What happened to backpage?

Interesting.

Made me go look. Craigslist has apparently abandoned its personals section.
 
Yeah, it's been around for a while. There was another good story about it somewhere, too.

I'm sure you could find another option for the hobby... :D
 
Actually Backpage and to some extent Craigslist were used by sex traffickers, particularly for underage girls (some as young as 9-10 years old) and boys. I attended a CLE a few months ago on the subject. A lawyer in Washington State and I would assume elsewhere sued Backpage and won fairly significant judgments and then the feds moved in. I think Craigslist simply saw the hand writing on the wall and voluntarily shut down their ad section but I am not sure. Makes you absolutely sick to hear the testimony of the children/young women involved and how they got caught up in the whole mess.
 
Jumpmaster said:
Actually Backpage and to some extent Craigslist were used by sex traffickers, particularly for underage girls (some as young as 9-10 years old) and boys. I attended a CLE a few months ago on the subject. A lawyer in Washington State and I would assume elsewhere sued Backpage and won fairly significant judgments and then the feds moved in. I think Craigslist simply saw the hand writing on the wall and voluntarily shut down their ad section but I am not sure. Makes you absolutely sick to hear the testimony of the children/young women involved and how they got caught up in the whole mess.
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I agree. It isn’t just the “Crown” that isn’t pleased. These guys are scum bags. The victims of this trafficking are some of the most vulnerable in our society.
 
As much as I despise human trafficking and exploitation, I wish they’d legalize sex work in the US. At least that way there’d Be a mechanism to distinguish volunteers from slaves. That, and those being exploited would have some recourse, which they don’t now.
 
steingar said:
As much as I despise human trafficking and exploitation, I wish they’d legalize sex work in the US. At least that way there’d Be a mechanism to distinguish volunteers from slaves. That, and those being exploited would have some recourse, which they don’t now.
Click to expand...

That's one thing i hate about this Country's puritanism when it comes to sex. They always lump everybody in with the trafficking boogieman, when they're really objecting to the voluntary behavior. They just don't want to be called out on their desire to legislate the behavior of their neighbors while still calling themselves Freedom Fries loving " 'Muricans ". Puritan hypocrites. We're still socially pretty backwater as far as sex is concerned. As a collective we're just as prone to sexual exploration as Europeans; we're just coy and hypocritical in working and social life. I've seen it first hand too in the way the UCMJ handles us indentured servants on the social "customs" arena. Straight up draconian; it ain't like we're storming Normandy but a hypothetical 50% vagina presence in the ranks is somehow distracting us and making us incur casualties. Kid you not, that's how it's treated.

Maybe in 50 years we will get over ourselves. I'll be too old to enjoy it of course LOL.
 
The trouble is, I think this drives the ads to the dark web. Doesnt that make it even harder to catch the bad guys?
 
steingar said:
As much as I despise human trafficking and exploitation, I wish they’d legalize sex work in the US. At least that way there’d Be a mechanism to distinguish volunteers from slaves. That, and those being exploited would have some recourse, which they don’t now.
Click to expand...

That's along the lines of my thinking. The more you bring it out to the light of day the easier it is to regulate it and keep it safe
 
Lest consenting adults conduct business together

o-PURITAN-facebook.jpg
 
Let’s get it straight what the problem is. It isn’t consenting adults paying for sex. These are exploited minors. I don’t think I am puritanical saying that a young (under 18) person should not be exploited. Under age sex trafficking is a huge problem and a real one and these guys were complicit. I don’t think they should be able to hide behind their 1st amendment rights. Allowing this to blatantly happen on their media makes them scum bags of the first order. They profited on the backs of these young Girls and boys. Don’t make them into the hero’s they are not.
 
It is wonderful to be a sexual liberal until someone operates a brothel next to your house.
 
John221us said:
Let’s get it straight what the problem is. It isn’t consenting adults paying for sex. These are exploited minors. I don’t think I am puritanical saying that a young (under 18) person should not be exploited. Under age sex trafficking is a huge problem and a real one and these guys were complicit. I don’t think they should be able to hide behind their 1st amendment rights. Allowing this to blatantly happen on their media makes them scum bags of the first order. They profited on the backs of these young Girls and boys. Don’t make them into the hero’s they are not.
Click to expand...

