I don't understand the thru-line of this Wired story. It effectively concedes the government's case: Backpage built a system that coached users to post trafficking ads without setting off its controls. If you posted an ad containing “lolita,” “rape,” “fresh,” or “little girl” (the article's examples), the system would
alert the user so they could use different terms, and then
accept their new ad.
There's lots not to like about SESTA, but the Backpage people weren't (AFAIK) charged under SESTA.
Why am I meant to care about the Backpage owner's colorful history? Isn't the important thing I actually need to know to understand what happened here buried towards the bottom of this story, in a couple paragraphs discussing what they were actually charged with? Agree or disagree with the prosecution, but that's the story.
I feel like people on message boards are sold on a narrative about how child sex trafficking never happens, which is easy when it's an abstraction. But it does happen.
A middle aged man I briefly worked with, and that a friend of mine worked for --- Peter Privateeer, the former CEO of a company called Reflex Security --- just finished serving 12 years in prison for buying a 14 year old girl. The pimp who sold her had been holding her at gunpoint and forcing her to "service" his customers. Where did the pimp meet the CEO? On Backpage. The girl cost $600.
The ads for teenaged children Backpage was handling were real. Not all of them, I'm sure. But it was really happening. And Backpage helped it happen.
Should a safe online market for sex workers exist? Perhaps. But we should be able to at least agree that the people who operate it should take their responsibility as a steward of the public safety seriously. That's not Backpage. Backpage did did at least as much to set back the cause of safeguarding sex workers than any misguided lawmaker.
There's lots not to like about SESTA, but the Backpage people weren't (AFAIK) charged under SESTA.
Why am I meant to care about the Backpage owner's colorful history? Isn't the important thing I actually need to know to understand what happened here buried towards the bottom of this story, in a couple paragraphs discussing what they were actually charged with? Agree or disagree with the prosecution, but that's the story.
I feel like people on message boards are sold on a narrative about how child sex trafficking never happens, which is easy when it's an abstraction. But it does happen.
A middle aged man I briefly worked with, and that a friend of mine worked for --- Peter Privateeer, the former CEO of a company called Reflex Security --- just finished serving 12 years in prison for buying a 14 year old girl. The pimp who sold her had been holding her at gunpoint and forcing her to "service" his customers. Where did the pimp meet the CEO? On Backpage. The girl cost $600.
The ads for teenaged children Backpage was handling were real. Not all of them, I'm sure. But it was really happening. And Backpage helped it happen.
Should a safe online market for sex workers exist? Perhaps. But we should be able to at least agree that the people who operate it should take their responsibility as a steward of the public safety seriously. That's not Backpage. Backpage did did at least as much to set back the cause of safeguarding sex workers than any misguided lawmaker.