19 ms·

Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

172 points by btimil 10y ago

blazespin 10y ago
There really is only one appropriate solution for this and that is universal basic income.
- jacobtracey 10y ago
  lol
- yladiz 10y ago
  This really ignores the reality of sex trafficking. Sure, sometimes you become a prostitute because you need money for you or your family, but much of the time it's against your will[See 1, page 13 PP 3]. A universal basic income will not solve that. A UBI may help a prostitute get out of their profession, because many do want to leave and money is a large concern[See 1, page 14 PP 1], but that still ignores other issues such as health issues e.g. STDs and addiction to drugs. 1: See https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238796.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238796.pdf
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    Is there any source for your partition estimation?
- BigJono 10y ago
  I love the concept of UBI as a way to offset jobs lost due to automation, but I have no clue how people think it is supposed to become a replacement for other forms of welfare. In Australia, our welfare system pays around $250/week and it's about the right amount to live on without starving or being kicked out of your house. We have 24 million people. To pay them all $250/week we'd have to spend $312B/year. Our entire current federal budget is $450B/year. I don't see how this works. Not in the slightest. Even if we used all the current allocation for welfare (~120B) and cut out all the administrative overhead that's only ~$100/week. Nowhere near enough to live on. I can't speak for America or elsewhere, but a UBI here would be enough to stop anyone from taking up prostitution to support themselves. Not even close.
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
Is the distinction between this page and the kind of things posted on craigslist, strictly that the posters had to pay to list their ads? Or do prostitutes not post on craigslist? AFAIK Newmark hasn't had to deal with any of this. I'd be interested to know if there is something similar and legal in countries that allow prostitution (Netherlands?). Seems like they were making a lot of revenue for what is basically illegal ads - so a legal version would do even better I would imagine. Though I suppose the pricing would drop if it were legal.
- haser_au 10y ago
  Craigslist had a section, and shut it down. http://gawker.com/5630687/your-post-craigslist-guide-to-buying-sex-online http://gawker.com/5630687/your-post-craigslist-guide-to-buyi... Edit: Newmark has had to deal with it. Check here for more; http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2010/09/pimp_mobile.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2...
  - x0ra 10y ago
    Craigslist still has plenty of prostitution going on in their "casual encounters" section...
- themgt 10y ago
  I posted a new thread w/ the NYT link [1], [2] because it had this helpful tidbit: A congressional investigation this year found that the website changed some of its adult classifieds to conceal the fact that the advertisements were for sex acts with minors. Mr. Ferrer was subpoenaed by a Senate subcommittee last fall to answer questions about reported child sex-trafficking ads, but he did not show up. Found to be covering up child sex trafficking by Congress and you just blow them off and don't change anything? That's the point where getting arrested shouldn't be much of a surprise. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/us/carl-ferrer-backpage-ceo-is-arrested.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/us/carl-ferrer-backpage-ce... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12658053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12658053
seibelj 10y ago
Even if you are morally opposed to prostitution, is there really any benefit to authorities when you remove a centralized location and move it to the street or many different websites? If you really want to manage the prostitution "problem", having it all on a single website seems like a benefit for managing and researching the issue.
- haser_au 10y ago
  Same could be said for the legalisation of drugs. Central online repository, good for research.
  - skrebbel 10y ago
    Good idea, right!
  - kgwgk 10y ago
    And for the legalisation of contract killing or the legalisation of slavery. Of course one might think that drugs or prostitution should be legal but then you don't need to "allow" a special marketplace for an illegal activity.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  Most sex workers agree that their safety is improved dramatically by having the business side of it out in the open. And, there have been studies on sex worker safety that indicate strongly that legal prostitution is safer for everyone; it also reduces coercion when it is not underground (women don't need a pimp, if law enforcement is on their side). Since I started paying attention a few years ago, I've noticed that most commentary from law enforcement and politicians on the subject of prostitution frames it as "human trafficking" or just "trafficking", even when there were no non-consenting parties involved (and nearly all prostitution is between consenting adults). It is misleading, unethical, and actively harmful to the safety of the people they're claiming to help, but, they do it anyway. The implication that someone is being forced into sexual slavery makes them seem like the good guys in the story...when, in reality, they're mostly just harassing and imprisoning poor women who are making an honest living the best way they know how. Of course no one wants to see children being sexually abused. No one wants to see children or otherwise at-risk people forced into prostitution. But, that's already illegal; they don't have to victimize all sex workers to pursue and prosecute those crimes. The kicker here is that the police found these kids who had been forced into sexual slavery because of the ads on this site. Had it been completely underground, they wouldn't have found them, wouldn't have been able to set up a sting, and wouldn't have been able to get the girls out of a dangerous and abusive situation. Now, it goes further underground, where the risk is even higher.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