That's just the trouble, I think most of it is consenting adults. I'm not saying we shouldn't hold the owners accountable if they didn't do due diligence to prevent pedophiles or sex slave trafficking on their site. But it actually would make more sense to me if the FBI would engage them and secretly work to catch these scum.

Suppose 92% of the ads are consenting adults and 6% are minors under 18 years old but otherwise consenting and 2% are true kidnapped children being held against their will. I think we all would agree that the 2% are the first group that needs to be stopped. The discussion needs to be what is the best way to accomplish that? I do not see how driving the 100% underground into the dark web accomplishes that.
 
John221us said:
Let’s get it straight what the problem is. It isn’t consenting adults paying for sex. These are exploited minors. I don’t think I am puritanical saying that a young (under 18) person should not be exploited. Under age sex trafficking is a huge problem and a real one and these guys were complicit. I don’t think they should be able to hide behind their 1st amendment rights. Allowing this to blatantly happen on their media makes them scum bags of the first order. They profited on the backs of these young Girls and boys. Don’t make them into the hero’s they are not.
Click to expand...

A huge problem? I don’t think so, for every minor there are probably 2,000 women advertising they are 32 who are actually more like 42.

Whenever someone invokes “the children” it’s often a good sign their argument is weak at best.


Rushie said:
That's just the trouble, I think most of it is consenting adults. I'm not saying we shouldn't hold the owners accountable if they didn't do due diligence to prevent pedophiles or sex slave trafficking on their site. But it actually would make more sense to me if the FBI would engage them and secretly work to catch these scum.

Suppose 92% of the ads are consenting adults and 6% are minors under 18 years old but otherwise consenting and 2% are true kidnapped children being held against their will. I think we all would agree that the 2% are the first group that needs to be stopped. The discussion needs to be what is the best way to accomplish that? I do not see how driving the 100% underground into the dark web accomplishes that.
Click to expand...

That.

Though I’d say it’s probably more like 1%, and shutting down backpage actually drives that 1% who are actually hurting kids to go further underground thus making them harder to catch. Good job guberment!


Clip4 said:
It is wonderful to be a sexual liberal until someone operates a brothel next to your house.
Click to expand...

You don’t have zoning laws?

You would have a heck of a time opening a business right next to most houses in America.
 
James331 said:
A huge problem? I don’t think so, for every minor there are probably 2,000 women advertising they are 32 who are actually more like 42.

Whenever someone invokes “the children” it’s often a good sign their argument is weak at best.




That.

Though I’d say it’s probably more like 1%, and shutting down backpage actually drives that 1% who are actually hurting kids to go further underground thus making them harder to catch. Good job guberment!




You don’t have zoning laws?

You would have a heck of a time opening a business right next to most houses in America.
Click to expand...

It isn’t my argument and it is apparently strong enough to bring these guys to trial. These guys operated globally. Some food for thought;

https://arkofhopeforchildren.org/child-trafficking/child-trafficking-statistics

The numbers;
Update: In 2012 the (UNODC) United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports the percentage of child victims had risen in a 3 year span from 20 per cent to 27 per cent. Of every three child victims, two are girls and one is a boy.

Gender and age profile of victims detected globally: 59% Women - 14% Men - 17% Girls and 10% were Boys.

  • 600,000 to 800,000 women, children and men bought and sold across international borders every year and exploited for forced labor or commercial sex (U.S. Government)
  • When internal trafficking victims are added to the estimates, the number of victims annually is in the range of 2 to 4 million
  • 50% of those victims are estimated to be children
  • It is estimated that 76 percent of transactions for sex with underage girls start on the Internet
  • 2 million children are subjected to prostitution in the global commercial sex trade (UNICEF)
  • There are 20.9 Million victims of Trafficking World wide as of 2012
  • 1.5 Million victims in the United States
 
John221us said:
It isn’t my argument and it is apparently strong enough to bring these guys to trial. These guys operated globally. Some food for thought;

https://arkofhopeforchildren.org/child-trafficking/child-trafficking-statistics

The numbers;
Update: In 2012 the (UNODC) United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports the percentage of child victims had risen in a 3 year span from 20 per cent to 27 per cent. Of every three child victims, two are girls and one is a boy.

Gender and age profile of victims detected globally: 59% Women - 14% Men - 17% Girls and 10% were Boys.

