
Small ads sex trafficking: the battle against Backpage - salad77
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jul/02/fight-for-my-daughter-battle-against-backpage-child-sex-trafficking
======
mootothemax
Backpage sound pretty evil here, any argument about prostitution can be
ignored entirely:

 _Backpage was focused on getting as many ads posted as possible. It
instructed moderators to edit ads and strip out the code words used by pimps
to indicate that the person in the ad was a child.

Words such as “Lolita”, “fresh” and “amber alert”... were edited out and the
ads posted.

In one subpoenaed email believed to be from Backpage management, moderators
were instructed: “If in doubt about underage: the process for now should be to
accept the ad”_

(I added formatting for clarity)

~~~
Pxtl
Oof. Penny-wise, pound-sociopathic. I wonder how high up this went? I mean,
"management" could be just a low-level moderation supervisor barely above the
"moderator" role themselves, or could be somebody just under the C-levels.

~~~
DanBC
It was absolutely at the top of the company.

See the photo caption: "In court: (from left) Carl Ferrer, James Larkin,
Andrew Padilla and Michael Lacey are sworn-in prior to testifying before the
Senate earlier this year. Photograph: Cliff Owen/AP" \-- these people knew
Backpage was being used to traffic children to be raped, and they fought in
court to be allowed to continue to do so.

The _I am Jane Doe_ film is a good documentary that covers the events.

~~~
yorwba
That Backpage's C-suite appeared in court does not somehow imply that they
were willingly complicit in child abuse. However, the fact that they plead the
Fifth does look pretty damning. While it can't be used against them in a court
of law, the court of public opinion is a different matter entirely.

------
mst
Nice of them to not even bother including any of the sex workers' rights
groups who can talk about the facilities for making safer arrangements that
backpage provided or about how rare actual child enslavement is and how often
they're found because the customers report them because that wasn't what they
wanted to pay for.

This is basically a PR piece for the puritan/radfem lobby that hates sex
workers on principle and has allied itself with NGOs whose budgets depend on
vastly inflating the problem and ignoring the fact that under the current
system law enforcement are usually more dangerous to the workers than anybody
else :(

~~~
Pxtl
There has to be a place to draw the line - if somebody is running a child
prostitution ring under your nose on your property, then you've failed in your
responsibilities as a business owner.

Too many software companies these days operate as "dumb pipes" and are allowed
to wash their hands of their responsibilities as middle-men for unthinkable
crimes. Whether it's Amazon selling lead-laden baby-toys (and then blame
ephemeral Chinese companies for the problem) or classified pages being a
storefront for child-prostitutes, or social media being a vector for
harassment and threats:

If you own the venue and you profit off of its use, you have a responsibility
to not facilitate crime.

~~~
pyre
One of the big issues is that as soon as you delve into content-censoring,
then the law makes you liable for _everything_ (from child abuse to libel).
The law takes an all-or-nothing approach.

For example, think about what YouTube would be like if every video had to be
manually vetted by a real person before it was uploaded.

That said, if someone points out illegal things happening on your site (e.g.
the mother pointing out the photos of her 13-year-old daughter), and you
_still_ do nothing, that is an issue.

~~~
jacquesm
Easy workaround: don't censor anything but set up an automated tip generator
to the authorities if certain keywords are present in the ad.

I had a file upload service for a while (files.ww.com) and in spite of the
very clearly worded warning pedophiles would attempt to use the service and a
couple of them (and their buddies) found themselves in more trouble than they
ever wished they had. I still got sick of it though and shut the whole thing
down but it worked just dandy as a honeypot. The guy at the Dutch vice squad
that was my contact died, I'm full of respect for people that will step into
this junk to combat it, that can't be easy on the senses. He was called in to
deal with the case of a childcare center in Amsterdam where a bunch of sub-
humans had been abusing children as young as _19 days old_ (I wish I was
making that up) to make videos in order to sell online.

Disgusting doesn't begin to describe it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_sex_crimes_case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_sex_crimes_case)

Please be warned that this is not a pleasant page to read.

~~~
Bluestrike2
I read an article a few years ago about some of the people who work to
identify child pornography victims. One of the quotes stuck with me when one
of the investigators talked about some of their worst cases where they've
literally watched these children grow over the course of _years_ through the
images of them that's shared online. People talk about maintaining your
distance, but I don't know if that's even possible in that kind of situation.
The idea of going into work everyday, knowing that there's even the slightest
possibility that you'll find new images of a child you haven't been able to
identify or save for the bulk of their childhood, is a mental challenge I
can't even begin to comprehend.

------
MichaelBurge
> “I called Backpage dozens of times asking them to take down those photos,
> that my daughter was just a child and that what had been done to her was a
> crime,” says Kubiiki. “They refused and said if I didn’t pay for it, they
> couldn’t take it down. In the end they just stopped returning my calls.”

Man, I get the argument for free speech, but at least donate the profit from
those listings to charity, and respond with empathy & take listings down when
the actual mother calls you. He's already been arrested - literally nobody
benefits from it staying up.

That's still a place I wouldn't want to be in, but at least you can argue a
couple benefits like e.g. being able to catch some of the traffickers that
would otherwise have gone deeper underground.

> Kubiiki’s anger at Backpage grew and grew.

Historically, creating Warmaiden mothers whose life goal is to take you down
ends badly. It's the only reason the Senate even cared about the issue.

~~~
gommm
Yes, this is very surprising. There was no reason for backpage not to remove
the listing and refusing to do so could only lead to a lot more problems for
Backpage.

------
mcguire
Mary Mazzio:

"...But the thing that shocked me most about making this film was that those
guys who ran Backpage, back in the day they were rabble-raising libertarians,
yet, at some point, my view is that maybe the money became so outrageously
intoxicating, perhaps there was this notion that the sale of children was
simply collateral damage.”

