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>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 tra

>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?
- ryanlol 8y ago
  https://www.newsweek.com/backpagecom-made-500-million-prostitution-say-prosecutors-878722 https://www.newsweek.com/backpagecom-made-500-million-prosti... Are you guys really suggesting that open child prostitution is so prevalent in the US that it could possibly make up more than a fraction of a ‰ of backpages business? That sounds completely asinine to me. These guys were literally drowning in money from normal escort ads, why on earth would they want underage escort ads?
  - pharrington 8y ago
    That is neither a sound logical argument, nor is it evidence towards your point. And to answer your question, Yes. Do you have much familiarity with the various systems in which child sex trafficking happens in the US? If not, that ignorance may be a huge factor towards the dissonance you're displaying.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    In actual practice they didn't want to know or do anything about the legality or illegality of the transactions they were facilitating because a large portion of their draw is the the hands off nature. Its likely that a good chunk of the ads were in fact for over 18 individuals but neither we nor backpage probably know how much was illegal.
tptacek 8y ago
I too am a little mystified by why they chose to do what they did because I agree with you that there just can't be that much money in child trafficking. But the indictment has a lot of details, some of it supported by quotes in emails; it seems pretty likely that they did do stuff. Why? Maybe just ideology? There's a lot in the indictment to suggest that they don't take child sex trafficking seriously as a problem. They joke about it ("entrapment.com"). They take meetings and disregard the information they're given. They're on the record declining to adopt things they say are "good ideas" because they don't have enough "P.R. value". I think the balance of information we have strongly suggests that Lacey and Larking just DGAF. This is the problem I have with the Standard Internet Discussion on Backpage.com. It invariably focuses on the harm reduction argument. I'm prepared to buy the harm reduction argument! But someone responsible needs to run that site; the people who actually ran it belong in prison.
- stickfigure 8y ago
  You keep asserting this, yet despite repeated requests from myself and others you still have not pointed out the parts of the indictment that are presumably so convincing. If it's so clearcut, give us the article numbers and let's talk about specifics. The indictment is easy enough to read. This whole subthread is starting to sound like the McMartin Preschool case.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    "Article numbers"?
    - stickfigure 8y ago
      The indictment is a long series of numbered paragraphs. Point out the ones that should make me feel something other than "the American Taliban is now fully running the country".
      - tptacek 8y ago
        Yeah that sounds super productive.

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?

ryanlol 8y ago
https://www.newsweek.com/backpagecom-made-500-million-prostitution-say-prosecutors-878722 https://www.newsweek.com/backpagecom-made-500-million-prosti... Are you guys really suggesting that open child prostitution is so prevalent in the US that it could possibly make up more than a fraction of a ‰ of backpages business? That sounds completely asinine to me. These guys were literally drowning in money from normal escort ads, why on earth would they want underage escort ads?
- pharrington 8y ago
  That is neither a sound logical argument, nor is it evidence towards your point. And to answer your question, Yes. Do you have much familiarity with the various systems in which child sex trafficking happens in the US? If not, that ignorance may be a huge factor towards the dissonance you're displaying.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  In actual practice they didn't want to know or do anything about the legality or illegality of the transactions they were facilitating because a large portion of their draw is the the hands off nature. Its likely that a good chunk of the ads were in fact for over 18 individuals but neither we nor backpage probably know how much was illegal.

tptacek 8y ago

I too am a little mystified by why they chose to do what they did because I agree with you that there just can't be that much money in child trafficking. But the indictment has a lot of details, some of it supported by quotes in emails; it seems pretty likely that they did do stuff. Why? Maybe just ideology? There's a lot in the indictment to suggest that they don't take child sex trafficking seriously as a problem. They joke about it ("entrapment.com"). They take meetings and disregard the information they're given. They're on the record declining to adopt things they say are "good ideas" because they don't have enough "P.R. value". I think the balance of information we have strongly suggests that Lacey and Larking just DGAF. This is the problem I have with the Standard Internet Discussion on Backpage.com. It invariably focuses on the harm reduction argument. I'm prepared to buy the harm reduction argument! But someone responsible needs to run that site; the people who actually ran it belong in prison.

stickfigure 8y ago
You keep asserting this, yet despite repeated requests from myself and others you still have not pointed out the parts of the indictment that are presumably so convincing. If it's so clearcut, give us the article numbers and let's talk about specifics. The indictment is easy enough to read. This whole subthread is starting to sound like the McMartin Preschool case.
- tptacek 8y ago
  "Article numbers"?
  - stickfigure 8y ago
    The indictment is a long series of numbered paragraphs. Point out the ones that should make me feel something other than "the American Taliban is now fully running the country".
    - tptacek 8y ago
      Yeah that sounds super productive.