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Comment by stickfigure | Hacker News Reader

stripped the keywords out of the ads and ran them anyways

I don't see why this is particularly damning. Visit any porn tube site right now and you will notice that "teen", "stepsister", and a few other young-sounding keywords are incredibly popular. The actresses are quite obviously NOT underage.

When I worked for kink.com a decade ago, we had a policy to avoid these words because they made our credit card processors nervous. They already had a difficult enough time with fetish content. All our content was produced in-house (with meticulous 2257 records), but if we had put user-generated content on the site, we absolutely would have stripped out keywords that were too edgy.

Sex workers and pornographers habitually sell the fantasy of barely legal. Not even the customers really believe this fantasy. I wouldn't necessarily assume a suggestive ad actually represents child abuse, and editing out misleading keyword stuffing seems pretty reasonable.

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Backpage wasn’t porn, which is known to be fake on many levels selling fantasy. These ads weren’t about fantasy, they were a reality you could buy. I don’t know if you’ve even been to the site (which I checked out after the controversy recently started) — I was shocked to see what it was and that such a site could be online without being taken down.

If they really just edited out those words, then that’s pretty f’d up. The ads were very clearly for prostitutes, all with very obvious photos. If someone looks very underage, and advertises as underage, then they should do the right thing and notify the authorities themselves. To profit from that is extremely unethical.

These ads weren’t about fantasy

Have you ever talked to a sex worker or former sex worker? I know a few. Fantasy and role play is part of the job, even if it's just pretending to be someone's girlfriend for a couple hours.

I don't see anything wrong with making money off of other people's fantasies (in virtual or real life), as long as everyone is a consenting adult. The indictment doesn't establish that backpage encouraged underage prostitution.

The context, with Backpage, is that we know literal sex trafficking, include with children, happened through that site.

We are viewing the mechanisms Backpage implemented and ads placed on that site, both in the context of the adult marketing fantasy world you talk about and in the context of literal child sex slavery occurring on Backpage.

> I don't see anything wrong with making money off of other people's fantasies (in virtual or real life), as long as everyone is a consenting adult. The indictment doesn't establish that backpage encouraged underage prostitution.

Eh, what? You can't just say "as long as" first and then change the bar to "[isn't] established that they encouraged" in the next sentence. Maybe I am missing something.

> as long as everyone is a consenting adult.

We know, and Backpage don't deny this, that many of the ads were for children.

But if we restrict ourself to adults; it's a myth that women want to work in prostitution, or that it's just another job. The vast majority of women working in prostitution only do so to feed a drug addiction,or because they're in debt, or because they're being coercively controlled. Yes, I do speak to women who've been through this.

Nope, I know a lady who worked as an escort to pay for school. She enjoyed it, liked making money and ended up working as a manager booking appointments and stuff for the agency she worked for, including some fairly important government officials. She talked a lot about it to anyone that would listen and repeatedly said it was a great way to pay for school. She had zero regrets and said she would do it again if she ever needed money. I don't know for sure, but I don't think she was addicted to drugs.

A coworker of a friend of mine who works in the medical field also works as an escort on the side just for the money and fun of it. She's one of the ones that goes to parties and on dates with lonely rich people. She's been bought cars and jewelery paid vacations to tons of places.

I have suggested before that I would very much like to see a suggestion for a generic law that make prostitution illegal without using words that involve sex or proxies for it.

What about a law forbidding all work that has the work injury rates (or higher) of current legal prostitution and where the majority of employees are in debt? As a purely theoretical idea I wonder how wide of an impact that would have.

Coercion is naturally a bigger issue and reminds me of how mining and debt slavery co-evolved. Targeting the illegal behavior worked there quite effective in turning mining into a normal profession and away from a place where men in debt worked until they died at an early age.

Your statement is so misogynistic and paternalizing that I don't even know where to begin.

I'll just have to go with "what can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence". Back up your claims, and "I talked to a few women" does not count.

> The vast majority of women working in prostitution only do so to feed a drug addiction,or because they're in debt, or because they're being coercively controlled.

This is flat-out wrong.

Citation needed

> Backpage wasn’t porn, which is known to be fake on many levels selling fantasy.