I'm a little unclear about what she was expecting. To my knowledge,
libertarians are not find of enforcing their morals on others.

~~~
pyre
Maybe she was confusing "radical libertarians" with "radical liberals?"

~~~
nuklearwanze
a radical libertarian would basically be an entrepreneurial anarchist - but
what would a radical liberal look like.

~~~
nyolfen
john brown

------
thriftwy
Should not cops, like, read this website too and do a raid everybody they seen
someone offer themself nearby while looking teenage?

The major problem in our society is that police and detectives cost us a lot
of money but basically do nothing. The only thing really saving us is that
people of XXI century are unbelievably benign.

~~~
tunetine
I understand the problem is basically understaffing. You don't have enough
workforce to spend the time tracking these people down then actually doing
something about it. It's the reason burglaries and bank robberies go unsolved
until you have multiple occurrences and enough people see footage on the news.

~~~
thriftwy
I understand the problem is wrong priorities, where cops are engaged in busy
work so they have no time to fight the actual crime.

Said busy work often concerns imaginary crime, like going after weed consumers
or "computer pirates".

Often the system is either dysfunctional, and avoids crime, or crooked, and
works to cover up crime.

------
excalibur
The core of the problem here is the fact that prostitution is illegal. If you
legalize it, you can regulate it, and take steps to prevent human trafficking
and child prostitution. The vast majority of clients will happily go through
the legitimate channels and buy from licensed providers. A small minority will
continue to trade in children through shady services, but the smaller volume
will make it much easier for law enforcement to tackle.

------
jacquesm
Everything you create online has abuse potential, I found that out the hard
way with the whole streaming webcam thing. But it is how you deal with that
abuse potential that makes all the difference, these guys appear to have done
that in the most cynical way possible: by allowing their website to be used to
commit terrible crimes against minors with internal policies explicitly geared
towards enabling.

This should not - in my opinion - stop at a fine or some kind of slap on the
wrist but should be factored under aiding and abetting and should come with
jail time for those involved. If that's what it takes to get people to take
this stuff serious then so be it.

~~~
smokeyj
BP doesn't do anything that couldn't be facilitated by a P2P system. If
someone built a P2P classifieds app - should the developer be responsible for
everything listed?

I think policing should fall 100% on the police. If something is illegal to
upload or illegal to download - that's the responsibility of the end user -
not the ISP, or the router manufacturer, or the SSL issuer, or the OSS
contributors.

~~~
jacquesm
> BP doesn't do anything that couldn't be facilitated by a P2P system.

Indeed.

> If someone built a P2P classifieds app - should the developer be responsible
> for everything listed?

No, but that is not the case here. I don't see how you could monetize a p2p
system so that the creator of the software would profit of it but would not
have a way to shut down illegal content, either requires some central system.

~~~
smokeyj
The backend could be powered by an app-coin issued by developers during an
ICO.

I could see an argument for criminalizing decentralized architectures because
"think of the children".

~~~
jacquesm
I know you´re trying real hard to do that but again: that is not the case
here. So maybe stick to what is really happening rather than to imagine what
you think might happen?

~~~
smokeyj
You made the hypothetical point that "Everything you create online has abuse
potential" and concluded "it is how you deal with that abuse potential that
makes all the difference".

I'm simply making the point that creators have no moral obligation to police
how people abuse their creation.

So here's what will happen: BP will be shut down. The service providers and
clientele will move to system that's more distributed and harder to track
down. LE will chalk this up to a win, BP execs will get punished, and children
will continue to be abused except tracking them down will be more difficult.

~~~
jacquesm
People doing illegal stuff will use whatever means they can get their hands on
to do their illegal stuff. Giving them an easy to find platform means more
illegal stuff is done, not less so adding a barrier will cut down the amount
of abuse at the expense of making it harder to track them down.

It's a tough choice but rewarding the enabling of crimes like these is
entirely the wrong signal, it makes it seem as if this is normal and
acceptable which it never should be.

The other side of the coin is that the operators probably already use multiple
sources for their 'customers' (I use the word loosely, you might as well read
co-criminals for it), and that shutting this one down will only cut off a
portion of the hydra that has visibility in the otherwise respectable part of
the world. Punishing the customers of child prostitution while at the same
time legalizing the regular form goes another step in the right direction, but
may not be acceptable in all political climates.

------
kachurovskiy
Backpage actions look bad and it may very well be that they deserve a serious
fine or prison time for the management.

However, it was not through Backpage that their child was abducted. Instead,
without Backpage, they might have never gotten their child back.

As a father, if Backpage is closed, I wouldn't feel any safer for my kid.

------
Pxtl
> America’s largest classified website, was to buy a fridge. The second time
> she sold some clothes.

I've never heard of backpage as anything _but_ prostitution. Are there regions
where it won out over Kijiji and CraigsList for buy and sell classifieds?

------
rayiner
> But the thing that shocked me most about making this film was that those
> guys who ran Backpage, back in the day they were rabble-raising
> libertarians, yet, at some point, my view is that maybe the money became so
> outrageously intoxicating, perhaps there was this notion that the sale of
> children was simply collateral damage.

------
shams93
Really services like Backpage make the work if finding kidnapped people much
easier. This has been going on long before there was a backpage.com site, but
before the internet these women were forced to walk the streets and the likely
hood of this woman finding her daughter back in the 1980s would have been
almost nil. It's a double edged sword but if I were in law enforcement I would
see Backpage as a valuable intelligence asset.

~~~
ljf
Did you read the article? They were editing posts that were obviously offering
minors, and then allowing them, so as to profit from the post.