  • 600,000 to 800,000 women, children and men bought and sold across international borders every year and exploited for forced labor or commercial sex (U.S. Government)
  • When internal trafficking victims are added to the estimates, the number of victims annually is in the range of 2 to 4 million
  • 50% of those victims are estimated to be children
  • It is estimated that 76 percent of transactions for sex with underage girls start on the Internet
  • 2 million children are subjected to prostitution in the global commercial sex trade (UNICEF)
  • There are 20.9 Million victims of Trafficking World wide as of 2012
  • 1.5 Million victims in the United States
Click to expand...


I don’t buy that a significant number of hookers on that site was a child sex slave.

And if that was the case, the government would be a fool for hijacking that site, as it would be a beautiful tool to catch the child slave drivers and free the inslaved children.
 
James331 said:
I don’t buy that a significant number of hookers on that site was a child sex slave.

And if that was the case, the government would be a fool for hijacking that site, as it would be a beautiful tool to catch the child slave drivers and free the inslaved children.
Click to expand...
I get that it is a bigger problem than you want to believe it is. It is a bigger problem than I want to believe, as well.
 
John221us said:
I get that it is a bigger problem than you want to believe it is. It is a bigger problem than I want to believe, as well.
Click to expand...

When’s the last time you saw a child hooker or heard of a local child sex ring bust in your area?

I mean a 17 year old runaway hooking and saying they are 20 is one thing, sad, but I’d wager they are inflating the numbers with those which are bad, but a different problem IMO


Not saying it’s not out there, but I get a whiff of fear mongering.
 
James331 said:
When’s the last time you saw a child hooker or heard of a local child sex ring bust in your area?

I mean a 17 year old runaway hooking and saying they are 20 is one thing, sad, but I’d wager they are inflating the numbers with those which are bad, but a different problem IMO


Not saying it’s not out there, but I get a whiff of fear mongering.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, my area, Sacramento, is a hotbed for it:
https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2017/09/18/human-trafficking/
https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/tag/sex-trafficking/
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article206567644.html
https://fox40.com/2018/05/09/i-beli...lnerable-women-are-tricked-into-prostitution/
 
John221us said:
Unfortunately, my area, Sacramento, is a hotbed for it:
https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2017/09/18/human-trafficking/
https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/tag/sex-trafficking/
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article206567644.html
https://fox40.com/2018/05/09/i-beli...lnerable-women-are-tricked-into-prostitution/
Click to expand...

A lot of them are brought over from Asian countries, South Korea in particular, on student visas. They end up working in the happy ending massage parlors. And yes, there are a ton of them in the area.

Re. legalizing prostitution, I'm on the fence about it. I have no use for it personally, but damn, tell me that hooking up with a girl in a bar for a night is that different than just handing her a C note or whatever the going price for it is.

When I was in college, and this was a long time ago, one of my buddies went to see a friend of ours that lived in a gated apartment on the corner of Auburn and Howe. He was there to pick up a couple borrowed textbooks. The short of it was that he had to park in front of the motel next door, and the cops happened to be running a sting operation at the time. They cuffed him and stuffed him as soon as he got out of the car, and gave him a citation and a court date. The case? Laughable. All the other sting reports from that day read the same, word for word. They just changed the names. They even cataloged what he had on his person - 50 cents in change for the phone. Cell phones weren't much of a thing yet.

The county DA at the time had a policy of prosecuting any and all solicitation cases, regardless of merit. So, he had two choices. Spend between five and ten grand in court and legal expenses and -probably- win, or, pay a $700 fine and the charges get dropped and the conviction reversed in two years. Of course he paid the fine. Yeah, it was a campaign statistic that the DA flaunted - a prostitution sting conviction with close to a 100% conviction rate. Tell me that isn't crooked.

So yeah, I can think of all kinds of reasons why it should be legalized. But what will probably happen is that it would be taxed and regulated, and then illicit sex operations would pop up to circumvent that. Just like we are now seeing with the marijuana business.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Re. legalizing prostitution, I'm on the fence about it. I have no use for it personally, but damn, tell me that hooking up with a girl in a bar for a night is that different than just handing her a C note or whatever the going price for it is.
Click to expand...

I could make the argument the hypergamy that prevails in our society can be construed as a shamelessly hypocritical form of prostitution. If men were not all of a sudden thirsty all the time because access is no longer a proposition hinging on financial slavery, our consumer society would be in deep ---t, I tell you that much.

