Feds seize Backpage

[Enigma]

^ I never said that. You just have no argument so you and others are getting bent out of shape.

Again, Backpage has never denied that child sex trafficking existed on their site, the question was whether they tried to stop it or not.

Trump's administration has made this a priority since day 1, people only care about this one because it might slightly hamper their ability to have anonymous sex with women from the internet. The ironic thing is I actually made a popular thread on "Craigslist Game" years ago, but clearly I'm just a prude who doesn't know anything about the interwebz.

Meanwhile, the thread went from "there's no child sex trafficking and no children on Backpage" to "you're a crazy peasant who needs help if you care about that".

I've already proved my point, so I'll leave you guys to argue about muh libertarian values and white knighting for hookers

 

[Leonard D Neubache]

On what basis do you assume I was referring directly to you?

 

[Captain Gh]

^ I never said that. You just have no argument so you and others are getting bent out of shape.

Again, Backpage has never denied that child sex trafficking existed on their site, the question was whether they tried to stop it or not.

Trump's administration has made this a priority since day 1, people only care about this one because it might slightly hamper their ability to have anonymous sex with women from the internet. The ironic thing is I actually made a popular thread on "Craigslist Game" years ago, but clearly I'm just a prude who doesn't know anything about the interwebz.

Meanwhile, the thread went from "there's no child sex trafficking and no children on Backpage" to "you're a crazy peasant who needs help if you care about that".

I've already proved my point, so I'll leave you guys to argue about muh libertarian values and white knighting for hookers

We all understand your point of view... but can't you see the slippery slope this seizing of Backpage represents? How about the ISP providers. The people committing these atrocious crimes for sure had ISP addresses. Could the providers be made liable next? And what about street prostitution? If you happen to leave near a Prostitution/crime hotspot and you own a business there... who would draw the line of you not be responsible for facilitating criminal activities if you keep it shut?

And everyone would keep their your mouth shut... to avoid getting their head busted... but would the law even care? And what about the hotel giving lodging to prostitutes? If one of them gives a fake ID... is the hotel guilty then? And I could go on & on! Yeah Child trafficking is an awful crime... but it still should be fought without affecting the liberties of Anyone... if not eventually they'll come for something you truly care about.

 

[AneroidOcean]

Found on Reddit:

From the comments section:

There's a reason for that. For a time - at least until 2011, Backpage was sending illegal child-trafficking ads to the feds in a honeypot scenario (not uncommon - I worked for an ISP in KC in 2001 which hosted all kinds of sites which were of interest to the DOH - Taliban and Al-Qaeda affiliated sites specifically. We were instructed to keep them up for monitoring).

I know this because I worked in the same office - not the group mind you. There were 3 companies located there - although they were connected by virtue of being sub-companies of the overall corporate structure (until 2012) which meant my biggest beef with Backpage is they were raiding my dev-pool for talent - which wasn't a small amount of suck.

I checked my conclusions with another dev (who after 10 years) was still in the office and connected to my DM client - although not with Backpage - and he confirmed this earlier this week. My former boss worked closer with Larkin and I'm going to poll his opinion on this too (he left in 2012 after the re-org).

 

[The Father]

28 sexually exploited children rescue and 474 arrested, Feb. 2017

http://ktla.com/2017/02/01/474-arre...g-statewide-human-trafficking-operation-lasd/

84 children rescued and 120 arrested, Oct. 2017

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...human-traffickers-arrested-across-u-s-n812156

That particular bust was spread across several states and involved cooperation with authorities from Canada, the UK, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines.

Speaking of the Philippines, they had their largest child porn bust every back in May 2017, which also included rescuing some of the children who had been used in the material. That bust was based on info provided by the US.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-12/afp-assists-philippines-livestream-child-abuse-sting/8521820

Though Backpage wasn't involved in this, there's a reason the suit specifies 17 countries and not just the US (and there's a reason he plead guilty so quickly).

Here's another one. Sacramento pilot receives life sentence for child sex trafficking offenses, Feb. 2018

http://wtkr.com/2018/01/24/californ...ilipino-children-for-sex-gets-life-in-prison/

Much of the worst child trafficking occurs outside of the US, but these days Western men paying for videos or livestreams of children being abused is a huge problem because it then creates an even bigger market for trafficking.

