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stripped the keywords out of the ads and ran them anyways I don't see why this is particularly damning. Visit any porn tube site right now and you will notice

stripped the keywords out of the ads and ran them anyways I don't see why this is particularly damning. Visit any porn tube site right now and you will notice that "teen", "stepsister", and a few other young-sounding keywords are incredibly popular. The actresses are quite obviously NOT underage. When I worked for kink.com a decade ago, we had a policy to avoid these words because they made our credit card processors nervous. They already had a difficult enough time with fetish content. All our content was produced in-house (with meticulous 2257 records), but if we had put user-generated content on the site, we absolutely would have stripped out keywords that were too edgy. Sex workers and pornographers habitually sell the fantasy of barely legal. Not even the customers really believe this fantasy. I wouldn't necessarily assume a suggestive ad actually represents child abuse, and editing out misleading keyword stuffing seems pretty reasonable.

tptacek 8y ago
A system Backpage claims to have put in place to suppress child sex trafficking was actually used to groom child sex trafficking ads (and, presumably, others) for mainstream acceptance.
- stickfigure 8y ago
  That's absurdly vague. You build a form that allows ads to be submitted. It refuses to allow certain illicit keywords. People resubmit a few times until they get the form to accept the ad. Prosecution: You built a tool to help child sex traffickers groom their ads!
  - tptacek 8y ago
    That's not what their system is accused of doing.
    - stickfigure 8y ago
      You're right. Here's exactly what their system is accused of doing: You build a form that allows ads to be submitted. It strips out certain keywords. I read the indictment. It's pages and pages about the evils of prostitution, with just a few bits like - gasp - stripping out the word lolita to make them sound unsympathetic. I'm not impressed. I'm honestly surprised that you are. I was in the industry when the word "lolita" suddenly went from common porn advertising (just like "teen") to forbidden. The content didn't change one bit; something changed in the legal landscape and the industry just did a global search and replace of their marketing content. They stripped out the keywords.
      - tptacek 8y ago
        I don't think we're reading the same indictment, because the one I'm looking at is wall-to-wall quotes from Backpage staff and emails, and virtually nothing about the evils of prostitution. Further, the indictment I'm reading doesn't simply talk about them filtering out the word "lolita", but a variety of keywords, and has examples of instances where they had known problematic ads with human review and stripped out problematic photos manually before running the ads.
        miracle2k 8y ago
        Yes, and 95% percent of them are intended to proof that BackPage knowingly facilitated prostitution. Starting with page 42, they list these ads. They somewhat hilariously call the subject of every ad "victim 1", "victim 2", despite there being no evidence, or indeed reason to believe, that they are or were. I am reading this as someone who's thinking like the author of the reason article: A website running prostitution ads should legally be allowed to exist. You claim to be open to that position. Read like this, ignoring everything that presumes such a thing is in itself wrong, there are maybe 15 or 20 points out of the 156 that could even be considered relevant.
        chimeracoder 8y ago
        > Yes, and 95% percent of them are intended to proof that BackPage knowingly facilitated prostitution. Which, incidentally, wasn't a crime until March 2018, when Congress passed a law that not only made it a crime, but retroactively criminalized it for Backpage. This is absurdly unconstitutional, of course[0], and the bill's author (Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut) should know that, since he was the Attorney General for Connecticut before. Of course, Blumenthal does know this, because he's been waging a personal war against prostitution for the past decade. He's the reason that Craigslist shut down the "erotic services" section about ten years ago, which meant that sex workers had to start posting in the personals section. (Of course, this gave them cause to write FOSTA/SESTA, at which point Craigslist had to shut down the entire personals section as well.) [0] https://medium.com/@TechFreedom/yes-sesta-is-probably-unconstitutional-after-all-d9f58ffb0927 https://medium.com/@TechFreedom/yes-sesta-is-probably-uncons...
    - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
      So if they strip out the words and post it anyways, it isn't doing enough, but if it just doesn't allow it to be posted, then it is a tool that allows traffickers to groom their adds?
      - tptacek 8y ago
