Both the New Times and Village Voice are advocates on issues of civil rights and they cause lots of problems for authoritarian politicians and organizations trying to control people's lives [2][3]. Lacey and Larkin Fund is a huge supporter/funder of groups like ACLU and immigrant groups who donate heavily to civil right causes[2][6].
Part of the attack on backpage is political in my opinion after looking at the facts.
> Backpage started as the literal back page of the New Times, filled with classified ads.
> Lacey and Larkin, former New Times executives who sold off the newspaper chain in 2012, retained the lucrative interest in the Backpage website.
Both Larkin and Lacey are big civil right advocates and donate heavily to civil rights causes, sex rights, gay rights and immigrant rights [2][3] and the New Times attack politicians for corruption on the regular. After they attacked Arpaio they had nearly a decade of attacks from him and associated groups [5]. They did a strange tactic attacking Larkin and Lacey going after New Times readers.
>In October 2007, Maricopa County sheriff's deputies arrested Lacey and Larkin on charges of revealing secret grand jury information concerning the investigations of the New Times's long-running feud with Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio. In July 2004, the New Times published Arpaio's home address in the context of a story about his real estate dealings, which the County Attorney's office was investigating as a possible crime under Arizona state law. A special prosecutor served Village Voice Media with a subpoena ordering it to produce "all documents" related to the original real estate article, as well as "all Internet web site traffic information" to a number of articles that mentioned Arpaio. [5]
Arpaio tried to get all information on all Phoenix New Times readers and the paper has been known to be tough on Arpaio overreaches in Arizona on immigrants and non-conservatives.
> The prosecutor further ordered Village Voice Media to produce the IP addresses of all visitors to the Phoenix New Times website since January 1, 2004, as well as which websites those readers had been to prior to visiting. As an act of "civil disobedience", Lacey and Larkin published the contents of the subpoena on or about October 18, which resulted in their arrests the same day.On the following day, the county attorney dropped the case after declining to pursue charges against the two. [5]
> The special prosecutor's subpoena included a demand for the names of all people who had read the Arpaio story on the newspaper's website. It was the revealing of the subpoena information by the New Times which led to the arrests. Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas dropped the charges less than 24 hours after the two were arrested [5]
> In the weeks following the arrests, members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, of which the Phoenix New Times is a member, provided links on their websites to places where Arpaio's address could be found. This was done to show solidarity with the Phoenix New Times.[5]
There is a strange section of the Backpage report attacking Lacey and Larkin for selling it to an outside investor who is offshore. They appear to hide ownership from them some might say wisely if it is being the whipping boy for 'trafficking' claims when really it is a sex worker ad website [4].
> Third, despite the reported sale of Backpage to an undisclosed foreign company in 2014, the true beneficial owners of the company are James Larkin, Michael Lacey, and Carl Ferrer. Acting through a complex chain of domestic and international shell companies, Lacey and Larkin lent Ferrer over $600 million to purchase Backpage from them. But as a result of this deal, Lacey and Larkin retain significant financial and operational control, hold almost complete debt equity in the company, and still receive large distributions of company profits. According to the consultant that structured the deal, moreover, this transaction appears to provide no tax benefits. Instead, it serves only to obscure Ferrer’s U.S.-based ownership and conceal Lacey and Larkin’s continued beneficial ownership.
I'd say part of the attack on backpage is political and shuts down a big political donor for civil rights and typically liberal aims [2]. It seems them selling off the New Times, Village Voice and moving ownership overseas from 2012-2014 irked some politicians and authoritarians.
The Backpage report claims of 'trafficking' amounts to simply a profanity filter that backpage created to PREVENT people posting bad ads or possible 'trafficking' not encouraging it [4].
The report says Backpage 'knowingly concealed evidence of criminality' for removing bad terms being posted due to a profanity/word filter? They didn't want people posting ads with these terms because they were bad words, not that they supported it[4].
That argument is like saying, because a site profanity filter removed racial slurs that the site was 'knowingly concealing evidence of racism'.
The whole idea was to block it not some devious hiding scheme. Understand backpage made lots of money, they wouldn't risk it for 'trafficking' and 'child trafficking' is such a reach that it just seems tacked on to the report with no evidence of it. Of course backpage doesn't want bad words posted to their ads, doesn't every classified site?
New Times, Village Voice and by association, Backpage, have all been targets in Arizona by Arpaio, McCain and authoritarian orgs mainly because they are tough on authoritarian politicians including Trump, it seems there was more to this attack than what is stated in the report.
The New Times has a history in being pro-civil rights and anti-war.
> The Phoenix New Times is a free alternative weekly Phoenix, Arizona newspaper, published each Thursday. It was the founding publication of New Times Media (now Village Voice Media), but The Village Voice is now the flagship publication of that company.[5]
The paper was founded in 1970 by a group of students at Arizona State University, led by Frank Fiore, Karen Lofgren, Michael Lacey, Bruce Stasium, Nick Stupey, Gayle Pyfrom, Hal Smith, and later, Jim Larkin, as a counterculture response to the Kent State shootings in the spring of that year. Gary Brennan played a role in its creation. According to the 20th Anniversary issue of the New Times, published on May 2, 1990, Fiore suggested that the anti-war crowd put out its own paper. The first summer issues were called the Arizona Times and assembled in the staff's La Crescenta apartments across from ASU. The Arizona Times was renamed the New Times as the first college issue went to press in September 1970.[5]
New Times pushes civil rights and personal freedoms including ending marijuana prohibition and calls out prohibitionists in Arizona, as well as other causes for personal freedom [7].
New Times has been kicking up dust on authoritarianism since the 70s. Lacey and Larkin also won a lawsuit against Arizona as recently as 2013 for false arrest which is still used to attack them [5].
> In December 2013, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay Phoenix New Times founders Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin $3.75 million to settle their false arrest lawsuit against the county defendants.
Take a look at their civil rights fund to see what I mean about how they take authority orgs/politicians to task and encourage civil rights [2]. They have been trying to take down the New Times, Village Voice Media and Backpage for nearly a decade and a half [5]. The whole report on Backpage, and their owners Lacey and Larkin who started New Times and Village Voice, might be a massive ad hominem [4]. It also appears to be an attack on owners of alternative media influence and funding for civil rights matters.
My guess is Lacey and Larkin, civil rights fighters that seem similar to Larry Flynt[2], won't let this just happen and they'll fight it. Most of the attacks on Backpage, and previously the New Times and Village Voice, attacks their character via ad hominems because they are causing trouble for authoritarians and pushing alternative news media funding, my guess is this takedown of Backpage is no different.
[1] https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2018/04/0...
[2] http://www.laceyandlarkinfronterafund.org/
[3] http://www.phoenixmag.com/valley-news/i-fought-the-law-and.h...
[4] https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Backpage%20Report...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_New_Times
[6] https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2017/0...
[7] http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/here-are-the-prohibition...