5 ms·

Yup, people would like to spin this as the government cracking down on garden-variety prostitution, yet Backpage in particular has many dubious ties to child tr

Yup, people would like to spin this as the government cracking down on garden-variety prostitution, yet Backpage in particular has many dubious ties to child trafficking.

AFNobody 9y ago
It isn't a spin because it has resulted in a crack down in garden variety prostitution and a shutdown of multiple services (including ones that were purely defensive exercises of free speech, such as unsafe/bad date lists).
- creaghpatr 9y ago
  I expect the coming allegations will detail conspiracy to commit a crime and/or RICO between the people running the site and sex traffickers. The key thing that will need to be proven is the complicity of the admins, although if they are already seizing the site I expect the authorities have what a judge or grand jury feels is enough evidence to warrant the seizure.
  - AFNobody 9y ago
    The problem is, they passed a bunch of legal changes recently under the guise of "Well, it is because Backpage cannot be brought to Justice." And now, well, "Oh yeah we had the power all along" which is what your comment is stating as your belief. That is why your claims about spin are problematic to me. You are ignoring the background of the situation to make a very narrow claim about "spin" when the claims of "spin" are about the laws they passed citing Backpage.
    - creaghpatr 9y ago
      SESTA has not been signed into law so I’m not sure what you’re talking about, unless the sex workers were on the Backpage payroll.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > The key thing that will need to be proven is the complicity of the admins No. That's what used to be necessary, before SESTA and FOSTA passed[0]. The whole point of SESTA and FOSTA was to remove that requirement - websites are now liable even if they aren't complicit. Even if they take active efforts to combat sex work on their service, they're still liable if someone manages to use the site for that purpose. Again, none of this relates to sex trafficking. It applies to consensual sex work. [0] And even though SESTA and FOSTA aren't signed into law yet, Blumenthal specifically wrote the law to apply retroactively. So once the bills are signed, this lower standard is what will apply.
    - joering2 9y ago
      Then how come I don't see Zuckerberg and Sandberg behind bars yet? Don't tell me there is none, or never been a sex trafficking thru Facebook.
      - PrimHelios 9y ago
        That one's simple: bribery.
      - nym 9y ago
        Laws like this are selective in nature.
      - 220V_USKettle 9y ago
        There is no ticker symbol for backpage in their portfolio.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > Then how come I don't see Zuckerberg and Sandberg behind bars yet? Well, because SESTA hasn't gone into effect yet. You can bet once it does there will be at least private civil cases against Facebook. Public, including criminal, ones might take until they've got precedent from smashing less well-funded defendants, but they'll come, too, especially (even if Facebook takes drastic action now to prevent future liability) for past cases under the retroactivity provisions (which should be constitutionally problematic for criminal cases, but not so much for civil cases.)
chimeracoder 9y ago
> Yup, people would like to spin this as the government cracking down on garden-variety prostitution, yet Backpage in particular has many dubious ties to child trafficking. The law does criminalize any activity relates to prostitution, not sex trafficking. That's not spin - that's literally the express purpose of the law as written. It's not a coincidence that the law is written to apply to all forms of sex work. Blumenthal, the senator who authored the bill, has been personally crusading against sex work from the past decade, longer than he's even been in the Senate. He chose Backpage as the particular target for this bill, but it's not like he hasn't gone after any and all forms of sex work in the past.
gowld 9y ago
What are those ties? The article above only mentions "adult services" and sex work.
- dmix 9y ago
  When users submitted listings with keywords like "young girls" (and worse) it would automatically detect them and suggest edits to allow the listing to still be posted without triggering any red flags. Among other things (?). Which is why the feds believe they crossed the line into actively assisting criminal activity when they should have just been dissuading or outright blocking the people creating this type of content on the site.

Yup, people would like to spin this as the government cracking down on garden-variety prostitution, yet Backpage in particular has many dubious ties to child trafficking.

AFNobody 9y ago

It isn't a spin because it has resulted in a crack down in garden variety prostitution and a shutdown of multiple services (including ones that were purely defensive exercises of free speech, such as unsafe/bad date lists).

creaghpatr 9y ago
I expect the coming allegations will detail conspiracy to commit a crime and/or RICO between the people running the site and sex traffickers. The key thing that will need to be proven is the complicity of the admins, although if they are already seizing the site I expect the authorities have what a judge or grand jury feels is enough evidence to warrant the seizure.
- AFNobody 9y ago
  The problem is, they passed a bunch of legal changes recently under the guise of "Well, it is because Backpage cannot be brought to Justice." And now, well, "Oh yeah we had the power all along" which is what your comment is stating as your belief. That is why your claims about spin are problematic to me. You are ignoring the background of the situation to make a very narrow claim about "spin" when the claims of "spin" are about the laws they passed citing Backpage.
  - creaghpatr 9y ago
    SESTA has not been signed into law so I’m not sure what you’re talking about, unless the sex workers were on the Backpage payroll.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > The key thing that will need to be proven is the complicity of the admins No. That's what used to be necessary, before SESTA and FOSTA passed[0]. The whole point of SESTA and FOSTA was to remove that requirement - websites are now liable even if they aren't complicit. Even if they take active efforts to combat sex work on their service, they're still liable if someone manages to use the site for that purpose. Again, none of this relates to sex trafficking. It applies to consensual sex work. [0] And even though SESTA and FOSTA aren't signed into law yet, Blumenthal specifically wrote the law to apply retroactively. So once the bills are signed, this lower standard is what will apply.
  - joering2 9y ago
    Then how come I don't see Zuckerberg and Sandberg behind bars yet? Don't tell me there is none, or never been a sex trafficking thru Facebook.
    - PrimHelios 9y ago
      That one's simple: bribery.
    - nym 9y ago
      Laws like this are selective in nature.
    - 220V_USKettle 9y ago
      There is no ticker symbol for backpage in their portfolio.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Then how come I don't see Zuckerberg and Sandberg behind bars yet? Well, because SESTA hasn't gone into effect yet. You can bet once it does there will be at least private civil cases against Facebook. Public, including criminal, ones might take until they've got precedent from smashing less well-funded defendants, but they'll come, too, especially (even if Facebook takes drastic action now to prevent future liability) for past cases under the retroactivity provisions (which should be constitutionally problematic for criminal cases, but not so much for civil cases.)

chimeracoder 9y ago

> Yup, people would like to spin this as the government cracking down on garden-variety prostitution, yet Backpage in particular has many dubious ties to child trafficking. The law does criminalize any activity relates to prostitution, not sex trafficking. That's not spin - that's literally the express purpose of the law as written. It's not a coincidence that the law is written to apply to all forms of sex work. Blumenthal, the senator who authored the bill, has been personally crusading against sex work from the past decade, longer than he's even been in the Senate. He chose Backpage as the particular target for this bill, but it's not like he hasn't gone after any and all forms of sex work in the past.

gowld 9y ago

What are those ties? The article above only mentions "adult services" and sex work.

dmix 9y ago
When users submitted listings with keywords like "young girls" (and worse) it would automatically detect them and suggest edits to allow the listing to still be posted without triggering any red flags. Among other things (?). Which is why the feds believe they crossed the line into actively assisting criminal activity when they should have just been dissuading or outright blocking the people creating this type of content on the site.