No, it was prostitution, which is, however, also well-known to be fake on many levels and selling fantasy.

When the fantasy is underage girls, they’ve been acquired through human trafficking, and you can purchase sex with them, then that’s straight up illegal and immoral.

>I don't see why this is particularly damning. Visit any porn tube site right now and you will notice that "teen", "stepsister", and a few other young-sounding keywords are incredibly popular. The actresses are quite obviously NOT underage.

That's not what happened. Backpage knew children were being kidnapped, drugged, and advertised for sex on their site. They had some choices: cooperate with law enforcement to help stop it happening; do nothing; or cooperate with the kidnappers to earn more money. They chose to cooperate with the traffickers.

> At the direction of CEO Carl Ferrer, the company programmed this electronic filter to “strip” —that is, delete—hundreds of words indicative of sex trafficking ( including child sex trafficking) or prostitution from ads before their publication. The terms that Backpage has automatically deleted from ads before publication include “lolita,” “teenage,” “rape,” “young,” “amber alert,” “little girl,” “teen,” “fresh,” “innocent,” and “school girl.” When a user submitted an adult ad containing one of these “stripped” words, Backpage’s Strip Term From Ad filter would immediately delete the discrete word and the remainder of the ad would be published. While the Strip Term From Ad filter changed nothing about the true nature of the advertised transaction or the real age of the person being sold for sex, thanks to the filter, Backpage’s adult ads looked “cleaner than ever.” Manual editing entailed the deletion of language similar to the words and phrases that the Strip Term From Ad filter automatically deleted—including terms indicative of criminality

If Backpage were truly cooperating with law enforcement they would have reported these ads before stripping the wordds, rather than stripping the words and then deleting the original ad.

>cooperate with law enforcement to help stop it happening; do nothing; or cooperate with the kidnappers to earn more money. They chose to cooperate with the traffickers.

This is ludicrous on its face. Backpage obviously wasn't earning any meaningful amounts of money from child prostitution.

I too am a little mystified by why they chose to do what they did because I agree with you that there just can't be that much money in child trafficking. But the indictment has a lot of details, some of it supported by quotes in emails; it seems pretty likely that they did do stuff. Why? Maybe just ideology?

There's a lot in the indictment to suggest that they don't take child sex trafficking seriously as a problem. They joke about it ("entrapment.com"). They take meetings and disregard the information they're given. They're on the record declining to adopt things they say are "good ideas" because they don't have enough "P.R. value". I think the balance of information we have strongly suggests that Lacey and Larking just DGAF.

This is the problem I have with the Standard Internet Discussion on Backpage.com. It invariably focuses on the harm reduction argument. I'm prepared to buy the harm reduction argument! But someone responsible needs to run that site; the people who actually ran it belong in prison.

You keep asserting this, yet despite repeated requests from myself and others you still have not pointed out the parts of the indictment that are presumably so convincing.

If it's so clearcut, give us the article numbers and let's talk about specifics. The indictment is easy enough to read.

This whole subthread is starting to sound like the McMartin Preschool case.

In the McMartin Preschool case the allegations were utterly fantastic. We had a bunch of Satan worshippers abusing children in a dungeon dug beneath the school that they would have had to have dug with spoons as people would have certainly noticed a backhoe and a bunch of construction workers digging the sex dungeon.

No actual crimes were committed and there were no victims. In this case the facts are entirely pedestrian and the victims real. It seems pretty clear that people were abused. The only real question is how guilty are the people running Backpage.

Since they were running a page selling people and seemed at best disinterested in not selling children I'd say very. If you sell produce you acquire along with customers money the obligation to ensure that the produce you sell is safe and doesn't cause your customers to die of food poisoning.

If you sell sex it seems people selling children for sex is a foreseeable risk that they did at best NOTHING to mitigate.

I'm not sure why some people seem apt to defend them.

In the McMartin Preschool case, 0 children were found to be abused by the accused.

I mean, it's an indictment.

If you want some proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the proprietors of BackPage.com committed the crimes they are accused of, that's totally fair, and that's also what the criminal justice system is supposed to produce as an end result.

"Article numbers"?