aphexcx 10y ago
As someone who recently built a project (http://www.aphex.cx/iconoclast-a-child-prostitution-hunter/ http://www.aphex.cx/iconoclast-a-child-prostitution-hunter/) to find this exact stuff, I'm glad to see action taken against Backpage. Pimping kids out should be hard.
- iwasanewt 10y ago
  how does that work?
  - wingerlang 10y ago
    One of the sections in his post is literally "how does it work"..
55555 10y ago
With hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year, I guess they should have donated more to the relevant Attorney Generals' campaign funds. My best wishes to all of the victims in this article.
tessierashpool 10y ago
FWIW, this headline is not completely accurate. The story itself says further down the page, "Ferrer was arrested on felony charges of pimping a minor, pimping, and conspiracy to commit pimping." None of these are actually trafficking charges; they're run-of-the-mill prostitution charges. There's also a story from a young girl who was forced into sex work, which is certainly awful, and some stuff about studies and claims of sex trafficking, but there's a clickbait factor to the headline. There are a variety of new state and federal laws on sex trafficking which were passed in recent years, and nobody associated with Backpage has been charged under any of them, afaict.
- stephenr 10y ago
  > pimping a minor > run-of-the-mill prostitution charges I sincerely fucking hope that isn't "run of the mill". > run-of-the-mill > adj. Not special or outstanding; average.
  - Pyxl101 10y ago
    "Run-of-the-mill" in that sentence modifies "prostitution". When I read that person's sentence I think, "So, what kind of prostitution charge is average or not special? That kind." That's what they think, anyway. Whether this is true or false could be validated by seeing what kind of prostitution cases are commonly brought vs uncommonly brought.
    - stephenr 10y ago
      > So, what kind of prostitution charge is average or not special? That kind. I don't even want to know how you consider a child prostitution charge "average or not special".
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - anoctopus 10y ago
        It's not that these charges are average, it's that trafficking charges are a distinct group from prostitution; prostitution charges are the far more standard group, and hence are run-of-the-mill, even though the specific charges within that group are not typical of that group.
1024core 10y ago
Why is it that in such cases, the government reaches for the CEO right away; but when Wells Fargo employees open millions of fraudulent accounts, it's not the CEO's fault? If I were to commit identity theft (which is basically what the WF employees did), then I would be facing jail time; why hasn't anyone in WF been charged with criminal fraud yet? Why not the CEO?
- M_Grey 10y ago
  The CEO has money, connections, and the thin veneer of respectability. The issues involved are not so simple and emotive as the ones relating to sex and minors. You know... the usual bullshit.
  - gscott 10y ago
    Plus the person who has him arrested is running for US Senate and sees a free way to get extra press coverage.
    - taternuts 10y ago
      bingo
- rhizome 10y ago
  The vice lobby is apparently kinda weak.
- blazespin 10y ago
  Because, get freaking real, there are 267K FTE at WF .. versus backapage probably hires what, maybe a 100 or so? If some % of 267K people are not committing fraud, than I'd want to arrest the CEO for doing some terrible brainwashing.
- rayiner 10y ago
  You're comparing apples and oranges. The CEO of a small internet company almost certainly has a hand in everything the company does. The CEO of a large corporation has no idea what the line workers are doing.[1] If a bunch of Yahoo employees had gone off and run as sex-trafficking site off Yahoo's servers, they wouldn't go arrest Marissa Mayer. Not because "lobbying" but because that would be stupid and unreasonable. [1] I've done internal investigations at megacorps. When something shady goes down with line employees they hire teams of lawyers just to tell management what the heck is going on inside their own company.
jgunsch 10y ago
> One of the advertisers, identified only as 15-year-old "E.S.," ''was forced into prostitution at the age of 13 by her pimp," according to an affidavit filed with the complaint. She used other online advertising services until they were shut down, the court filing says, when she turned to Backpage. This reads horribly: the feds took down multiple sites and knew about this 15-year-old, but didn't manage to reach her in the process?
- ben_jones 10y ago
  It was my impression that sites like Backpage were massive "honey pots" that feds and local law enforcement used to contain and frequently thwart illicit activities such as prostitution. It seems like they are taken down at arbitrary times afterwards either after their usefulness as a law enforcement mechanism has diminished and, slight tin foil hat here, whenever an agency needs a "big bust" for political purposes. Go figure many are hurt in the process.
GirlsCanCode 10y ago
Traficckng, shmaficcing. For some reason, women who have no "sexual currency" of their own get very angry when men and women enter into business transactions for pleasure. It's an outgrowth of 3rd wave feminism. Expect these things to get worse under a female regime.
cft 10y ago
