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> It was involved in 73 percent of all child trafficking cases reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Wouldn't this make Backpage an incredible asset to law enforcement? I'm surprised they're taking it down, instead of cooperating.

I can imagine the site could have facilitated countless sting operations and collected user data to identify traffickers.

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It says right in the article that they have been cooperating. And Backpage has been under investigation since at least 2016, so law enforcement has a ton of data to work with. Who says they haven't been using it for further arrests already?

I think OP meant leaving it up and continuing to collect data / track the players.

Its quite possible that that part of the play dried up.

More likely that the forces driving the legislation (which are very anti-sex, period), and the Congress critters willing to jump on board (who know their base), don't know and/or don't care about whether the boon it provides to law enforcement outweighs its visibility re: trafficking.

A lot of morals based legislation is driven by worldview, not by data.

What I understand is shutting down BP was all about seizing the assets of the owner, and less than about what the site was doing.

Makes you think they don’t really want to go after the buyers.

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