How is that obvious? I, offhand, don't know how to obtain Backpage's financial records. Can you provide evidence or a sound logical argument demonstrating that Backpage obviously didn't earn meaningful (maybe we have different meanings of this word?) amounts of money from ads for child sex slaves?

https://www.newsweek.com/backpagecom-made-500-million-prosti...

Are you guys really suggesting that open child prostitution is so prevalent in the US that it could possibly make up more than a fraction of a ‰ of backpages business? That sounds completely asinine to me.

These guys were literally drowning in money from normal escort ads, why on earth would they want underage escort ads?

In actual practice they didn't want to know or do anything about the legality or illegality of the transactions they were facilitating because a large portion of their draw is the the hands off nature. Its likely that a good chunk of the ads were in fact for over 18 individuals but neither we nor backpage probably know how much was illegal.

That is neither a sound logical argument, nor is it evidence towards your point.

And to answer your question, Yes. Do you have much familiarity with the various systems in which child sex trafficking happens in the US? If not, that ignorance may be a huge factor towards the dissonance you're displaying.

The part you quoted doesn't seem to contradict the other posters claim at all.

You say "that's not what happened" then propose what did happen... Is there proof of these things or is it how you are choosing to interpret some of info?

Surely att, sprint and others know that their lines are used for kidnapping, drugging and advertising sex, I don't think that makes them or backpage part of those ills. You propose they chose to cooperate with traffickers and make it sound like it was an A or B choice. I propose it is possible to cooperate with hookers and law enforcement at the same time, and from what I have seen, maybe that is what happened, not at all what you are implying.

Do you claim to know how much Backpage was "truly cooperating with LE" ?

As someone who has reported internet postings to LE and spent hundreds of hours trying to push similar info to various agencies, let me assure you that what many might imagine could happen when a site reports bad postings to whatever agencies, not many of them get a warrant and swat team to swoop in the next day. In fact they often don't do shit about it.

I this comment you post quotes about "Backpage has automatically deleted from ads before publication include... ... “amber alert,”" and in another comment on this page you state "Backpage were telling advertisers to use phrases like "amber alert"."

You seem to be very confused on these particular issues.

A system Backpage claims to have put in place to suppress child sex trafficking was actually used to groom child sex trafficking ads (and, presumably, others) for mainstream acceptance.

That's absurdly vague.

You build a form that allows ads to be submitted. It refuses to allow certain illicit keywords. People resubmit a few times until they get the form to accept the ad.

Prosecution: You built a tool to help child sex traffickers groom their ads!

1) Backpage were telling advertisers what language to use. Backpage were telling advertisers to use phrases like "amber alert".

2) Backpage claimed to be helping law enforcement.

If that were true when someone submits an ad for "15 year old lolita" the form would keep the details, ask the submitter to change the words, and then Backpage could either submit those details to law enforcement or wait for LE to turn up with a warrant.

What actually happened was Backpage said "Whoops, you can't use that word", and then allow the submitter to resubmit, and then the system would delete all trace of the orginal ad. So, when LE turned up with warrants asking for all the advertisers who'd tried to use the phrase "15 year old lolita" Backpage could say "we don't have that information".

re 1) - You make this sound like there was instructions posted on the page when you clicked "advertise" saying this, or advertisers were notified via email how to do this or something. Is this the case?

I run some online chat rooms, and the chats auto block some bad words by default and others words I added to the censor filter, I would hate to think someone would one day post that I tell spammers how to send spam by blocking one word and not blocking shorturlDotcom/M$a$k$eMoney$from$Home

The game of block this, spammers find work around, share with other spammers, add those to the block list, repeat; is not intending to teach scammers how to scam better.

re 2) from what I read long ago, for years BP did send notices to law enforcement when they felt that there were under age pictures used, is this not true or did this practice stop?

I have also read that just by being the main watering hole for this kind of thing, many agencies used it to look for abuse and trafficking victims, with some jurisdictions letting the self promoting adults go. I've also read where some cops were setting up fake ads to catch people looking for sex,

So it has always appeared to me that BP was helping law enforcement in several ways all over the country.

I understand some people think the best way to help is to shut down naughty ads completely, I myself think that is short sighted. I guess some people think things they did helped the dark side (in any way) / gave any comfort to the enemy and therefor they should be destroyed.