This was no more a prostitution website than Craigslist, before Craigslist struck a deal with attorney generals of several states to shut down its Adult Classifieds section [1]. In fact, given Craigslist scale it had many more prostitution (and probably child prostitution) ads. The question is: why Craig and this CEO were given such disparate treatment? Because the times have changed, or because Craigslist was much bigger and an arrest of Craig would have unleashed a huge wave of rage from free speech supporters as a violation of the principles of Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act, since classifieds sites are republishers, rather than publishers of content and should not be responsible for the classifieds content. 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/business/16craigslist.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/business/16craigslist.html : "The sex ads cost $10 and were on track to bring in $44 million in revenue this year, according to the AIM Group, a consulting firm that closely monitors the company. Craigslist also charges for some real estate and job ads, but most listings are free"
- adventurer 10y ago
  I remember this very vaguely about 3-4 year back but I believe Backpage pretty much publicly said they were there to fill the void. If Craigslist doesn't want to deal with it, then come on over! Craigslist was a warning shot. Backpage new that fully and sprinted into harms way. $$
- pmorici 10y ago
  Probably because Craig'slist also have a sizable business in other areas not related.
  - ChoHag 10y ago
    It's certainly easier to start with groups who only participate in activities which are uncomfortable to publicly defend.
- dhimes 10y ago
  I was wondering about this too. Specifically, I thought websites were held harmless for the content they carry. If somebody posts a threat to the President or something else illegal on a website, is the website liable? If something slanderous shows up in Google, is Google liable for slander? How does that work?
DavidWanjiru 10y ago
Question: If Bernie Madoff had advertised his pyramid scheme in, say, the New York Times, can the paper be held responsible for subsequent losses suffered by those who took up the offer made in the advert? Is this case legally similar, or do the specific crimes of human trafficking make it different? You know, sort of like how contracts are ordinarily enforceable, but if I agree to marry off my 12-year-old daughter to you, that "contract" is not enforceable.
- anon12345690 10y ago
  The basic rule is contracts cannot override the law.
  - perlgeek 10y ago
    The real question is: to what degree are providers of platforms (such as ad agencies and newspapers that publish ads) responsible for checking the lawfulness of the content that is published through them? And is it consistent for the different kinds of platform?
jasonjei 10y ago
I'm confused and I'm not a lawyer. Isn't this interstate commerce and therefore the purview of federal authorities? Why is CA leading a felony investigation for a supposed crime that happened over the Internet?
mrthunder 10y ago
I don't understand what that CEO did? He just runs classified ads website how is he a pimp? Why is he responsible for other people actions on his website? Is this just a show or he is really in a trouble? This doesn't sound like a free country.
- moefogs 10y ago
  Only on HN would somebody look at a site that gets 99% of their revenue from escort ads and claim it's something other than an escort ad site. Y'all are fucking dumb af.
rdl 10y ago
I wish there were a good way to separate out coerced or human trafficking (which I believe is less common in the medium to high end US prostitution market) from the morally objectionable stuff. Arguably the way to do that is by providing a "clean" alternative, either "good"/safe/consensual prostitution, or just really high quality vr/robotic/immersive porn. It's really hard for me to find fault with someone deciding to have sex with other adults for $200-500+/hr vs. working in a slaughterhouse or call center or something for $8-15/hr.
xbryanx 10y ago
It's important to understand that this arrest is happening in concert with a major operation to disrupt sex trafficking rings outside of Backpage specifically. http://www.startribune.com/feds-to-announce-bust-of-global-sex-ring/395996911/ http://www.startribune.com/feds-to-announce-bust-of-global-s... Neither article mentions specific coordination, but considering the arrests happened on the same day, I'm imagining that there must have been some coordination in the investigations.
conductr 10y ago
If BP goes down, this is a huge opportunity for another site. Just like it was for BP when CL closed their section. Who is positioned to fill the void?
h4nkoslo 10y ago
The first definition of "pimping" they provide, "making money off of prostitutes", seems to encompass anything from a gas station allowing the corner whores to buy cigarettes to an NGO with a grant for "rescuing" them.
feklar 10y ago
Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr are full of escort ads, so is 'fetlife' which is basically a prositution social media site for people in that scene. Then there's all the porn sites with escorts uploading videos of themselves like XVideos and shilling their services. Nobody is going after Instagram's CEO for allowing #gfe or #(city)escort hashtags. Backpages seemed like a good police tool in that they could entrap politically connected people with fake prostitution ads, and they could identify organized prositution more easily. For example here it was simple to find the gangster listings running microbrothels, these are condos rented by street gangs who import girls from Asia, seize their passports and pimp them out. These gangs were also well known to rob each other's micros, and there are plenty of stories on all those escort review forums of armed gangsters kicking down the door and jacking the place since police won't be called. Selective law enforcement again happening here so the Backpages CEO guy must have made political statements advocating for legalization or was politically active in some other way. It's my main theory why Redbook was shutdown, because they entertained very loud activists in their forums calling for legalization who often called out city and state politicians directly. Reminder if you want to run an illegal business don't be politically active and you can operate under the radar like Fetlife with it's thousands of escort ads.
jcslzr 10y ago
The real criminals are the people making prostitution illegal