Marriage within that hypergamy is an economic contract first and foremost. People who get butt hurt about that utterance simply resemble the remark too much for their own comfort. Semantics aside, it is a straight up trade in my book for the "marry up" crowd. As such, I find the argument against calling it prostitution a distinction without difference. Count me in on the legalization and taxation of prostitution and recreational drugs. Prohibition never works. Puritanism is a cancer against human progress and enlightenment.
 
Do you feel the same way about people who have to take lower wage jobs at the regionals to get to the majors?

Or college kids who take minim wage jobs to pay for their education while in school?


Or are you just hung because it’s sex?

I mean if you think there is a huge difference between people who under their own freewill make the choice to give a handy at a “massage parlor” vs flipping burgers in a 100f kitchen to make a buck is any different, it’s not.
 
James331 said:
Do you feel the same way about people who have to take lower wage jobs at the regionals to get to the majors?

Or college kids who take minim wage jobs to pay for their education while in school?


Or are you just hung because it’s sex?

I mean if you think there is a huge difference between people who under their own freewill make the choice to give a handy at a “massage parlor” vs flipping burgers in a 100f kitchen to make a buck is any different, it’s not.
Click to expand...

Just a different type of meat is all.
 
Sac Arrow said:
When I was in college, and this was a long time ago, one of my buddies went to see a friend of ours that lived in a gated apartment on the corner of Auburn and Howe. He was there to pick up a couple borrowed textbooks. The short of it was that he had to park in front of the motel next door, and the cops happened to be running a sting operation at the time. They cuffed him and stuffed him as soon as he got out of the car, and gave him a citation and a court date. The case? Laughable. All the other sting reports from that day read the same, word for word. They just changed the names. They even cataloged what he had on his person - 50 cents in change for the phone. Cell phones weren't much of a thing yet.

The county DA at the time had a policy of prosecuting any and all solicitation cases, regardless of merit. So, he had two choices. Spend between five and ten grand in court and legal expenses and -probably- win, or, pay a $700 fine and the charges get dropped and the conviction reversed in two years. Of course he paid the fine. Yeah, it was a campaign statistic that the DA flaunted - a prostitution sting conviction with close to a 100% conviction rate. Tell me that isn't crooked.
Click to expand...

Reminds me of something I read in a book, once (I guess fact can be stranger than fiction) ;) that does stink.
 
John221us said:
Let’s get it straight what the problem is. It isn’t consenting adults paying for sex. These are exploited minors. I don’t think I am puritanical saying that a young (under 18) person should not be exploited. Under age sex trafficking is a huge problem and a real one and these guys were complicit. I don’t think they should be able to hide behind their 1st amendment rights. Allowing this to blatantly happen on their media makes them scum bags of the first order. They profited on the backs of these young Girls and boys. Don’t make them into the hero’s they are not.
Click to expand...

By that logic, the phone company should be held culpable for every drug deal, illegal wager, or murder for hire that takes place using their lines; the Bic pen company for every bad check written using one of their pens; and the Postal Service for every scam perpetrated using the mail.

If the government had the collective common sense of the fleas on a feral cat, they would have infiltrated Backpage and used it as a source of intelligence about trafficking rather than shutting it down.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
By that logic, the phone company should be held culpable for every drug deal, illegal wager, or murder for hire that takes place using their lines; the Bic pen company for every bad check written using one of their pens; and the Postal Service for every scam perpetrated using the mail.

If the government had the collective common sense of the fleas on a feral cat, they would have infiltrated Backpage and used it as a source of intelligence about trafficking rather than shutting it down.

Rich
Click to expand...
That is a real stretch (good sound bite I suppose), but what you suggest would require the phone company to be aware of the content of the calls (monitoring). With advertising, the publisher is well aware of the content. A better comparison would be a TV commercial advertising (with a picture) a young, under aged, prostitute for hire. I personally don’t have a real issue with consenting adults paying for sex (though I have never needed or desired such a service), but there really is a problem with underage sex trafficking. The numbers, to me, are staggering. I, apparently, don’t feel the same way as you about the responsibility of these media professionals contributing to the problem. They can and should do better at setting standards for what is appropriate.

Edit: Come on Rich, you build websites. Would you knowingly build one that advertised young, underaged prostitutes (I am guessing not).
 
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