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Unfortunately all this might mean is that child trafficking cases not reported on Backpage have a much higher chance of never being reported. So I don't view t

Unfortunately all this might mean is that child trafficking cases not reported on Backpage have a much higher chance of never being reported. So I don't view the statement particularly condemning RELATIVE TO (note the emphasis!) non-Backpage child trafficking cases. Furthermore, the age distribution of victims between Backpage vs non-Backpage victims probably differs considerably.

azinman2 8y ago
It also cuts off a significant channel. Only time will tell, but chances are it could make a large impact in reduction.
- pfisch 8y ago
  That is bullshit. I'm sure there are already 100 other sites doing this. This is like shutting down piratebay. No one really cares except the owners. As if you would shut down your very profitable human trafficking business because backpage.com is down. You already have your dungeons and people or whatever is entailed in this sick shit. You would just go to another site.
  - creddit 8y ago
    This argument is so often used; that shutting down access to one means of doing an illegal or negative act doesn't matter because there are other means and it's always false. Any time you increase the cost of doing something by a non-trivial amount you are almost certain to decrease the amount that thing is done. The assumptions you make that you lead you to your conclusion aren't clearly based in fact: 1) It is effectively costless to move to a new service 2) Any new service has equivalent demand 3) The profits are significant (your very profitable human trafficking business) The first is clearly false. You'll need to move all your workflows to a new platform, learn the new platform, understand how to market on it, etc. The second is also clearly false. These are marketplaces meaning there are strong network effects. Backpage was likely the best marketplace meaning it had very large portions of both the supply side and demand side. Now, how do you what service to move to when no service is dominant yet? You don't. You almost certainly see decreased marketplace effects in the "100 other sites doing this". For the third, is there any reason at all to believe the human trafficking business is "very profitable"? It seems like a very small market with very high costs. Of course, a further effect here is the deterrent that shutting down such a website will be to developers who may wish to replace backpage. A further example of what I will call "the fallacy of costless transfer" is in suicide prevention. Removing access to easy means of suicide, prevents the likelihood of committing suicide. Hence why there is to be a net around the golden gate bridge to catch jumpers.
    - jjeaff 8y ago
      Not to mention, of those hundred new sites that popup, some of them will be honey pots operated by law enforcement. Traffickers have lost a trusted marketplace and it will hopefully be difficult to find another.
      - nickthemagicman 8y ago
        Theres literally infinite number of places on the web human traffickers can start a market place.
        emiliobumachar 8y ago
        Irrelevant. Once they start a new one, how will buyers know they're not a cop?
        anonbanker 8y ago
        you should probably look into "Zero-Trust Authentication".
    - busterarm 8y ago
      Yeah, prohibition has worked out lots of times.
      - jakelazaroff 8y ago
        When people refer to prohibitions failing, they're generally referring to consensual or victimless crimes: drugs, alcohol, (non-coerced) prostitution, gambling, etc. That's not the case here. Coercion and violence are component to human trafficking. Taking down Backpage and similar websites isn't "prohibition" any more than laws against murder are.
        busterarm 8y ago
        And I think you missed the point completely and that's exactly why my comment had to be made. The fact that you use murder here is a perfect example. Prohibition measures are all about restricting the availability of something to curb the desire of it. With the sole exception of the Quaalude, it has never worked. A single government had to convince a global industry to stop its production entirely. There were only like 7 or 9 labs making it though. Oh and with designer drug labs in China, you can actually get ludes made now if you're clever. Human trafficking, coercion and violence is a side-effect of a desire creating a market. Driving that market underground will not eliminate the market, you have to eliminate peoples' desire for that thing. You can't globally stop the production of human beings to curtail this market like they did with Quaaludes... Murder is just about the freest, easiest thing you can do if that's your desire. Murder rates are on the decline because it's just something not that many people want to do anymore.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    You can say the exact same thing about human trafficking: catch one trafficker, 2 more will step in to take their place. But no reasonable person thinks that means we should stop prosecuting traffickers. Read the Backpage indictments: these people ran a criminal conspiracy to profit by knowingly helping child sex traffickers.
    - wybiral 8y ago
      Exactly. It's weird how much backlash there is whenever a certain crowd gets the paranoid narrative of "first they came for X..." I understand the appeal of that argument. Regulation should be approached with caution, but these people were selling children as sex slaves.
      - praneshp 8y ago
        I also saw the "when they came for you, no one was left" shit in the threads a few days ago. That has to be the second most nonsense cliche behind attaching -gate to any controversy
    - nickthemagicman 8y ago
      SESTA is not about Backpage. It's about being able to take down any site and arrest the owners if the sites contains anything the government deems inappropriate. SESTA is huge gov't overreach and everyone's distracted by these sensational news reports.
      - tptacek 8y ago
        Backpage wasn't indicted under SESTA.
      - anonbanker 8y ago
        I find it strange, if not alarming, that nobody is talking about how backpage.com would still be up if Net Neutrality still existed.
chimeracoder 8y ago
> Unfortunately all this might mean is that child trafficking cases not reported on Backpage have a much higher chance of never being reported. That is, in fact, exactly what it means. That's why everyone from sex trafficking survivors to the Department of Justice was telling Congress not to pass the badly-named SESTA/FOSTA bills, because preventing people from conducting (consensual) sex work online makes it much harder to rescue actual victims of sex trafficking.
- empath75 8y ago
  It backpage wasn’t limiting itself to consensual sex work. They were literally working with pimps that were selling kidnapped children to be raped.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > It backpage wasn’t limiting itself to consensual sex work. They were literally working with pimps that were selling kidnapped children to be raped. As I already said, it's a lot easier to find victims of sex trafficking, rescue them, and prosecute the traffickers when sites like Backpage exist. That's literally why prosecutors opposed SESTA/FOSTA in the first place, along with former victims of sex trafficking.