172 points by btimil 10y ago

blazespin 10y ago

There really is only one appropriate solution for this and that is universal basic income.

jacobtracey 10y ago
lol
yladiz 10y ago
This really ignores the reality of sex trafficking. Sure, sometimes you become a prostitute because you need money for you or your family, but much of the time it's against your will[See 1, page 13 PP 3]. A universal basic income will not solve that. A UBI may help a prostitute get out of their profession, because many do want to leave and money is a large concern[See 1, page 14 PP 1], but that still ignores other issues such as health issues e.g. STDs and addiction to drugs. 1: See https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238796.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238796.pdf
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  Is there any source for your partition estimation?
BigJono 10y ago
I love the concept of UBI as a way to offset jobs lost due to automation, but I have no clue how people think it is supposed to become a replacement for other forms of welfare. In Australia, our welfare system pays around $250/week and it's about the right amount to live on without starving or being kicked out of your house. We have 24 million people. To pay them all $250/week we'd have to spend $312B/year. Our entire current federal budget is $450B/year. I don't see how this works. Not in the slightest. Even if we used all the current allocation for welfare (~120B) and cut out all the administrative overhead that's only ~$100/week. Nowhere near enough to live on. I can't speak for America or elsewhere, but a UBI here would be enough to stop anyone from taking up prostitution to support themselves. Not even close.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

Is the distinction between this page and the kind of things posted on craigslist, strictly that the posters had to pay to list their ads? Or do prostitutes not post on craigslist? AFAIK Newmark hasn't had to deal with any of this. I'd be interested to know if there is something similar and legal in countries that allow prostitution (Netherlands?). Seems like they were making a lot of revenue for what is basically illegal ads - so a legal version would do even better I would imagine. Though I suppose the pricing would drop if it were legal.

