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FBI Seizes Backpage.com, a Site Criticized For Sex-Related Ads (reuters.com)
The FBI has reportedly seized the sex marketplace website Backpage.com, according to a posting on its website on Friday. "The posting said the U.S. Justice Department would provide more information at 6 p.m. EDT," reports Reuters. "It said U.S. attorneys in Arizona and California, as well as the Justice Department's section on child exploitation and obscenity and the California and Texas attorneys general had supported the work in shutting down the website." From the report: Lawmakers and enforcement officials have been working to crack down on the site, the second largest classified ad service in the country after Craigslist that is used primarily to sell sex. The U.S. Senate passed legislation last month making it easier for state prosecutors and sex-trafficking victims to sue social media networks, advertisers and others that fail to keep sex trafficking and other exploitative materials off their platforms. The Supreme Court in January 2017 refused to consider reviving a lawsuit against backpage.com filed by three young women alleging the site facilitated their forced prostitution. But the site has since then faced a slew of other lawsuits alleging child sex trafficking. According to AZCentral, local FBI officials have confirmed "law enforcement activity" Friday morning at the Sedona-area home of Michael Lacey, a co-founder of Backpage.com. The raid comes amid what appears to be a shut-down of the website.
Backpage had plenty of legitimate advertising, when does google and twitter and Facebook get shut down for the same reasons?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
"sex marketplace website"?? Really?? That's likes saying "Google, the pedophile search engine". Just because someone posted something inappropriate does not mean the entire website is devoted to only that.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
This is about punishing adult prostitution full stop. And it's going to make both providers and clients less safe (as every organization actually representing sex workers makes clear), and make it harder to track down the very small number of coerced women and slightly underage teenagers (they deliberately use language to make you think of actual children, not the 16-17 year olds doing it themselves, who are already legal for non-paid sex in 31 states, that make up 99.9999% of 'child sex trafficking victims' on backpage-- it's not that this is ok, but it's hardly the same as under 12 as the language implies), where Backpage was very helpful in assisting LE.
But that's the point. To the right, selling sex is an immoral sin. To the left, any woman that chooses prostitution is suddenly without agency, and therefore being exploited, her opinion on it being irrelevant. Either way, it's not a decision that an adult should be free to make. So they punish these human moral failures by increasing suffering all around, all while grandstanding about how they're "saving" people when in fact they're doing the opposite. It's the same exact thing as the drug war. You take a dangerous activity that's conducted among consenting adults, prohibit it by force of law, and in doing so "send the message" that you stand against it and are fighting it, but you're actually greatly increasing the harm instead of decreasing it.
It's called sadomoralism, and the left and right are both guilty of it, just with different justifications and trappings around the edges. No matter how many people you lock up, you're never going to stop it, and by going that route, you maximize the harm. But of course, regulating such things in a manner that actually reduces the harm means accepting that some people can then engage in the activity without being able to punish them for it-- and that's too high a price to pay no matter how devastating the alternative, whether it's hard drugs or prostitution, and whether you're talking about team (R) or team (D); because a utopia where drug abuse and prostitution vanish from the earth forever can always be achieved if we just refuse to give in and punish a little more.