> 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

> 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.