You say "what actually happened..." Is there an article somewhere saying that LE got a warrant looking for this phrase you mention? Sounds outrageous to me.

They were reporting to NCMEC. For all we know, the phrase "15 year old lolita" caused them to report something.

Beyond that, they had a bad word filter to help moderate the site. To make themselves look better, yes. They didn't want a bunch of ads on there using the word "lolita". They could have blocked ads with that word, thus guiding "traffickers" in how to write ads. They chose apparently to delete these words. Both of them would have been used against them. In either case, they must have had tens of thousands of ads matching, with the actual underage persons involved being in all likelyhood a small minority.

They were reporting a fixed number of things to NCMEC every day and every month. They capped the number of things they'd report to NCMEC. The indictment specifically charges them with getting ad submissions clearly pertaining to child sex trafficking and not reporting to them to law enforcement. When they met with NCMEC, NCMEC told them (paraphrasing) "you're breaking the law and will eventually get prosecuted for this". NCMEC and Backpage were not allies.

You are clearly reading the indictment in the way you choose to. Let's have a look.

#51: NCMEC claims in front of Backpage that "many" of the ads feature children, and either this, or posting prostitution ads in general, is illegal. Ok. Nothing here about Backpage not deleting ads involving underage people.

#54: Backpage asked NCMEC what kind of prostitution ads would be acceptable. NCMEC declines the answer. Backpage says "Adult prostitution is none of your business". The indictment mentions this proudly - because why? Because the indictment is 100% presupposed on the idea that Backpage advertising adult prostitution is a crime.

#63: NCMEC tells them, quote "a large portion of the ads on Backpage were blatant prostitution ads". No mention of underage persons.

#80. A mention of an email in which a limit on the reports to NCMEC is suggested. No details as to why, if maybe NCMEC asked for less reports, or if any such limit was ever implemented.

#96. NCMEC sends a letter, suggesting: verify the age and identify of submitters, verify the age and identity of individuals in photographs, do not accept prepaid credit cards, require users to use verified email addresses and phone numbers (not sure how). Backpage ignored those suggestions.

Now, if you, like NCMEC, believe that sex trafficking is a huge issue in the US, then you may find those suggestions to be sensible. If you, like me, believe in policies that protect marginalized people who engage in sex work, you might find them to only intended to create barriers for people who do not need this kind of help. In either case, this does not mean that Backpage condoned or otherwise supported sex traffickers.

That is all the mentions of NCMEC in the indictment as far as I can see.

Isn’t there a bit more than that?

For reference: https://www.justice.gov/file/1050276/download

#12 Alleges the age scrubbing behavior tptacek has mentioned.

#13 Discusses their lack of interest in a warning message and cites an email discussing limiting their reporting of incidents because they didn’t want to exceed 500 reports a month to the NCMEC. Far from your claim that the motivation is unclear, it is in fact explicit.

#51 Is actually the second warning Backpage received about the underage issue, the first being a letter from the AG’s as outlined in #39

#61 Is a list of newly banned terms including, “Lolita, fresh, high school, tight and young.”

#67 Adds “amber alert” to the “strip out list” tptacek has mentioned, guided the moderation’s “cleaning” of ads pimping children; ads which were not removed.

#69 Discuss their rejection of using age-verification software because of the ~$.60 cost per query.

#72 Refers to a letter from Seattle PD warning about the prevalence of underage prostitution ads on their site.

#74 A letter from state AG’s alleging multiple counts of human trafficking through their site.

#75 Rejection of an attempt to handle the “underage issue” because it would not provide a PR benefit.

#76 A presentation by their own PR firm warning that of the three major categories of ads on their site, one was “Pimps and Men Looking For Kids.”

#77 Email about underage issue, includes joke that site should be called “entrapment.com”

#78 Padilla admits to editing 76 pages of ads with the word “teen” in them, not removing said ads.

#79 Alleges thst during performance reviews many mods who ignored underage escorts kept their jobs.

#80 Actually states the reason, “If we don’t want to blow past 500 this month, we shouldn’t be doing more than 16 per day.”

#83 Keeping a 17 year old’s ad up despite her attempt to recruit a 15 year old because the 15 year old wasn’t actually in the ad.