        I don't follow. They strip out the words and post it anyways.
        PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
        But if they did the opposite, and just not posted any add that they flagged as inappropriate, then the ones posting the add could keep testing and figure out what sort of add gets past, and thus Backpage would be blamed for helping the traffickers posting the add figure out how to avoid detection.
        pharrington 8y ago
        You are adding speculation about claims no one is making. We know Backpage applied energy towards changing a Backpage operated system that had the first-order effect of facilitating child sex trafficking. The speculation is about Backpage's intent, and for the intents of this discussion, that gets determined in court.
        PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
        Look at the comment chain with the quote >You build a form that allows ads to be submitted. It refuses to allow certain illicit keywords. People resubmit a few times until they get the form to accept the ad. to see where the claim is being made that the company was helping to craft ads to avoid detection.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - DanBC 8y ago
    1) Backpage were telling advertisers what language to use. Backpage were telling advertisers to use phrases like "amber alert". 2) Backpage claimed to be helping law enforcement. If that were true when someone submits an ad for "15 year old lolita" the form would keep the details, ask the submitter to change the words, and then Backpage could either submit those details to law enforcement or wait for LE to turn up with a warrant. What actually happened was Backpage said "Whoops, you can't use that word", and then allow the submitter to resubmit, and then the system would delete all trace of the orginal ad. So, when LE turned up with warrants asking for all the advertisers who'd tried to use the phrase "15 year old lolita" Backpage could say "we don't have that information".
    - stevenicr 8y ago
      re 1) - You make this sound like there was instructions posted on the page when you clicked "advertise" saying this, or advertisers were notified via email how to do this or something. Is this the case? I run some online chat rooms, and the chats auto block some bad words by default and others words I added to the censor filter, I would hate to think someone would one day post that I tell spammers how to send spam by blocking one word and not blocking shorturlDotcom/M$a$k$eMoney$from$Home The game of block this, spammers find work around, share with other spammers, add those to the block list, repeat; is not intending to teach scammers how to scam better. re 2) from what I read long ago, for years BP did send notices to law enforcement when they felt that there were under age pictures used, is this not true or did this practice stop? I have also read that just by being the main watering hole for this kind of thing, many agencies used it to look for abuse and trafficking victims, with some jurisdictions letting the self promoting adults go. I've also read where some cops were setting up fake ads to catch people looking for sex, So it has always appeared to me that BP was helping law enforcement in several ways all over the country. I understand some people think the best way to help is to shut down naughty ads completely, I myself think that is short sighted. I guess some people think things they did helped the dark side (in any way) / gave any comfort to the enemy and therefor they should be destroyed. You say "what actually happened..." Is there an article somewhere saying that LE got a warrant looking for this phrase you mention? Sounds outrageous to me.
    - miracle2k 8y ago
azinman2 8y ago
Backpage wasn’t porn, which is known to be fake on many levels selling fantasy. These ads weren’t about fantasy, they were a reality you could buy. I don’t know if you’ve even been to the site (which I checked out after the controversy recently started) — I was shocked to see what it was and that such a site could be online without being taken down. If they really just edited out those words, then that’s pretty f’d up. The ads were very clearly for prostitutes, all with very obvious photos. If someone looks very underage, and advertises as underage, then they should do the right thing and notify the authorities themselves. To profit from that is extremely unethical.
- stickfigure 8y ago
  These ads weren’t about fantasy Have you ever talked to a sex worker or former sex worker? I know a few. Fantasy and role play is part of the job, even if it's just pretending to be someone's girlfriend for a couple hours. I don't see anything wrong with making money off of other people's fantasies (in virtual or real life), as long as everyone is a consenting adult. The indictment doesn't establish that backpage encouraged underage prostitution.
  - egko 8y ago
