3 ms·

You're missing my other point in there - if you have the technical skills, language skills, and particularly mostly user-generated content (so you don't have to

You're missing my other point in there - if you have the technical skills, language skills, and particularly mostly user-generated content (so you don't have to push much content of your own anyway), how much would you figure a site like that might cost to run on an annual basis? Seems to me that it could probably disappear into just the annual marketing budget of Durex, Trojans, with almost no notice, just to present one set of people also related to the sex industry. My bigger concern is that commercial entities (with their profit-driven motive and legal exposure) wouldn't be the only ones interested in the question of "Who's illegally hiring prostitutes AND do their hiring patterns indicate anything special about their interests?" A few hosted servers or VMs, some dedicated bandwidth in a few datacenters, a few cutouts and "private investors" backing it who don't actually care about making profits, and you have a priceless intelligence source about horny people - mostly of no interest at all, but a few potentially of great interest and value. What would be the worth of a Senator or Representative with embarrassing interests? It's not like elected officials ever get caught in airport bathrooms, diapers, or sending tacky selfies on Twitter.

prostoalex 10y ago
Good points, technical costs are fairly minimal, considering that the court case lists a grand total of 3 operators. Considering the nature of business, Backpage likely used payments not just as a revenue source, but as a filtering mechanism protecting against excessive spam. Even if you're not in the industry, there's some motivation to post a fake ad just to prank (or shame) someone, play a bad joke on the ex, insert a URL or two to get some free Web traffic, etc. Payment requirement somewhat mitigates the spam/prank/fake threat, which happens to appeal to consumers as well. I think the intelligence argument is overstated - communications of such nature are typically handled by phone/SMS/temp email anyways, and if someone is worried about their IP being tracked, they are likely to employ Tor or commercial VPN service.

prostoalex 10y ago

Good points, technical costs are fairly minimal, considering that the court case lists a grand total of 3 operators. Considering the nature of business, Backpage likely used payments not just as a revenue source, but as a filtering mechanism protecting against excessive spam. Even if you're not in the industry, there's some motivation to post a fake ad just to prank (or shame) someone, play a bad joke on the ex, insert a URL or two to get some free Web traffic, etc. Payment requirement somewhat mitigates the spam/prank/fake threat, which happens to appeal to consumers as well. I think the intelligence argument is overstated - communications of such nature are typically handled by phone/SMS/temp email anyways, and if someone is worried about their IP being tracked, they are likely to employ Tor or commercial VPN service.