#86, and #87, and #88 A mother explains that her drugged, kidnapped daughter is appearing in ads on the site, cites a phone number, and asks for ads to be removed. Response is that since the site in question (Backpagepics.com) isn’t owned by their corporate entity they don’t need to bother.

#93 AZU study showing issue with underage prostitution is shown to BP along with recommendations which are ignored.

#94 Coaching someone posting underage prostitutes on how to clean up the ads while keeping them up.

You didn’t even do a good job of cherry picking, and why bother with that unconvincing attempt at deception when we’re discussing a document we’re all reading?! A document which is quite damning and conforms to tptacek’s version of events rather than your own skewed version.

And you still had the gall to open with You are clearly reading the indictment in the way you choose to. Let's have a look. Look in the mirror.

I was citing all the references to NCMEC that I could find.

I looked at some of the points that you mentioned specifically, and I stand by my position. I support Backpage publishing ads for prostitution, and I would draw the line at them in any way supporting underage prostitution or sex trafficking. I don't see anything here that tells me that Backpage did that.

If you would like me to refute any point in particular, let me know.

Just as an example of how I am reading things. You refer to:

#39 - A letter by attorney generals saying Backpage should stop accepting prostitution ads, with the claim that "ads trafficking children" are among them in a subordinate clause. It does even claim that Backpage ignored those ads, or encouraged them.

Things like #61, #67 or #78, re. the word filter: It's obviously controversial, but look, there are thousands of ads using words like "teen" or "lolita". None of them mean that actual children are involved. In fact, NCMEC said, quote "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".

They can filter those words silently, they can block them explicitly ("guiding traffickers about how to write their ads" they will say), or they can have them posted as-is. And they can choose which of those ads warrant a report because they look like actual trafficking, which apparently they did.

I mean, let's say you and me want to run a prostitution ad site like Backpage, you figure you could do it in a way that would not end up with you in the position Backpage is in right now?

#86, and #87, and #88 is interesting: First of all, the ad is deleted once it is pointed out on Backpage.com. And Backpagepics.com may well not be under the control of Backpage, as they say; they might not be able to do anything about it.

Now, reading this I did think that not bothering, on purpose, to respond to a mother who's child has been kidnapped is pretty awful behaviour (though it still doesn't proof they condoned trafficking).

However, the indictment doesn't quote Padilla here, it paraphrases. For all we know, he told the subordinate: Answer the email, but just so you know this, Backpagepics.com is not owned by us, in general we don't have a legal responsibility to deal with them. Or, maybe Padilla showed a gross lack of empathy here.

But think the government wouldn't blatantly misrepresent this email, while also not lying? Think again.

As I said, if you would like me to address a specific point, I am happy to.

It's virtually impossible to know which of the ads actually corresponded to child sex trafficking. But it is not impossible to know that some of them did; the indictment includes statements from trafficked children and their families.

Despite your effort to frame the conversation that way, nobody is claiming that every "lolita" Backpage ad was a pimped child. The claim is simply that some were, and that Backpage knew it. It wasn't up to Lacey and Larkin to make a best effort at profiting from illegal prostitution ads while not profiting from child sex abuse: they were repeatedly given ways to mitigate the latter crime, and they repeatedly refused to do anything meaningful about it.

They belong in prison.

Since (as you say) it's impossible to know which ads correspond to child sex trafficking, and it's almost certain that some will be, what you are saying is that all marketplaces for prostitution must be banned.

Let's roll with that. Since it's impossible to know which pr0n on tube sites is underage, and it's almost certain that some will be, all porn tube sites must be banned.

Since it's impossible to know which email accounts are used for child sex trafficking, and it's almost certain that some will be, all email services must be banned. There's really no limit to how far you can go with this.

Why don't you start right now? Youporn, xhampster, xvideos, there are dozens - they all have "teen" sections. Send them a letter letting them know that their website is used by "child" pornographers (you're unsure which images, of course, it's really hard to tell with 17/18 year olds). That starts Claim #1 "defendant was notified that their site facilities child pornography". Better yet, get a law enforcement agency to do it, that looks better on the indictment. The fact that uploads ban/strip the word 'lolita' (they do, actually) - Claim #2!