    > I don't see anything wrong with making money off of other people's fantasies (in virtual or real life), as long as everyone is a consenting adult. The indictment doesn't establish that backpage encouraged underage prostitution. Eh, what? You can't just say "as long as" first and then change the bar to "[isn't] established that they encouraged" in the next sentence. Maybe I am missing something.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    > as long as everyone is a consenting adult. We know, and Backpage don't deny this, that many of the ads were for children. But if we restrict ourself to adults; it's a myth that women want to work in prostitution, or that it's just another job. The vast majority of women working in prostitution only do so to feed a drug addiction,or because they're in debt, or because they're being coercively controlled. Yes, I do speak to women who've been through this.
DanBC 8y ago
>I don't see why this is particularly damning. Visit any porn tube site right now and you will notice that "teen", "stepsister", and a few other young-sounding keywords are incredibly popular. The actresses are quite obviously NOT underage. That's not what happened. Backpage knew children were being kidnapped, drugged, and advertised for sex on their site. They had some choices: cooperate with law enforcement to help stop it happening; do nothing; or cooperate with the kidnappers to earn more money. They chose to cooperate with the traffickers. > At the direction of CEO Carl Ferrer, the company programmed this electronic filter to “strip” —that is, delete—hundreds of words indicative of sex trafficking ( including child sex trafficking) or prostitution from ads before their publication. The terms that Backpage has automatically deleted from ads before publication include “lolita,” “teenage,” “rape,” “young,” “amber alert,” “little girl,” “teen,” “fresh,” “innocent,” and “school girl.” When a user submitted an adult ad containing one of these “stripped” words, Backpage’s Strip Term From Ad filter would immediately delete the discrete word and the remainder of the ad would be published. While the Strip Term From Ad filter changed nothing about the true nature of the advertised transaction or the real age of the person being sold for sex, thanks to the filter, Backpage’s adult ads looked “cleaner than ever.” Manual editing entailed the deletion of language similar to the words and phrases that the Strip Term From Ad filter automatically deleted—including terms indicative of criminality If Backpage were truly cooperating with law enforcement they would have reported these ads before stripping the wordds, rather than stripping the words and then deleting the original ad.
- ryanlol 8y ago
  >cooperate with law enforcement to help stop it happening; do nothing; or cooperate with the kidnappers to earn more money. They chose to cooperate with the traffickers. This is ludicrous on its face. Backpage obviously wasn't earning any meaningful amounts of money from child prostitution.
  - pharrington 8y ago
    How is that obvious? I, offhand, don't know how to obtain Backpage's financial records. Can you provide evidence or a sound logical argument demonstrating that Backpage obviously didn't earn meaningful (maybe we have different meanings of this word?) amounts of money from ads for child sex slaves?
jstarfish 8y ago
> I don't see why this is particularly damning. Visit any porn tube site right now and you will notice that "teen", "stepsister", and a few other young-sounding keywords are incredibly popular. The actresses are quite obviously NOT underage. > When I worked for kink.com a decade ago Commercial "underage" content can get away with it because they always have the 2257 records to back it up. That's as much a certification of its fictional status as one can get. There are no 2257 records for prostitutes. And prostitution itself is illegal. When you're at the point where you're setting up filters to govern the facilitation (not prohibition!) of an already illegal trade, obscuring the fact that ad subjects for non-fictional services may also be underage doesn't buy you any deniability. Once you demonstrate knowledge, it's game over. That company selling encrypted phones to cartels, the guy building smuggling compartments in cars, Ross Ulbricht, and now Backpage...all demonstrated that they knew what business they were in and did it anyway. Hell, pre-legalization, the stoners at your local bong shop had better OPSEC than most of these clowns-- you mention marijuana in their store and they'd kick you out and refuse to do business with you, since they didn't want to be caught admitting they were selling drug paraphernalia, just "tobacco pipes, man."
- miracle2k 8y ago
  Sure, Backpage knowingly ran a prostitution website, which may well be illegal. What galls people is the claim that this is about something other that: That they are especially culpable because they stripped the word "teen" from the ads.
Ceezy 8y ago
The problem is not so much about child prostitution but rather that them promoting illegal stuff on their web site and knowing it at the time