haser_au 10y ago
Craigslist had a section, and shut it down. http://gawker.com/5630687/your-post-craigslist-guide-to-buying-sex-online http://gawker.com/5630687/your-post-craigslist-guide-to-buyi... Edit: Newmark has had to deal with it. Check here for more; http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2010/09/pimp_mobile.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2...
- x0ra 10y ago
  Craigslist still has plenty of prostitution going on in their "casual encounters" section...
themgt 10y ago
I posted a new thread w/ the NYT link [1], [2] because it had this helpful tidbit: A congressional investigation this year found that the website changed some of its adult classifieds to conceal the fact that the advertisements were for sex acts with minors. Mr. Ferrer was subpoenaed by a Senate subcommittee last fall to answer questions about reported child sex-trafficking ads, but he did not show up. Found to be covering up child sex trafficking by Congress and you just blow them off and don't change anything? That's the point where getting arrested shouldn't be much of a surprise. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/us/carl-ferrer-backpage-ceo-is-arrested.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/us/carl-ferrer-backpage-ce... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12658053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12658053

seibelj 10y ago

Even if you are morally opposed to prostitution, is there really any benefit to authorities when you remove a centralized location and move it to the street or many different websites? If you really want to manage the prostitution "problem", having it all on a single website seems like a benefit for managing and researching the issue.

haser_au 10y ago
Same could be said for the legalisation of drugs. Central online repository, good for research.
- skrebbel 10y ago
  Good idea, right!
- kgwgk 10y ago
  And for the legalisation of contract killing or the legalisation of slavery. Of course one might think that drugs or prostitution should be legal but then you don't need to "allow" a special marketplace for an illegal activity.
SwellJoe 10y ago
Most sex workers agree that their safety is improved dramatically by having the business side of it out in the open. And, there have been studies on sex worker safety that indicate strongly that legal prostitution is safer for everyone; it also reduces coercion when it is not underground (women don't need a pimp, if law enforcement is on their side). Since I started paying attention a few years ago, I've noticed that most commentary from law enforcement and politicians on the subject of prostitution frames it as "human trafficking" or just "trafficking", even when there were no non-consenting parties involved (and nearly all prostitution is between consenting adults). It is misleading, unethical, and actively harmful to the safety of the people they're claiming to help, but, they do it anyway. The implication that someone is being forced into sexual slavery makes them seem like the good guys in the story...when, in reality, they're mostly just harassing and imprisoning poor women who are making an honest living the best way they know how. Of course no one wants to see children being sexually abused. No one wants to see children or otherwise at-risk people forced into prostitution. But, that's already illegal; they don't have to victimize all sex workers to pursue and prosecute those crimes. The kicker here is that the police found these kids who had been forced into sexual slavery because of the ads on this site. Had it been completely underground, they wouldn't have found them, wouldn't have been able to set up a sting, and wouldn't have been able to get the girls out of a dangerous and abusive situation. Now, it goes further underground, where the risk is even higher.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

aphexcx 10y ago

As someone who recently built a project (http://www.aphex.cx/iconoclast-a-child-prostitution-hunter/ http://www.aphex.cx/iconoclast-a-child-prostitution-hunter/) to find this exact stuff, I'm glad to see action taken against Backpage. Pimping kids out should be hard.

iwasanewt 10y ago
how does that work?
- wingerlang 10y ago
  One of the sections in his post is literally "how does it work"..

55555 10y ago

With hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year, I guess they should have donated more to the relevant Attorney Generals' campaign funds. My best wishes to all of the victims in this article.

tessierashpool 10y ago

FWIW, this headline is not completely accurate. The story itself says further down the page, "Ferrer was arrested on felony charges of pimping a minor, pimping, and conspiracy to commit pimping." None of these are actually trafficking charges; they're run-of-the-mill prostitution charges. There's also a story from a young girl who was forced into sex work, which is certainly awful, and some stuff about studies and claims of sex trafficking, but there's a clickbait factor to the headline. There are a variety of new state and federal laws on sex trafficking which were passed in recent years, and nobody associated with Backpage has been charged under any of them, afaict.

stephenr 10y ago
> pimping a minor > run-of-the-mill prostitution charges I sincerely fucking hope that isn't "run of the mill". > run-of-the-mill > adj. Not special or outstanding; average.
- Pyxl101 10y ago
  "Run-of-the-mill" in that sentence modifies "prostitution". When I read that person's sentence I think, "So, what kind of prostitution charge is average or not special? That kind." That's what they think, anyway. Whether this is true or false could be validated by seeing what kind of prostitution cases are commonly brought vs uncommonly brought.
  - stephenr 10y ago
    > So, what kind of prostitution charge is average or not special? That kind. I don't even want to know how you consider a child prostitution charge "average or not special".
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - anoctopus 10y ago
      It's not that these charges are average, it's that trafficking charges are a distinct group from prostitution; prostitution charges are the far more standard group, and hence are run-of-the-mill, even though the specific charges within that group are not typical of that group.