The good news for the Backpage guys is that in court, every single one of those points in the indictment are going to have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. The bad news is it won't matter because what's really going on is that they're being prosecuted for facilitating adult prostitution, and our puritanical society has barely come to grips with the fact that sex toys are now legal (marijuana is still pending).

No matter what you think of Lacey and Larkin, the loss of backpage and craigslist adult is a huge step backwards for female autonomy.

Markets for prostitution are banned. But that's not my point: my point is that at multiple steps along the way, Larkin and Lacey were told what they could do to mitigate the harm their site was causing to children, and they refused to do it.

For the nth time, I'm receptive to the harm reduction argument for sites like Backpage. They just need to be run by people who won't try to profit from child prostitution.

Supporters of Backpage can talk tough on message boards in advance of the trial, but those guys are going to lose in court, and lose bad. It's a nightmare indictment. This notion that they're going to prevail at trial seems like it depends on the idea that the jury is going to nullify for two middle aged men who knowingly profited from child sex trafficking. It's not going to happen.

Again, the indictment does not rely on sex trafficking having taking place. If the judge allows this to be brought up in court at all, the jury would likely still be instructed to make their decision regardless of whether they believe such charges to be true, since it does not factor into the US Codes under which the defendants are charged.

That leaves the moral question.

They were running a board posting prostitution ads. We agree that this is a-ok. The claim is that in some cases, some of the posts were advertising underage prostitution or sex trafficking. The number is disputed, but I think we can also agree it was a minority. I am sure we can further agree that inevitably, since some sex trafficking exists, someone will try to advertise it.

The attorney generals, or NCMEC, argued that Backpage should shutdown it's prostitution section, citing, among other things, sex trafficking. You are open to the idea that in the name of harm reduction, such a section should exist, though. So ok, Backpage doesn't shut it down.

Some suggestions were made how Backpage might otherwise reduce sex trafficking occurring on their website. Those included things like having submitters provide ID documents. It seems that you believe that refusing to do so is what made Backpage evil, when it otherwise would have been ok. That obviously depends on the sensibility of those suggestions. Maybe you think that they were no-brainers, likely to save the lives of thousands of children. I think they were invasive, made in bad faith, not likely to make a difference, yet totally undermining the Backpage as harm reduction argument.

Suffice it to say that I don't want to run a prostitution website with your blessing, but on the mercy of a bunch of attorney generals not being able to convince you that I didn't do "enough" to combat abuse. That seems like a precarious position to be in.

Now maybe if they did require IDs, or implemented other changes, they would have gained your approval. But it is unlikely it would have saved them from an indictment, or from the ire of sex-trafficking hysterics, nor the politicians trying to ride the PR wave.

There are sites that work differently than Backpage. They have advertisers maintain permanent profiles. They have higher barriers to entry and more checks. They may require a login to see any content. This gains them a lower profile, but ultimately does not protect them (see Redbook, Rent Boy, and probably others I do not recall right now).

The majority of sex workers are neither sex trafficking victims, nor high-class escorts with a Twitter profile. A lot of them might be similar to, say, the mother portrayed in the film Florida Project. They don't want to maintain a profile. This is not their full time job. They might post an ad today to earn some money, then delete it tomorrow. Backpage served this clientele. The silver lining here might be that the government is not, now, in the possession of the identities of tens of thousands of these woman.

Facilitating adult prostitution is a crime.

But morally ok.

That's not what their system is accused of doing.

You're right. Here's exactly what their system is accused of doing:

You build a form that allows ads to be submitted. It strips out certain keywords.

I read the indictment. It's pages and pages about the evils of prostitution, with just a few bits like - gasp - stripping out the word lolita to make them sound unsympathetic. I'm not impressed. I'm honestly surprised that you are.

I was in the industry when the word "lolita" suddenly went from common porn advertising (just like "teen") to forbidden. The content didn't change one bit; something changed in the legal landscape and the industry just did a global search and replace of their marketing content. They stripped out the keywords.

I don't think we're reading the same indictment, because the one I'm looking at is wall-to-wall quotes from Backpage staff and emails, and virtually nothing about the evils of prostitution.