tptacek 8y ago

A system Backpage claims to have put in place to suppress child sex trafficking was actually used to groom child sex trafficking ads (and, presumably, others) for mainstream acceptance.

stickfigure 8y ago
That's absurdly vague. You build a form that allows ads to be submitted. It refuses to allow certain illicit keywords. People resubmit a few times until they get the form to accept the ad. Prosecution: You built a tool to help child sex traffickers groom their ads!
- tptacek 8y ago
  That's not what their system is accused of doing.
  - stickfigure 8y ago
    You're right. Here's exactly what their system is accused of doing: You build a form that allows ads to be submitted. It strips out certain keywords. I read the indictment. It's pages and pages about the evils of prostitution, with just a few bits like - gasp - stripping out the word lolita to make them sound unsympathetic. I'm not impressed. I'm honestly surprised that you are. I was in the industry when the word "lolita" suddenly went from common porn advertising (just like "teen") to forbidden. The content didn't change one bit; something changed in the legal landscape and the industry just did a global search and replace of their marketing content. They stripped out the keywords.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      I don't think we're reading the same indictment, because the one I'm looking at is wall-to-wall quotes from Backpage staff and emails, and virtually nothing about the evils of prostitution. Further, the indictment I'm reading doesn't simply talk about them filtering out the word "lolita", but a variety of keywords, and has examples of instances where they had known problematic ads with human review and stripped out problematic photos manually before running the ads.
      - miracle2k 8y ago
        Yes, and 95% percent of them are intended to proof that BackPage knowingly facilitated prostitution. Starting with page 42, they list these ads. They somewhat hilariously call the subject of every ad "victim 1", "victim 2", despite there being no evidence, or indeed reason to believe, that they are or were. I am reading this as someone who's thinking like the author of the reason article: A website running prostitution ads should legally be allowed to exist. You claim to be open to that position. Read like this, ignoring everything that presumes such a thing is in itself wrong, there are maybe 15 or 20 points out of the 156 that could even be considered relevant.
        chimeracoder 8y ago
        > Yes, and 95% percent of them are intended to proof that BackPage knowingly facilitated prostitution. Which, incidentally, wasn't a crime until March 2018, when Congress passed a law that not only made it a crime, but retroactively criminalized it for Backpage. This is absurdly unconstitutional, of course[0], and the bill's author (Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut) should know that, since he was the Attorney General for Connecticut before. Of course, Blumenthal does know this, because he's been waging a personal war against prostitution for the past decade. He's the reason that Craigslist shut down the "erotic services" section about ten years ago, which meant that sex workers had to start posting in the personals section. (Of course, this gave them cause to write FOSTA/SESTA, at which point Craigslist had to shut down the entire personals section as well.) [0] https://medium.com/@TechFreedom/yes-sesta-is-probably-unconstitutional-after-all-d9f58ffb0927 https://medium.com/@TechFreedom/yes-sesta-is-probably-uncons...
  - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    So if they strip out the words and post it anyways, it isn't doing enough, but if it just doesn't allow it to be posted, then it is a tool that allows traffickers to groom their adds?
    - tptacek 8y ago
      I don't follow. They strip out the words and post it anyways.
      - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
        But if they did the opposite, and just not posted any add that they flagged as inappropriate, then the ones posting the add could keep testing and figure out what sort of add gets past, and thus Backpage would be blamed for helping the traffickers posting the add figure out how to avoid detection.
        pharrington 8y ago
        You are adding speculation about claims no one is making. We know Backpage applied energy towards changing a Backpage operated system that had the first-order effect of facilitating child sex trafficking. The speculation is about Backpage's intent, and for the intents of this discussion, that gets determined in court.
        PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
        Look at the comment chain with the quote >You build a form that allows ads to be submitted. It refuses to allow certain illicit keywords. People resubmit a few times until they get the form to accept the ad. to see where the claim is being made that the company was helping to craft ads to avoid detection.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- DanBC 8y ago
  1) Backpage were telling advertisers what language to use. Backpage were telling advertisers to use phrases like "amber alert". 2) Backpage claimed to be helping law enforcement. If that were true when someone submits an ad for "15 year old lolita" the form would keep the details, ask the submitter to change the words, and then Backpage could either submit those details to law enforcement or wait for LE to turn up with a warrant. What actually happened was Backpage said "Whoops, you can't use that word", and then allow the submitter to resubmit, and then the system would delete all trace of the orginal ad. So, when LE turned up with warrants asking for all the advertisers who'd tried to use the phrase "15 year old lolita" Backpage could say "we don't have that information".
  - stevenicr 8y ago
    re 1) - You make this sound like there was instructions posted on the page when you clicked "advertise" saying this, or advertisers were notified via email how to do this or something. Is this the case? I run some online chat rooms, and the chats auto block some bad words by default and others words I added to the censor filter, I would hate to think someone would one day post that I tell spammers how to send spam by blocking one word and not blocking shorturlDotcom/M$a$k$eMoney$from$Home The game of block this, spammers find work around, share with other spammers, add those to the block list, repeat; is not intending to teach scammers how to scam better. re 2) from what I read long ago, for years BP did send notices to law enforcement when they felt that there were under age pictures used, is this not true or did this practice stop? I have also read that just by being the main watering hole for this kind of thing, many agencies used it to look for abuse and trafficking victims, with some jurisdictions letting the self promoting adults go. I've also read where some cops were setting up fake ads to catch people looking for sex, So it has always appeared to me that BP was helping law enforcement in several ways all over the country. I understand some people think the best way to help is to shut down naughty ads completely, I myself think that is short sighted. I guess some people think things they did helped the dark side (in any way) / gave any comfort to the enemy and therefor they should be destroyed. You say "what actually happened..." Is there an article somewhere saying that LE got a warrant looking for this phrase you mention? Sounds outrageous to me.
  - miracle2k 8y ago

azinman2 8y ago

Backpage wasn’t porn, which is known to be fake on many levels selling fantasy. These ads weren’t about fantasy, they were a reality you could buy. I don’t know if you’ve even been to the site (which I checked out after the controversy recently started) — I was shocked to see what it was and that such a site could be online without being taken down. If they really just edited out those words, then that’s pretty f’d up. The ads were very clearly for prostitutes, all with very obvious photos. If someone looks very underage, and advertises as underage, then they should do the right thing and notify the authorities themselves. To profit from that is extremely unethical.

