, head of moderation:
> And even if an age verification was a deterrent to someone hoping to post an ad on Backpage to traffic a minor, it doesn’t mean they’re going to stop trying to traffic a minor. It only means they won’t be doing it on our site, where Backpage, NCMEC and law enforcement are in the best position to put an actual stop to the crime.
Assuming they were operating in good faith with NCMEC (not an assumption I'm committed to), he makes a reasonable point. And how would an effective age verification system be built for a site like this?
> Backpage documents also suggest the company failed to use its evaluation and training procedures to impress the seriousness of child exploitation upon its employees. As part of its investigation, Subcommittee staff examined several performance reviews for Backpage moderators...
Okay, if you're going to run a site like this, trying to identify child exploitation should be a much higher priority than this paragraph describes.
Still though, I'm leaning more towards "incompetent and poor judgement" than "malicious intent" here.
Note that Backpage were given the opportunity to put their side, and chose not to:
> Since June 2015, the Subcommittee has sought information from Backpage -first through a voluntary request, then by subpoena— about those screening measures. Backpage refused to comply, and the Subcommittee was forced to initiate the first civil contempt action uthorized by the Senate in more than twenty years.
Please read the report. It's not that long, and it's easy to read.
Backpage does not deny that its site was used for the sale of children for sex. When Backpage used the Communications Decency Act they claimed that this illegal stuff was happening but they, as a dumb pipe for ads, bore no responsibility for them. This is all detailed in court cases, and you can find those court cases by reading the report and following the references.
The thing is, those engaged in commercial sex have a vested interest in defending deregulation of all parts of it: that way they make more money. If you were to try to pass legislation that, for example, would require a license to purchase sex and that the license would be granted only upon passing sexual health medical exams, people selling sex would see this as an obstacle to getting as many clients as possible. I know several people think you can just tell at a glance if someone has an STI and that condoms give all the protection you need.
I think there are a lot of vulnerable people in the sex trade who just aren't speaking up because, well, they're vulnerable.
Not everyone is vulnerable, of course. There are those who are perfectly ok and happy and vocal. But that can't be everyone.
What is your basis for this assertion? I think having a tool that makes it easier to vet clients could just as easily be a boon to many sex workers that would allow them to safely see more clients?
People often advocate for checking the sexual health of the sellers, but you never hear about the same checks for the buyers. Why is that?
It's pretty likely a sex worker will chime in on this thread. Then we'll hear their opinions first-hand.
New Zealand requires buyers to adopt safer sex practices or be fined. I don't know to what degree this is enforced.
> The spreadsheet attached to Padilla’s email indicates that the following words (among others) were automatically deleted from adult ads by the Strip Term From Ad filter before ads were published:
• “lolita” (and its misspelled variant, “lollita”)
• “teenage”
• “rape”
• “young”
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Backpage%20Report...
While profits are higher (for some tiers of drug dealers), this is because the risks are correspondingly higher. Certainly those whose share of the drug profits is due to their capacity for violence and high risk tolerance are opposed to legalization. However, I suspect many of the producers and sellers whose share of profits depend on their industry knowledge find legalization attractive precisely because of the security and safety it can bring.