Further, the indictment I'm reading doesn't simply talk about them filtering out the word "lolita", but a variety of keywords, and has examples of instances where they had known problematic ads with human review and stripped out problematic photos manually before running the ads.

Yes, it's wall-to-wall quotes from Backpage staff about facilitating prostitution - which of course they are guilty of. But that's not what's at stake here in the court of public opinion, where there's rather a lot of people who believe it should be legal.

The prosecution (also apparently you) is/are trying to convince us that these guys are knowingly facilitating child sex trafficking, which is something we can agree on is bad. So let's throw out all the points in the indictment that aren't child-specific?

It just doesn't seem to leave much, unless you believe that every mention of the word "teen" is a case of child sex trafficking. I considered adding a variety of NSFW links here to the official "teen" category of popular porn tube sites, but I'm sure folks can find them on their own. And as I'm sure you know, it's not real.

You make a lot out of the "max 500 reports per month" item, but given that it's likely a laborious manual process, how many do you want to report? There are thousands of ads from fake "lolitas" and "teens", none of which are any more credible than the porn tubes. The NCMEC doesn't want a bunch of spam either.

If you'd like to call out any specific #s in the indictment for special attention, I'm happy to engage in an honest dialogue.

> So let's throw out all the points in the indictment that aren't child-specific?

Are you missing the bits where children who were advertised on Backpage contacted backpage to get these ads removed, and backpage refused to do so?

We have testimony from children.

I don't think your argument makes much sense. "Teen" pornography has plausible deniability (or whatever you want to call it) because it can be produced in a way that ensures that the actors are adults (though even that isn't always true). You have no such defense when it comes to material that one can assume is unlicensed, produced in countries with no such (de facto or not) regulation or when it comes to something like prostitution. I assume they didn't verify age of the participants. Not like "tube sites" are a particularly high horse to begin with since there is plenty of material out there that is not only unlicensed or piracy, but verifiably stolen. Which anyone who even pretend to care about privacy should be against.

The fact that a particular person in a pornographic video is underage is up to the government to proof if they want to convict you, say, of a child pornography charge. It does not matter where the material was produced, or what kind of records they kept.

Now, the government may create laws that oblige a distributor of pornography to be in possession of such records, and someone how is not may be in violation of those laws.

It also doesn't matter if the material is advertised as "teen" or not.

Similarly, you may argue that a site like Backpage should be legal, as long as they verify the age of the advertisers. It's a rather strange argument, after all, they can't verify that the person they verify is the person that turns up at the appointment. But that is not the law.

The government is instead alleging that there is a law that makes Backpage-like advertising of prostitution illegal, regardless of whether the ages were verified or not.

Wait, can you tell me what indictment you were reading, which was pages and pages of the evils of prostitution and just a few bits about what the Backpage staff did, and where the only thing they're accused of doing to groom child trafficking ads is stripping the word "lolita"? I'm genuinely curious about what your sourcing is now.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-leads-effo...

Please point out to me the #s that you find damning.

Did you read the indictment or the press release?

He's asking you for the #s, surely he's referring to the indictment with numbered chapters.

Chapter #61 discusses this scheme. It's ridiculous to claim that any of the words used in the indictment strongly suggest child prostitution.

>array of terms that are suggestive of child prostitution (e.g., "lolita," fresh," "high school," "tight," "young")

We know Backpage did nothing about some underage ads because the girls who'd been trafficked tried to get those ads taken down and Backpage declined.

> 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.”

Backpage allowed users to delete ads they posted.

Should Backpage have allowed anyone to take down their competitors ads by sending an email claiming that the competitor is underage?

If you have a photograph of a child being raped, and that child contacts you to ask for that photograph to be taken down, you should probably do a bit more than say "no", you should probably try and see if you are hosting images of child sexual abuse and see if you can take down those images.

Backpage didn't dispute the identity of the children.

Please read the documents.

>If you have a photograph of a child being raped

What a wonderful strawman.

>that child contacts you to ask for that photograph to be taken down, you should probably do a bit more than say "no",

How do you tell that a specific person is in a photo? How do you tell that said person is a child?

>you should probably try and see if you are hosting images of child sexual abuse

How would you propose they do that?

>Backpage didn't dispute the identity of the children.

>Please read the documents.

Did you read the chapter following the your quote?