stickfigure 8y ago
These ads weren’t about fantasy Have you ever talked to a sex worker or former sex worker? I know a few. Fantasy and role play is part of the job, even if it's just pretending to be someone's girlfriend for a couple hours. I don't see anything wrong with making money off of other people's fantasies (in virtual or real life), as long as everyone is a consenting adult. The indictment doesn't establish that backpage encouraged underage prostitution.
- egko 8y ago
  > I don't see anything wrong with making money off of other people's fantasies (in virtual or real life), as long as everyone is a consenting adult. The indictment doesn't establish that backpage encouraged underage prostitution. Eh, what? You can't just say "as long as" first and then change the bar to "[isn't] established that they encouraged" in the next sentence. Maybe I am missing something.
- DanBC 8y ago
  > as long as everyone is a consenting adult. We know, and Backpage don't deny this, that many of the ads were for children. But if we restrict ourself to adults; it's a myth that women want to work in prostitution, or that it's just another job. The vast majority of women working in prostitution only do so to feed a drug addiction,or because they're in debt, or because they're being coercively controlled. Yes, I do speak to women who've been through this.

DanBC 8y ago

>I don't see why this is particularly damning. Visit any porn tube site right now and you will notice that "teen", "stepsister", and a few other young-sounding keywords are incredibly popular. The actresses are quite obviously NOT underage. That's not what happened. Backpage knew children were being kidnapped, drugged, and advertised for sex on their site. They had some choices: cooperate with law enforcement to help stop it happening; do nothing; or cooperate with the kidnappers to earn more money. They chose to cooperate with the traffickers. > At the direction of CEO Carl Ferrer, the company programmed this electronic filter to “strip” —that is, delete—hundreds of words indicative of sex trafficking ( including child sex trafficking) or prostitution from ads before their publication. The terms that Backpage has automatically deleted from ads before publication include “lolita,” “teenage,” “rape,” “young,” “amber alert,” “little girl,” “teen,” “fresh,” “innocent,” and “school girl.” When a user submitted an adult ad containing one of these “stripped” words, Backpage’s Strip Term From Ad filter would immediately delete the discrete word and the remainder of the ad would be published. While the Strip Term From Ad filter changed nothing about the true nature of the advertised transaction or the real age of the person being sold for sex, thanks to the filter, Backpage’s adult ads looked “cleaner than ever.” Manual editing entailed the deletion of language similar to the words and phrases that the Strip Term From Ad filter automatically deleted—including terms indicative of criminality If Backpage were truly cooperating with law enforcement they would have reported these ads before stripping the wordds, rather than stripping the words and then deleting the original ad.

ryanlol 8y ago
>cooperate with law enforcement to help stop it happening; do nothing; or cooperate with the kidnappers to earn more money. They chose to cooperate with the traffickers. This is ludicrous on its face. Backpage obviously wasn't earning any meaningful amounts of money from child prostitution.
- pharrington 8y ago
  How is that obvious? I, offhand, don't know how to obtain Backpage's financial records. Can you provide evidence or a sound logical argument demonstrating that Backpage obviously didn't earn meaningful (maybe we have different meanings of this word?) amounts of money from ads for child sex slaves?

jstarfish 8y ago

> I don't see why this is particularly damning. Visit any porn tube site right now and you will notice that "teen", "stepsister", and a few other young-sounding keywords are incredibly popular. The actresses are quite obviously NOT underage. > When I worked for kink.com a decade ago Commercial "underage" content can get away with it because they always have the 2257 records to back it up. That's as much a certification of its fictional status as one can get. There are no 2257 records for prostitutes. And prostitution itself is illegal. When you're at the point where you're setting up filters to govern the facilitation (not prohibition!) of an already illegal trade, obscuring the fact that ad subjects for non-fictional services may also be underage doesn't buy you any deniability. Once you demonstrate knowledge, it's game over. That company selling encrypted phones to cartels, the guy building smuggling compartments in cars, Ross Ulbricht, and now Backpage...all demonstrated that they knew what business they were in and did it anyway. Hell, pre-legalization, the stoners at your local bong shop had better OPSEC than most of these clowns-- you mention marijuana in their store and they'd kick you out and refuse to do business with you, since they didn't want to be caught admitting they were selling drug paraphernalia, just "tobacco pipes, man."

miracle2k 8y ago
Sure, Backpage knowingly ran a prostitution website, which may well be illegal. What galls people is the claim that this is about something other that: That they are especially culpable because they stripped the word "teen" from the ads.

Ceezy 8y ago

The problem is not so much about child prostitution but rather that them promoting illegal stuff on their web site and knowing it at the time