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Comment by dkdk8283 | Hacker News Reader

I have personal experience with Backpage. They had a team of 70 analysts on staff to review all ads and were the #1 source of trafficking tips.

I believe the bp owner got into a pissing match with the AZ DA and eventually lost. Many people who hide behind the US government are scumbags.

Fuck FOSTA/SESTA too.

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Strongly agree with the sentiment of your post. I'm curious how you came about the information that they were the #1 source of trafficking tips. That seems like the government killing a golden goose (not that that is surprising in any way).

It depends.

If they thought that backpage enabled/induced trafficking, then them being a top source of tips isn’t that valuable.

Would you let a drug dealer run a meth lab if he reported his customers for prosecution?

You can argue with my analogy, and I don’t quite agree with it myself, but I can see the government seeing it that way.

Doesn’t the three-letters do that like… all the time? That’s basically the definition of honeypotting

As I recall, the FBI did exactly that fairly recently, when they pwned some credit card trading site and ran it themselves for years.

They ran a child porn dark web site for two weeks:

"Playpen was a notorious darknet child pornography website that operated from August 2014 to March 2015.[1][2] The website operated through a hidden service through the Tor network which allowed users to use the website anonymously. After running the website for 6 months, the website owner Steven W. Chase was captured by the FBI. After his capture, the FBI continued to run the website for another 13 days as part of Operation Pacifier." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playpen_(website)

Australian police did the same thing with another captured site, for more than six months if I recall correctly. They actually even posted material to it themselves in status updates impersonating the admins, because the admins who set up the site had established that protocol because they believed police would never do that…

Seems reasonable to me. Limited timespan to gather information with potentially large payoff.

I don't agree with "entrapment" arguments and "faciliting spread" here. The site was already up, and the users were going to go there regardless. Running it for a week or two more is at worst marginal harm, considering it was already there for a good 6 months.

I don't think entrapment is the problem here - it's that the government is distributing child porn. It's still wrong even if the government is doing it. The ends don't justify the means.

The real tragedy is it had a massive chilling effect on other sites.

A major escort site (not BP) was ethically ran by a retired sex worker. The site sold out of fear of prosecution and the new owner is a horrible person in my opinion.

"the government" isn't a single person with consistent motives.

half the government wants to keep sex work illegal and doesn't really want to stop trafficking that much.

> half the government wants to keep sex work illegal and doesn't really want to stop trafficking that much.

This reads oddly, since in the government context "sex trafficking" is synonymous with "prostitution".

They want it illegal but widespread, so they can jail people arbitrarily. (Though I'm not sure that's what the GP meant.)

Yes, and at least a few of them want it still available for them.

A better analogy would be overlooking the weed in your CI's yard because he turns in meth cookers.

The only reason for the government to see it that way is because someone powerful wanted them to.

I thought the issue with backpage was that they were actively editing / editorializing prostitution ads to increase traffic. Even if they were helping the government they crossed the line from being a neutral carrier to actively aiding prostitution.

I didn’t work for BP but I worked in the industry for over 10 years.

Kamala Harris had a lot to do with it.

https://reason.com/video/2020/08/20/kamala-harris-dishonest-...

"She would go on to spread misinformation about the site and its co-founders, Michael Lacey and James Larkin, and she co-filed criminal charges that were quickly dismissed but succeeded at garnering headlines and photo ops that raised her political profile. In reality, Backpage.com had become a powerful tool for law enforcement to help catch sex traffickers because of the cooperation and commitment of the site's founders to that cause, whom Harris and many other states' attorneys general had painted as villains."

Also, once you drive the good people out of business, not only whatever is left over much worse, but it attracts the people who are outright sociopaths and want to push the boundaries just because they like to see people burn. Since the demand doesn't go away, it just goes underground. If tomorrow all legitimate painkillers were outlawed, drug trafficking would become a much worse problem with a lot more deaths.

Why do you think it is they were the number one source of tips?

Basically only sex trade related platforms can be big sources of such tips, Backpage was the biggest sex trade platform.

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