1024core 10y ago

Why is it that in such cases, the government reaches for the CEO right away; but when Wells Fargo employees open millions of fraudulent accounts, it's not the CEO's fault? If I were to commit identity theft (which is basically what the WF employees did), then I would be facing jail time; why hasn't anyone in WF been charged with criminal fraud yet? Why not the CEO?

M_Grey 10y ago
The CEO has money, connections, and the thin veneer of respectability. The issues involved are not so simple and emotive as the ones relating to sex and minors. You know... the usual bullshit.
- gscott 10y ago
  Plus the person who has him arrested is running for US Senate and sees a free way to get extra press coverage.
  - taternuts 10y ago
    bingo
rhizome 10y ago
The vice lobby is apparently kinda weak.
blazespin 10y ago
Because, get freaking real, there are 267K FTE at WF .. versus backapage probably hires what, maybe a 100 or so? If some % of 267K people are not committing fraud, than I'd want to arrest the CEO for doing some terrible brainwashing.
rayiner 10y ago
You're comparing apples and oranges. The CEO of a small internet company almost certainly has a hand in everything the company does. The CEO of a large corporation has no idea what the line workers are doing.[1] If a bunch of Yahoo employees had gone off and run as sex-trafficking site off Yahoo's servers, they wouldn't go arrest Marissa Mayer. Not because "lobbying" but because that would be stupid and unreasonable. [1] I've done internal investigations at megacorps. When something shady goes down with line employees they hire teams of lawyers just to tell management what the heck is going on inside their own company.

jgunsch 10y ago

> One of the advertisers, identified only as 15-year-old "E.S.," ''was forced into prostitution at the age of 13 by her pimp," according to an affidavit filed with the complaint. She used other online advertising services until they were shut down, the court filing says, when she turned to Backpage. This reads horribly: the feds took down multiple sites and knew about this 15-year-old, but didn't manage to reach her in the process?

ben_jones 10y ago
It was my impression that sites like Backpage were massive "honey pots" that feds and local law enforcement used to contain and frequently thwart illicit activities such as prostitution. It seems like they are taken down at arbitrary times afterwards either after their usefulness as a law enforcement mechanism has diminished and, slight tin foil hat here, whenever an agency needs a "big bust" for political purposes. Go figure many are hurt in the process.

GirlsCanCode 10y ago

Traficckng, shmaficcing. For some reason, women who have no "sexual currency" of their own get very angry when men and women enter into business transactions for pleasure. It's an outgrowth of 3rd wave feminism. Expect these things to get worse under a female regime.

cft 10y ago

This was no more a prostitution website than Craigslist, before Craigslist struck a deal with attorney generals of several states to shut down its Adult Classifieds section [1]. In fact, given Craigslist scale it had many more prostitution (and probably child prostitution) ads. The question is: why Craig and this CEO were given such disparate treatment? Because the times have changed, or because Craigslist was much bigger and an arrest of Craig would have unleashed a huge wave of rage from free speech supporters as a violation of the principles of Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act, since classifieds sites are republishers, rather than publishers of content and should not be responsible for the classifieds content. 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/business/16craigslist.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/business/16craigslist.html : "The sex ads cost $10 and were on track to bring in $44 million in revenue this year, according to the AIM Group, a consulting firm that closely monitors the company. Craigslist also charges for some real estate and job ads, but most listings are free"

adventurer 10y ago
I remember this very vaguely about 3-4 year back but I believe Backpage pretty much publicly said they were there to fill the void. If Craigslist doesn't want to deal with it, then come on over! Craigslist was a warning shot. Backpage new that fully and sprinted into harms way. $$
pmorici 10y ago
Probably because Craig'slist also have a sizable business in other areas not related.
- ChoHag 10y ago
  It's certainly easier to start with groups who only participate in activities which are uncomfortable to publicly defend.
dhimes 10y ago
I was wondering about this too. Specifically, I thought websites were held harmless for the content they carry. If somebody posts a threat to the President or something else illegal on a website, is the website liable? If something slanderous shows up in Google, is Google liable for slander? How does that work?

