Backpage.com "Censored"
cnyknight
New York
http://syracuse.backpage.com/Strippers/c…
I usually check out backpage once in awhile because I always find it humorous when I find dancers I know from the clubs posting ads on there. Recently I noticed that they have taken any adult related content down.
This is not a discussion around the merits of backpage, rather a discussion on censorship ... what do you think?
I usually check out backpage once in awhile because I always find it humorous when I find dancers I know from the clubs posting ads on there. Recently I noticed that they have taken any adult related content down.
This is not a discussion around the merits of backpage, rather a discussion on censorship ... what do you think?
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14 comments
Every time they "go after human trafficking" more often than not they come up empty (not saying it doesn't happen) - they use the human-trafficking thing to go after strip-clubs also as if most of the girls working in strip-clubs weren't there out of their own volition and were being forced to do it by a trafficker.
I had not looked at BP in a while but looked at it earlier today since it's rumored that a new club was gonna open in my area - often times new clubs advertise on BP but the strip-club section is now also censored.
--> "The Dallas-based media concern said that it had been under too much pressure from the Senate Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations' sex trafficking inquiries. The inquiries found that the online ads portal "edits" content of ads that amount to solicitation of prostitution by "deleting words and images before publication." The company, which lost a Supreme Court First Amendment battle and was forced to turn over thousands of pages of company documents detailing its business methods, said it fell victim in the same way that Craigslist did a decade ago, when it removed adult ads."
“Like the decision by Craigslist to remove its adult category in 2010, this announcement is the culmination of years of effort by government at various levels to exert pressure on Backpage.com and to make it too costly to continue,” Backpage told Congress late Monday,
The company added (PDF): http://www.backpage.com/statements/Backp…
Since mid-2015, the Subcommittee has, for reasons unrelated to the legislative responsibilities of Congress, sought to compel Backpage, an online publisher of third party-created advertisements, to provide a virtually unlimited amount of information regarding the company's core editorial decisions: what material it would publish and what material it would not publish. Backpage strongly believes that this core activity lies at the very heart of the protection against government interference afforded publishers of both print and online speech by the First Amendment. Backpage believes that the Subcommittee's quest for this information is not for the purpose of informing the legislative work of the Senate, but rather is part of a coordinated effort to drive Backpage out of business.
Further Reading
Craigslist shuts down “adult services” worldwide
The Senate wasn't the only government agency attacking Backpage. Texas and California officials lodged pimping charges against Michael Lacey and James Larkin, the former owners, and Carl Ferrer, the CEO." --> END QUOTE
From the peanut gallery / comments section of the Ars Technica website (liberal bias):
-->"The problem is that you've bought into the tactics that were used in exactly the way that was intended by those who used them.
It was never actually shown that Backpage was facilitating prostitution in court and certainly not that they'd been doing so for *underage* prostitution, and the courts actually found *against* those claims. Problem is, the politicians involved here disapprove of Backpage *in general*, regardless of whether or not the adult services we're discussing were legal (ie. not for pay), so they effectively sidestepped the justice system by using their political power to harass the website with public claims of profiting from child sex and ridiculously broad and expensive demands for documents that made it impossible for Backpage to continue operating that section of their business.
Now, I don't know if the senators' allegations are true. Maybe they are, but I don't think it's especially relevant. What's at issue here is that it's for the courts to determine that, not for the senators themselves to use investigatory powers intended to help them craft legislation specifically to sidestep those courts and directly attack the company." --> END QUOTE
^^^ Right. congress and the California AG basically oversteps their bounds until their attacks on Backpage compelled BP to do what these politicians wanted all along. The courts basically found on backpage's side yet congressmen and the AG abused their power to get what they wanted anyway.
Congress through its investigations made the cost of doing business for Backpage so high and unprofitable that BP felt compelled to self-censor. One of my congressmen, Senator Rob Portman, had this to say:
--> ""Backpage's response wasn't to deny what we said. It was to shut down their site. That's not 'censorship'—it's a validation of our findings," Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who led the Senate investigation, said in a statement."
I don't agree with your conclusion, Mr Senator. It doesn't validate your findings at all. You just used mob tactics to get what you want -- to compel a private company to bend to your will -- without due process. That's a government abuse of power. This guy actually seems smug about it. He 'doxed' BP into oblivion via over-regulation.
Again, from the peanut gallery / comments section. Here are the mob tactics that the government used explained:
--> "It's actually more than that.
Basically, Congress has the right to perform investigations and demand information from private entities in order to assess existing legislation or to determine whether or not there's a need for new legislation. They can exercise this right even if there's no specific legislation being targeted, however, which effectively enables them to use these kinds of demands for any reason.
That's what happened here. Not only were they clearly not investigating potential legislation (given that everything they were accusing Backpage of is already illegal), but the requests that they made from Backpage were broad to the point of effectively including all of the information that the company has its entire business, all of its subsidiaries, and all other companies that it associates with in virtually any way. That is, they requested information on every possible aspect of the company, something that would have been prohibitively expensive to produce, despite the fact that the target of the investigation was a single segment of a single website that they operate.
If they'd simply made the claim that Backpage was engaging in illegal activity, the site probably would have been able to largely ignore them. By also placing an absurdly financial onerous burden on them using repeated, ridiculously broad requests for information, they made it impossible for Backpage to continue. " --> END QUOTE
Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017…
--> "but the requests that they made from Backpage were broad to the point of effectively including all of the information that the company has its entire business, all of its subsidiaries, and all other companies that it associates with in virtually any way. That is, they requested information on every possible aspect of the company, something that would have been prohibitively expensive to produce" --> END QUOTE