It's not a straw man. That happened.

Is one more relevant than the other?

Obviously yes.

> how many do you want to report?

All of them?

All of what though? It's not like backpage could possibly know who's underage and who isn't.

Should every ad containing the word "tight" go to the NCMEC?

Please read the document.

Backpage have already admitted a lot of this stuff was happening.

They certainly did not. Please provide the # of the indictment or a specific source.

Yes, and 95% percent of them are intended to proof that BackPage knowingly facilitated prostitution.

Starting with page 42, they list these ads. They somewhat hilariously call the subject of every ad "victim 1", "victim 2", despite there being no evidence, or indeed reason to believe, that they are or were.

I am reading this as someone who's thinking like the author of the reason article: A website running prostitution ads should legally be allowed to exist. You claim to be open to that position. Read like this, ignoring everything that presumes such a thing is in itself wrong, there are maybe 15 or 20 points out of the 156 that could even be considered relevant.

> Yes, and 95% percent of them are intended to proof that BackPage knowingly facilitated prostitution.

Which, incidentally, wasn't a crime until March 2018, when Congress passed a law that not only made it a crime, but retroactively criminalized it for Backpage.

This is absurdly unconstitutional, of course[0], and the bill's author (Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut) should know that, since he was the Attorney General for Connecticut before.

Of course, Blumenthal does know this, because he's been waging a personal war against prostitution for the past decade. He's the reason that Craigslist shut down the "erotic services" section about ten years ago, which meant that sex workers had to start posting in the personals section. (Of course, this gave them cause to write FOSTA/SESTA, at which point Craigslist had to shut down the entire personals section as well.)

[0] https://medium.com/@TechFreedom/yes-sesta-is-probably-uncons...

Wait, which count in the Backpage indictment comes from SESTA? The newest part of the online version of 18 USC 1952, which includes the specific (non-money-laundering) charge Backpagers were charged with, comes from 2002.

So if they strip out the words and post it anyways, it isn't doing enough, but if it just doesn't allow it to be posted, then it is a tool that allows traffickers to groom their adds?

I don't follow. They strip out the words and post it anyways.

But if they did the opposite, and just not posted any add that they flagged as inappropriate, then the ones posting the add could keep testing and figure out what sort of add gets past, and thus Backpage would be blamed for helping the traffickers posting the add figure out how to avoid detection.

You are adding speculation about claims no one is making.

We know Backpage applied energy towards changing a Backpage operated system that had the first-order effect of facilitating child sex trafficking. The speculation is about Backpage's intent, and for the intents of this discussion, that gets determined in court.

Look at the comment chain with the quote

>You build a form that allows ads to be submitted. It refuses to allow certain illicit keywords. People resubmit a few times until they get the form to accept the ad.

to see where the claim is being made that the company was helping to craft ads to avoid detection.

> I don't see why this is particularly damning. Visit any porn tube site right now and you will notice that "teen", "stepsister", and a few other young-sounding keywords are incredibly popular. The actresses are quite obviously NOT underage.

> When I worked for kink.com a decade ago

Commercial "underage" content can get away with it because they always have the 2257 records to back it up. That's as much a certification of its fictional status as one can get.

There are no 2257 records for prostitutes. And prostitution itself is illegal. When you're at the point where you're setting up filters to govern the facilitation (not prohibition!) of an already illegal trade, obscuring the fact that ad subjects for non-fictional services may also be underage doesn't buy you any deniability.

Once you demonstrate knowledge, it's game over. That company selling encrypted phones to cartels, the guy building smuggling compartments in cars, Ross Ulbricht, and now Backpage...all demonstrated that they knew what business they were in and did it anyway. Hell, pre-legalization, the stoners at your local bong shop had better OPSEC than most of these clowns-- you mention marijuana in their store and they'd kick you out and refuse to do business with you, since they didn't want to be caught admitting they were selling drug paraphernalia, just "tobacco pipes, man."

Sure, Backpage knowingly ran a prostitution website, which may well be illegal. What galls people is the claim that this is about something other that: That they are especially culpable because they stripped the word "teen" from the ads.

The problem is not so much about child prostitution but rather that them promoting illegal stuff on their web site and knowing it at the time

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