Backpage Just Got A Dangerous New Enemy

[natina]

I was in a city council meeting and they claim minors are approached by sex traffickers. Every 90 minutes and that Jay Z with his big pimping is promoting it along with kim kardasian.
I don't get why Kim k was mentioned but jayz lyrics are a metaphors and is not about pimping women.
Just like saying something is Dope is not promoting drugs.

[filghy2]

I'm no Trump fan but this has been in the cards for a long time before he got in.

It was a throwaway line, but my point was not that Trump was responsible for this particular report. Rather it was that the presumption that government officials don't make claims unsupported by evidence clearly does not hold under Trump.

[DeseosEscandulosos]

It was a throwaway line, but my point was not that Trump was responsible for this particular report. Rather it was that the presumption that government officials don't make claims unsupported by evidence clearly does not hold under Trump.

Government officials have always made unsupported claims. What I said was that they weren't supposed to make unsupported accusations. In this case, two Senators are accusing private citizens of a serious crime.

The investigation into Backpage began before anyone took Trump seriously as a candidate. It's part of a campaign of unsupported trafficking claims going back more than two decades.

[DeseosEscandulosos]

I was in a city council meeting and they claim minors are approached by sex traffickers. Every 90 minutes and that Jay Z with his big pimping is promoting it along with kim kardasian.
I don't get why Kim k was mentioned...

Because she's shameless. She's got 99 problems but a blush ain't one.

[filghy2]

I was in a city council meeting and they claim minors are approached by sex traffickers. Every 90 minutes and that Jay Z with his big pimping is promoting it along with kim kardasian.
I don't get why Kim k was mentioned but jayz lyrics are a metaphors and is not about pimping women.
Just like saying something is Dope is not promoting drugs.

Sounds like another concoction by the right-wing fake news industry, most likely related to Kim's recent criticism of Trump's immigration ban, and the end of Kanye's love affair with Trump.

[GroobySteven]

Keep it on topic on Backpage - otherwise it will get moved to politics.

[DeseosEscandulosos]

Looking at the Bloomberg article:

"lawsuits in federal court in Arizona and Florida"

I missed the word "federal" the first time I read read this. Federal courts tend to be strict about standing. The plaintiffs are "an Arizona shelter for victims of sex trafficking and domestic abuse, a Florida anti-trafficking group, and a woman under the name Jane Doe." It's going to be difficult for a shelter and an anti-trafficking group to show that they were harmed by Backpage, so they're likely to be barred from suing. That leaves Jane Doe, who can only sue in one federal court at a time. So one of these suits is likely to be thrown out.

"The inquiry found that Backpage stripped advertisements of such terms as “Lolita” and “Amber Alert,” code words that the sex for sale was with underage girls and boys, then posted the sanitized advertisements."

Lazy reporting. The Senate report assumed that these were code words but offered no evidence. The reporter is uncritically repeating the assumption. During the time Backpage was stripping these words from ads, it reported hundreds of ads to the NCMEC because it suspected underage trafficking. It wouldn't make sense to report some ads and deliberately disguise others.

"Sex ads have simply shifted over to the “dating” section, Boies contends in court papers."

Well, obviously. But the courts have established that Backpage can't be sued for just running prostitution ads.

"On these sites, which aggregate sex ads, Backpage stripped metadata from photographs, thwarting attempts by family members and law enforcement to search the images, the plaintiffs alleged."

It also makes it harder to use the metadata to identify people who don't want their real identities made public.

Metadata can contain viruses. I don't know if there are other business reasons to strip out metadata from images.

Backpage is defending a lawsuit in Washington state and the owners face criminal charges in California. If you go to court enough times, eventually you're going to lose. I don't think any of the cases against Backpage are well founded, and this one looks pretty weak, but the accumulated litigation and risk of losing a case may force them out of business.

[natina]

Its actually the ALT RIGHT fake news which is using the RIGHT WING/NEOCONSERVATIVES fake news=faux news=fox news

Alternative facts=alt reality=trumps narcissism and fragility

Sounds like another concoction by the right-wing fake news industry, most likely related to Kim's recent criticism of Trump's immigration ban, and the end of Kanye's love affair with Trump.

[needingu]

"On these sites, which aggregate sex ads, Backpage stripped metadata from photographs, thwarting attempts by family members and law enforcement to search the images, the plaintiffs alleged."

It also makes it harder to use the metadata to identify people who don't want their real identities made public.

Metadata can contain viruses. I don't know if there are other business reasons to strip out metadata from images.

Does anyone know if Backpages stripped the Metadata from all photos uploaded to their site, or just the photos in the escorts section?

[hippifried]

Its actually the ALT RIGHT fake news which is using the RIGHT WING/NEOCONSERVATIVES fake news=faux news=fox news

Alternative facts=alt reality=trumps narcissism and fragility

Not really. The ones pushing this "trafficking" BS, & it is BS, are women who falsely call themselves "radical feminists". They're neither radical or feminist. The narrative is aimed at keeping as much sexwork as possible criminalized. The narrative becomes the excuse. Next section of the narrative is pushing the "Nordic plan", which shifts targeting to "pimps" & "johns", & anybody else with male genitalia. Trans women are excluded from the conversation because their package doesn't fit the narrative of the poor exploited or enslaved girls, who must be forced into the "life", because nobody could possibly make such a choice. Trans men are okay though, because they're just confused women who be shown the light.

Don't kid yourselves. This is misandry. It's all about criminalizing men having fun. "Sex trafficking" may or may not be a problem. There's no reliable statistics to support any of the claims. It's just a loud irrelevancy, interfering with the discussion about decriminalizing sexwork.