Personally, I could give a fuck if some 30-year-old hooker feels unsafe if it makes it harder for 5-year-old girls to be raped. I'll also take prostitution being illegal over the thousands of little girls "groomed" in the UK or the mass sexual assaults going on liberal Germany, etc.

Adult, non-forced prostitution has existed long before the internet came about and will do just fine without it. In reality, the fact that it's now so easy and less risky is why this #ExposetheSponsor, SeekingArrangement, etc. shit is becoming so out of control.

Hmmm...let's see: "28 commercially and sexually exploited children ...were rescued". What does that mean, exactly? "Commercially exploited"? Did someone use them to get more food stamps? The biggest "commercial exploitation" of children is child support payments! Women use kids as cash crops. Even "sexually exploited" stops short of saying the kids were used as prostitutes; maybe nude photos were taken.

The next article ("128 human traffickers") names one case of someone trying to sell kids for sex, and is silent about what the rest of the "trafficking" is. Coyote's smuggling people across the border? Arranging work for illegals? We have no idea, because like most of these stories, they carry sensationalized headlines and not much detail. How about details of the actual charges, something like "Jason O'Pimp was charged with 184 counts of child prostitution". Why do we never see that?

Look, i'm as much against kids being sexually abused as the next guy. I just don't think backpage or The Erotic Review has much to do with it. The BIGGEST purveyors of kiddie-diddling are groups that the law goes out of its way to protect - trannies, homo's, etc. Most of the action on those sites is willing women renting themselves out to willing men, as happens all over the world and all throughout history. Are there bad actors out there? Sure. Some. Let's arrest them! But you can't shut down the internet because someone once did a drug deal over it, or ban cars because 37K americans a year are killed in them (a tiny fraction far outweighed by the benefits to society of automobiles). Likewise, shutting down sites (which just happen to be favored among men) because somewhere in the world, some kid got touched by a pedophile is silly. Did we shut the catholic church down? They are FAR bigger abusers - and they didn't use the internet. Neither did Sandusky.

And why do i rarely hear about little GIRLS being raped? You do hear about it, but maybe 1/100th as much as you hear little boys being fucked by men. Sorry, but that says to me that pedo's are much more of a problem in the gay community than society is allowed to discuss.

 

[The Father]

Here's another example:

Former Oklahoma State Senator pleads guilty to child sex trafficking after using Craigslist to meet underage boys for sex

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/11/30/ex-oklahoma-lawmaker-guilty-child-sex-trafficking.html

Ummm...the story says he had a "17-year-old boy in a motel room and accused him of hiring the boy for sex."

That's the "child" you're talking about? Someone who, in a few months or perhaps days, would be 18? For most of human history, a 17 year could fuck (or marry) whomever they pleased. Let's not infantalize them.

Show me a story where someone rips a barbie doll or Thomas the tank engine out of a kid's hand and sells him or her for sex. Then show me 500 of those, and it still doesn't justify censoring the internet.

The answer isn't to throw out the baby with the bath water (no pun intended), it's to arrest the pimps and faggots who do this.

 

[Days of Broken Arrows]

^^^^^

Building on what The Father wrote, the biggest source of both child abuse and child sexual abuse is...the boyfriends of single mothers. There are scads of sources for this info. I dropped a few links below.

If the government really wanted to put an end to child sexual abuse, it would do something about single mothers. Instead, it created the "single mother culture", by creating the welfare state, in which fathers could not be in the home for mothers to receive gov't assistance.

As with a lot of urban trends, this then bled into the larger culture, which gave us the trend of unmarried moms who date guy after guy.

I'll bet that if all of us counted up the number of girls we knew who were sexually abused by their moms' boyfriends, it would dwarf the number of those Backpage arrests.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0145213492900708
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/mums-boyfriend--the-worst-sexual-risk-to-children-20140213-32n3s.html

 

[Raylan Givens]

Topics like this align the forum with degenerates, SJWs, and sexual libertine leftists. There is some Salon-level hamerstering going on in this thread to justify sexual promiscuity.

 

[SamuelBRoberts]

You think THIS is justifying sexual promiscuity?

Man, god help you if you ever look in the game section of the forum.

 

[Enigma]

We all understand your point of view... but can't you see the slippery slope this seizing of Backpage represents? How about the ISP providers. The people committing these atrocious crimes for sure had ISP addresses. Could the providers be made liable next? And what about street prostitution? If you happen to leave near a Prostitution/crime hotspot and you own a business there... who would draw the line of you not be responsible for facilitating criminal activities if you keep it shut?

