1. https://www.thecut.com/2018/04/7-sex-workers-on-what-it-mean...
2. https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/sex/sex-work...
If platforms keep child sex traffickers off their sites they won't get touched. If they don't they will get shut down.
It really isn't that hard.
The closest connection is about them automatically stripping suggestive words like "lolita" and "young" from online ads without blocking the advertisement. It's a bit of doublethink to suggest that removing suggestive words from an advertisement is facilitation.
Where they got into more trouble was in the manual editing process. They moved from outright deleting all posts that offend to editing advertisements to remove 'sex for money' (not child sex) references because it was potentially driving their user base elsewhere and ultimately not effective in educating their usersabout what specifically in the post was not acceptable. So, greed, really. But the manual review process was not the same as the automatic removal of questionable phrases (such as the ones picked up by the media and politicians to further an agenda).
Their moderators were not people actively seeking to enable the sale of children because the company would see increased advertising revenue. While they were greedy on the sex-for-money front, it's a huge unsupported leap to suggest actively enabling the sale of children. I'm sure if they saw some children for sale they would have acted appropriately. The same report that mentions the automatic filters advises that Backpage itself reports cases of suspected child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and that in some months Backpage has transmitted hundreds of such reports to NCMEC.
Which, of course, I am sure they are no longer sending these hundreds of reports per month since they were effectively shut down. Maybe there will be some other system with a moderation process that is likely to draw in and report offenders. But we'll probably kill that too.
So, if the crime is facilitating prostitution, sure, they are guilty. Intent is clearly there. Knowingly facilitating child sex trafficking? No, the only indicator is automatic removal of phrases from posts. That's the fabrication extrapolated from scant evidence which was used to build support for encroaching legislation.
The source of data for the hyperbolic claims of child sex trafficking was this 2017 Senate report if you'd like to review and make your own conclusions:
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Backpage%20Report...
FOSTA does make it explicitly illegal to operate a web site "with the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person" ... but that is not new. It has always been illegal to intentionally promote prostitution.
The EFF said the same thing arguing against FOSTA: that there was no need for a new criminal statute because existing criminal statutes already covered the same conduct.
The substantive change with FOSTA is: "CIVIL RECOVERY.—Any person injured by reason of a violation of section 2421A(b) may recover damages and reasonable attorneys’ fees in an action before any appropriate United States district court."
Before prostitutes couldn't sue a pimp because they were engaged in illegal activity (same reason a drug user can't sue a drug dealer). Criminalizing prostitution creates a legal immunity for pimps.
FOSTA changes that and now anyone who gets pimped on any of these escort sites can sue the owners. That is what will put them out of business. Not any police action.
A lot of liars out there spreading false info about how this is "bad for sex workers" ... but pimps are good at lying so that should be no surprise.
This doesn't specifically target child-prostitution. It easily could have, but doesn't. It targets all sex-work, which does have consequences.
So if the (I'm assuming) tiny fraction of child-prostitution is moved elsewhere (probably pimping them on the streets) then the grown adult sex-workers are now being forced to maybe go work for a pimp in dangerous situations vs. being independent and in control of when, where, and who they work with.
This law could very easily have been worded to make these companies responsible for any child-prostitution, but let adults be responsible for themselves.
I very specifically answered that first. Intentional promotion of prostitution has always been criminal. FOSTA didn't change that, which the EFF repeatedly said themselves when they were arguing against it.