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No. Turns out that question is irrelevant, because Backpage and pimps were empirically compatible.

• chc 9y ago
  You're drawing a false dilemma here. The question isn't "Was it possible for pimps to go on Backpage?" but "How easy was it to work without a pimp on Backpage versus on the street?" That's the argument people were making — not that nothing bad ever happened where Backpage was involved, but that sex workers feel more required to put themselves in bad situations in the absence of something like Backpage.
  • jakelazaroff 9y ago
    Likewise, the argument that people who support the takedown are making isn't "it was possible to use Backpage for prostitution", but "Backpage themselves were actively colluding with human traffickers". Maybe sex workers are less safe now that Backpage is gone, and that sucks — but it doesn't mean we let people working with human traffickers slide.
    • chc 9y ago
      If you look back a bit in the thread, the idea that I was disagreeing with is that this proves people were wrong when they said Backpage made many sex workers safer. I'm not saying we should let the Backpage people slide, but that the ideas "Backpage was involved in some very messed-up stuff that people should go to jail for" and "Backpage was better than the streets for sex workers on the whole" can both be true simultaneously.