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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 t

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...
    - tptacek 8y ago
      Wait, which count in the Backpage indictment comes from SESTA? The newest part of the online version of 18 USC 1952, which includes the specific (non-money-laundering) charge Backpagers were charged with, comes from 2002.
- stickfigure 8y ago
  Yes, it's wall-to-wall quotes from Backpage staff about facilitating prostitution - which of course they are guilty of. But that's not what's at stake here in the court of public opinion, where there's rather a lot of people who believe it should be legal. The prosecution (also apparently you) is/are trying to convince us that these guys are knowingly facilitating child sex trafficking, which is something we can agree on is bad. So let's throw out all the points in the indictment that aren't child-specific? It just doesn't seem to leave much, unless you believe that every mention of the word "teen" is a case of child sex trafficking. I considered adding a variety of NSFW links here to the official "teen" category of popular porn tube sites, but I'm sure folks can find them on their own. And as I'm sure you know, it's not real. You make a lot out of the "max 500 reports per month" item, but given that it's likely a laborious manual process, how many do you want to report? There are thousands of ads from fake "lolitas" and "teens", none of which are any more credible than the porn tubes. The NCMEC doesn't want a bunch of spam either. If you'd like to call out any specific #s in the indictment for special attention, I'm happy to engage in an honest dialogue.
  - egko 8y ago
    I don't think your argument makes much sense. "Teen" pornography has plausible deniability (or whatever you want to call it) because it can be produced in a way that ensures that the actors are adults (though even that isn't always true). You have no such defense when it comes to material that one can assume is unlicensed, produced in countries with no such (de facto or not) regulation or when it comes to something like prostitution. I assume they didn't verify age of the participants. Not like "tube sites" are a particularly high horse to begin with since there is plenty of material out there that is not only unlicensed or piracy, but verifiably stolen. Which anyone who even pretend to care about privacy should be against.
    - miracle2k 8y ago
      The fact that a particular person in a pornographic video is underage is up to the government to proof if they want to convict you, say, of a child pornography charge. It does not matter where the material was produced, or what kind of records they kept. Now, the government may create laws that oblige a distributor of pornography to be in possession of such records, and someone how is not may be in violation of those laws. It also doesn't matter if the material is advertised as "teen" or not. Similarly, you may argue that a site like Backpage should be legal, as long as they verify the age of the advertisers. It's a rather strange argument, after all, they can't verify that the person they verify is the person that turns up at the appointment. But that is not the law. The government is instead alleging that there is a law that makes Backpage-like advertising of prostitution illegal, regardless of whether the ages were verified or not.

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...
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Wait, which count in the Backpage indictment comes from SESTA? The newest part of the online version of 18 USC 1952, which includes the specific (non-money-laundering) charge Backpagers were charged with, comes from 2002.
stickfigure 8y ago
Yes, it's wall-to-wall quotes from Backpage staff about facilitating prostitution - which of course they are guilty of. But that's not what's at stake here in the court of public opinion, where there's rather a lot of people who believe it should be legal. The prosecution (also apparently you) is/are trying to convince us that these guys are knowingly facilitating child sex trafficking, which is something we can agree on is bad. So let's throw out all the points in the indictment that aren't child-specific? It just doesn't seem to leave much, unless you believe that every mention of the word "teen" is a case of child sex trafficking. I considered adding a variety of NSFW links here to the official "teen" category of popular porn tube sites, but I'm sure folks can find them on their own. And as I'm sure you know, it's not real. You make a lot out of the "max 500 reports per month" item, but given that it's likely a laborious manual process, how many do you want to report? There are thousands of ads from fake "lolitas" and "teens", none of which are any more credible than the porn tubes. The NCMEC doesn't want a bunch of spam either. If you'd like to call out any specific #s in the indictment for special attention, I'm happy to engage in an honest dialogue.
- egko 8y ago
  I don't think your argument makes much sense. "Teen" pornography has plausible deniability (or whatever you want to call it) because it can be produced in a way that ensures that the actors are adults (though even that isn't always true). You have no such defense when it comes to material that one can assume is unlicensed, produced in countries with no such (de facto or not) regulation or when it comes to something like prostitution. I assume they didn't verify age of the participants. Not like "tube sites" are a particularly high horse to begin with since there is plenty of material out there that is not only unlicensed or piracy, but verifiably stolen. Which anyone who even pretend to care about privacy should be against.
  - miracle2k 8y ago
    The fact that a particular person in a pornographic video is underage is up to the government to proof if they want to convict you, say, of a child pornography charge. It does not matter where the material was produced, or what kind of records they kept. Now, the government may create laws that oblige a distributor of pornography to be in possession of such records, and someone how is not may be in violation of those laws. It also doesn't matter if the material is advertised as "teen" or not. Similarly, you may argue that a site like Backpage should be legal, as long as they verify the age of the advertisers. It's a rather strange argument, after all, they can't verify that the person they verify is the person that turns up at the appointment. But that is not the law. The government is instead alleging that there is a law that makes Backpage-like advertising of prostitution illegal, regardless of whether the ages were verified or not.