DavidWanjiru 10y ago

Question: If Bernie Madoff had advertised his pyramid scheme in, say, the New York Times, can the paper be held responsible for subsequent losses suffered by those who took up the offer made in the advert? Is this case legally similar, or do the specific crimes of human trafficking make it different? You know, sort of like how contracts are ordinarily enforceable, but if I agree to marry off my 12-year-old daughter to you, that "contract" is not enforceable.

anon12345690 10y ago
The basic rule is contracts cannot override the law.
- perlgeek 10y ago
  The real question is: to what degree are providers of platforms (such as ad agencies and newspapers that publish ads) responsible for checking the lawfulness of the content that is published through them? And is it consistent for the different kinds of platform?

jasonjei 10y ago

I'm confused and I'm not a lawyer. Isn't this interstate commerce and therefore the purview of federal authorities? Why is CA leading a felony investigation for a supposed crime that happened over the Internet?

mrthunder 10y ago

I don't understand what that CEO did? He just runs classified ads website how is he a pimp? Why is he responsible for other people actions on his website? Is this just a show or he is really in a trouble? This doesn't sound like a free country.

moefogs 10y ago
Only on HN would somebody look at a site that gets 99% of their revenue from escort ads and claim it's something other than an escort ad site. Y'all are fucking dumb af.

rdl 10y ago

I wish there were a good way to separate out coerced or human trafficking (which I believe is less common in the medium to high end US prostitution market) from the morally objectionable stuff. Arguably the way to do that is by providing a "clean" alternative, either "good"/safe/consensual prostitution, or just really high quality vr/robotic/immersive porn. It's really hard for me to find fault with someone deciding to have sex with other adults for $200-500+/hr vs. working in a slaughterhouse or call center or something for $8-15/hr.

xbryanx 10y ago

It's important to understand that this arrest is happening in concert with a major operation to disrupt sex trafficking rings outside of Backpage specifically. http://www.startribune.com/feds-to-announce-bust-of-global-sex-ring/395996911/ http://www.startribune.com/feds-to-announce-bust-of-global-s... Neither article mentions specific coordination, but considering the arrests happened on the same day, I'm imagining that there must have been some coordination in the investigations.

conductr 10y ago

If BP goes down, this is a huge opportunity for another site. Just like it was for BP when CL closed their section. Who is positioned to fill the void?

h4nkoslo 10y ago

The first definition of "pimping" they provide, "making money off of prostitutes", seems to encompass anything from a gas station allowing the corner whores to buy cigarettes to an NGO with a grant for "rescuing" them.

feklar 10y ago

Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr are full of escort ads, so is 'fetlife' which is basically a prositution social media site for people in that scene. Then there's all the porn sites with escorts uploading videos of themselves like XVideos and shilling their services. Nobody is going after Instagram's CEO for allowing #gfe or #(city)escort hashtags. Backpages seemed like a good police tool in that they could entrap politically connected people with fake prostitution ads, and they could identify organized prositution more easily. For example here it was simple to find the gangster listings running microbrothels, these are condos rented by street gangs who import girls from Asia, seize their passports and pimp them out. These gangs were also well known to rob each other's micros, and there are plenty of stories on all those escort review forums of armed gangsters kicking down the door and jacking the place since police won't be called. Selective law enforcement again happening here so the Backpages CEO guy must have made political statements advocating for legalization or was politically active in some other way. It's my main theory why Redbook was shutdown, because they entertained very loud activists in their forums calling for legalization who often called out city and state politicians directly. Reminder if you want to run an illegal business don't be politically active and you can operate under the radar like Fetlife with it's thousands of escort ads.

jcslzr 10y ago

The real criminals are the people making prostitution illegal