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No, if you read the senate complaint, backpage employees actually EDITED posts to make them less obvious advertisements for illegal activity. And that clearly b
by hendersoon 10y ago
No, if you read the senate complaint, backpage employees actually EDITED posts to make them less obvious advertisements for illegal activity. And that clearly breaks safe harbour.
- saycheese 10y agoTo be fair, the Senate complaint is not evidence, it's a complaint.
- hendersoon 10y agoRight, they're allegations and don't contain the actual evidence upon which those allegations are founded. I would take them with a pinch of salt until seeing the actual evidence. But just a pinch; the excerpts and descriptions are very clear, non-ambiguous, and you would basically need to believe the senate was plain-faced lying to go too far down that road.
- mundo 10y agoThanks for clarifying that, you're right, I just assumed the "editing" the article mentioned was referring to a site feature.
- jandrese 10y agoDidn't that argument fall completely on its face in court?
- hendersoon 10y agoYes it did, the Backpage executives were cleared of all charges. And then the CA Attorney General and Senate apparently went after their credit card processors in an extra-legal way, applying pressure that forced Backpage to take down their sex services classifieds.
- leshow 10y agoThe employees didn't edit anything. They were just banning certain words from being posted. For example "teen" was a word not allowed to be posted. The senate was able to turn what is supposed to be a tool to censor certain types of posts into an argument that they were complicit. This is clearly ridiculous and it's why they were cleared of charges.