And everyone would keep their your mouth shut... to avoid getting their head busted... but would the law even care? And what about the hotel giving lodging to prostitutes? If one of them gives a fake ID... is the hotel guilty then? And I could go on & on! Yeah Child trafficking is an awful crime... but it still should be fought without affecting the liberties of Anyone... if not eventually they'll come for something you truly care about.

Bro, have you followed any of the other high profile website closures over the past 5 years? Megaupload, Silk Road, Pirate Bay, etc.?

Did any of those create a "slippery slope"? No. In fact, there are more sites like Megaupload, more darkweb markets, and more torrent portals than ever.

Did the FBI seizing 27 sites in Operation Onymous in 2014 stop people from buying drugs online? Not even close.

Did the 82 fake goods site they seized in 2010 stop cheap Chinese shit from being sold online? Not at all.

More relevantly, Craigslist was forced to shut down their erotic services section nearly 10 years ago. Did that create a slippery slope?

Regarding the ISP comments:

First of all, it's been repeatedly ruled that ISPs are not liable for what people use their service for, as long as they comply with takedown requests. The music industry and Hollywood have been trying to overturn that for decades and have failed.

Secondly, as TravelerKai pointed out, there are many ways around all of this, like using a VPN and hosting the website overseas.

Backpage got busted because they've been under scrutiny for years for allowing child ads to be posted there. Not only did they not try to stop this, they gamed the system to allow them to stay up.

Your analogies about getting arrested because a prostitute is standing down the road are silly and a huge departure from what we're talking about here.

If Backpage had been busted just for allowing adult hookers to post free ads on their site, we could have a different conversation, but that's not what happened. Again, Craigslist had a problem with their erotic services section years ago but didn't face criminal charges -- and aren't now, as far as I know. Many of the same adult hookers that post on Backpage cross post on Craigslist, and there are plenty of others.

People are trying hard to make this fit the narrative of the day, but they simply don't match the facts. I'd note that no one cared when a darkweb drug marketplace was seized -- and rightly so.

Also, Ferrer's lenient plea deal would indicate that he wasnt who they were after in the first place. Whether they're simply using him against the other founders or they're taking it further up the food chain remains to be seen.

Backpage were big donors to Democrats, including Pelosi, by the way.

 

[Days of Broken Arrows]

^^^

I would argue the shuttering of Web sites did, in fact, send us on the slippery slope. It's created a mentality where a lot of groups think the government should step in and shut down Web sites or ban citizens from social media) when they say or do something these groups don't like.

Case in point: A recent VICE article titled "Social Media Bans Aren't Enough to Stop the Far Right" (here is the cache of the article).

The headline alone takes for granted that "bans" are necessary -- and expected -- to stop people the writer deems "bad." In this case it's "the far right." (By the way, if the "far right" is reaching the mainstream, which is is, then it's mainstream, not "far right." But I digress.)

I'd argue that this started with Craigslist closing down the "erotic" sections of the site ten years ago. That shows there is a sort of morality behind these decisions -- and morality itself is very relative. Anyone can claim a moral high ground, esp. when you start bringing "the children" into the discussions.

Illegality is one thing, but what's immoral? Is the "far right" immoral? Is a disabled war veteran seeking female "companionship" immoral? And who is anyone to say, anyway?

I'm with you all on closing down sites that break the law per se. But I am not behind the nebulous claims of "morality" that underpin all of this.

 

[rpg]

Somewhat related, the Texas court has determined criminalizing revenge porn is a violation of 1st amendment. Many people have been arrested for uploading pics and videos of exes.

 

[Days of Broken Arrows]

On the heels of FOSTA and SESTA, a new bill was drafted that makes it easy for the gov't to seize bank accounts for anyone it deems dealing in "human trafficking" -- a charge with a frighteningly loose definition.

The bill is called the End Banking for Human Trafficking Act and it's already passed in the House. It was sponsored by Marco Rubio and Elizabeth Warren, so it has bipartisan support.

Why does this concern us? Because as I wrote on the thread about actress Allison Mack, the gov't can declare almost any sexual act it doesn't like as "human trafficking."