azinman2 8y ago

It also cuts off a significant channel. Only time will tell, but chances are it could make a large impact in reduction.

pfisch 8y ago
That is bullshit. I'm sure there are already 100 other sites doing this. This is like shutting down piratebay. No one really cares except the owners. As if you would shut down your very profitable human trafficking business because backpage.com is down. You already have your dungeons and people or whatever is entailed in this sick shit. You would just go to another site.
- creddit 8y ago
  This argument is so often used; that shutting down access to one means of doing an illegal or negative act doesn't matter because there are other means and it's always false. Any time you increase the cost of doing something by a non-trivial amount you are almost certain to decrease the amount that thing is done. The assumptions you make that you lead you to your conclusion aren't clearly based in fact: 1) It is effectively costless to move to a new service 2) Any new service has equivalent demand 3) The profits are significant (your very profitable human trafficking business) The first is clearly false. You'll need to move all your workflows to a new platform, learn the new platform, understand how to market on it, etc. The second is also clearly false. These are marketplaces meaning there are strong network effects. Backpage was likely the best marketplace meaning it had very large portions of both the supply side and demand side. Now, how do you what service to move to when no service is dominant yet? You don't. You almost certainly see decreased marketplace effects in the "100 other sites doing this". For the third, is there any reason at all to believe the human trafficking business is "very profitable"? It seems like a very small market with very high costs. Of course, a further effect here is the deterrent that shutting down such a website will be to developers who may wish to replace backpage. A further example of what I will call "the fallacy of costless transfer" is in suicide prevention. Removing access to easy means of suicide, prevents the likelihood of committing suicide. Hence why there is to be a net around the golden gate bridge to catch jumpers.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    Not to mention, of those hundred new sites that popup, some of them will be honey pots operated by law enforcement. Traffickers have lost a trusted marketplace and it will hopefully be difficult to find another.
    - nickthemagicman 8y ago
      Theres literally infinite number of places on the web human traffickers can start a market place.
      - emiliobumachar 8y ago
        Irrelevant. Once they start a new one, how will buyers know they're not a cop?
        anonbanker 8y ago
        you should probably look into "Zero-Trust Authentication".
  - busterarm 8y ago
    Yeah, prohibition has worked out lots of times.
    - jakelazaroff 8y ago
      When people refer to prohibitions failing, they're generally referring to consensual or victimless crimes: drugs, alcohol, (non-coerced) prostitution, gambling, etc. That's not the case here. Coercion and violence are component to human trafficking. Taking down Backpage and similar websites isn't "prohibition" any more than laws against murder are.
      - busterarm 8y ago
        And I think you missed the point completely and that's exactly why my comment had to be made. The fact that you use murder here is a perfect example. Prohibition measures are all about restricting the availability of something to curb the desire of it. With the sole exception of the Quaalude, it has never worked. A single government had to convince a global industry to stop its production entirely. There were only like 7 or 9 labs making it though. Oh and with designer drug labs in China, you can actually get ludes made now if you're clever. Human trafficking, coercion and violence is a side-effect of a desire creating a market. Driving that market underground will not eliminate the market, you have to eliminate peoples' desire for that thing. You can't globally stop the production of human beings to curtail this market like they did with Quaaludes... Murder is just about the freest, easiest thing you can do if that's your desire. Murder rates are on the decline because it's just something not that many people want to do anymore.
- tptacek 8y ago
  You can say the exact same thing about human trafficking: catch one trafficker, 2 more will step in to take their place. But no reasonable person thinks that means we should stop prosecuting traffickers. Read the Backpage indictments: these people ran a criminal conspiracy to profit by knowingly helping child sex traffickers.
  - wybiral 8y ago
    Exactly. It's weird how much backlash there is whenever a certain crowd gets the paranoid narrative of "first they came for X..." I understand the appeal of that argument. Regulation should be approached with caution, but these people were selling children as sex slaves.
    - praneshp 8y ago
      I also saw the "when they came for you, no one was left" shit in the threads a few days ago. That has to be the second most nonsense cliche behind attaching -gate to any controversy
  - nickthemagicman 8y ago
    SESTA is not about Backpage. It's about being able to take down any site and arrest the owners if the sites contains anything the government deems inappropriate. SESTA is huge gov't overreach and everyone's distracted by these sensational news reports.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      Backpage wasn't indicted under SESTA.
    - anonbanker 8y ago
      I find it strange, if not alarming, that nobody is talking about how backpage.com would still be up if Net Neutrality still existed.

chimeracoder 8y ago

> Unfortunately all this might mean is that child trafficking cases not reported on Backpage have a much higher chance of never being reported. That is, in fact, exactly what it means. That's why everyone from sex trafficking survivors to the Department of Justice was telling Congress not to pass the badly-named SESTA/FOSTA bills, because preventing people from conducting (consensual) sex work online makes it much harder to rescue actual victims of sex trafficking.

empath75 8y ago
It backpage wasn’t limiting itself to consensual sex work. They were literally working with pimps that were selling kidnapped children to be raped.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > It backpage wasn’t limiting itself to consensual sex work. They were literally working with pimps that were selling kidnapped children to be raped. As I already said, it's a lot easier to find victims of sex trafficking, rescue them, and prosecute the traffickers when sites like Backpage exist. That's literally why prosecutors opposed SESTA/FOSTA in the first place, along with former victims of sex trafficking.