Mack was accused of helping some self-improvement "guru" pick up women. As I wrote, neither she nor the "guru" trafficked anyone. But since trafficking hysteria is in vogue, now they're hit with massive, trumped-up charges.

(In the early 20th century, the gov't came up with something called "The Mann Act" to combat the "white slave trade," which was as fictional and paranoic as the trafficking fears we see today. It just gave officials a reason to arrest men they deemed as troublesome for charges like "taking a minor across state lines." Huh? So you can drive a minor from Frisco down to San Diego and that's cool...but take her across state lines and you go to jail! But I digress.)

Reason Magazine, by the way, also came out with an article that states what I basically said: The trafficking charges against Allison Mack are unwarranted. They might fall under the categories of fraud or harassment, but not trafficking.

But this is what happens when people get caught up in a craze. EVERYTHING starts to fall under the specific category of that craze. In the 1970s it was "cults." You don't hear about them now, though. Why is that? Guess the media and law enforcement moved on after they cashed in on that one. In the 1980s it was satan and daycare centers.

It's also worth noting that in the Preppie, clean-cut 1980s, we had the War on Drugs. Most middle class kids weren't addicts. This was just a way to fill prisons with poor people who couldn't afford legal representation. Those prisons are getting emptier with the legalization of pot -- just as officials are finding a way to fill them back up.

Anyone involved in the game community, the PUA scene, or anything of the sort should keep appraised of all this. When you combine this with the anti-male hysteria stoked by #metoo, it's looking more and more like we're headed into a New Victorian Age. If we're not there already.

 

[TooFineAPoint]

On the heels of FOSTA and SESTA, a new bill was drafted that makes it easy for the gov't to seize bank accounts for anyone it deems dealing in "human trafficking" -- a charge with a frighteningly loose definition.

The bill is called the End Banking for Human Trafficking Act and it's already passed in the House. It was sponsored by Marco Rubio and Elizabeth Warren, so it was obviously originally drafted by Satan himself.

Fixed for you.

 

[debeguiled]

Master List of Terms That Can Mean Anything:

Grooming.

Trafficking.

Hate Speech.

Harassment.

Domestic Violence.

Rape.

Targeting.

White Supremacy.

Privilege.

Research.

Nazi.

Misogynist.

Anti-Semite.

Transphobe.

Homophobe.

Aggression.

Harm.

Racist.

Sexist.

What am I missing?

 

[Days of Broken Arrows]

All of these laws are having major ripple effects. Facebook has come out with new rules and Twitter is now banning sexy images right and left.

People on the right felt the effects of social media crackdowns years ago. Well, now people on the left are feeling it too.

This has unexpectedly (and hilariously) caused feminists to realize they now have to support the manosphere. Talk about strange bedfellows. But I guess it's good these people finally realized that supporting bans against others means unwittingly supporting bans against their own:

 

[Days of Broken Arrows]

Delete. Double-posted accidentally.

 

[Rhyme or Reason]

Topics like this align the forum with degenerates, SJWs, and sexual libertine leftists. There is some Salon-level hamerstering going on in this thread to justify sexual promiscuity.

Is it a coincidence that your avatar is wearing a fedora?

 

[AnonymousBosch]

Anyone involved in the game community, the PUA scene, or anything of the sort should keep appraised of all this. When you combine this with the anti-male hysteria stoked by #metoo, it's looking more and more like we're headed into a New Victorian Age. If we're not there already.

We've been in the throes of Victorian Sensibility since 2011, and it was clearly-identifiable by 2013. I wrote about it in 2014. The full transition will take a few years, and, as I wrote last year in the Trump Thread, once the Left collapses, the Government will be controlled by Zionist Evangelicals, and their societal goals and desired morality are very different to, say, ours.

Something else I wrote a couple of years back: you will always get what you initially think you want, but when you do get it, you'll find it's never what you thought you wanted after all.

Whether this spiritual awakening is genuine or deliberate manipulation for political purposes is a coin toss by this point. One thing I've keep quiet about: the phrase 'The Great Awakening' is spoken about in Protestant Culture marking certain time periods, sure, but it was also repeatedly-used by Crowley to describe the desired goal of making society fall away from Christ.

It's too late to stop it now, and given where society is and what the sexual revolution made it, maybe a harsher moral reordering is required to keep it alive. Either way, censorship is inevitable, and there's no-one in power who shares our values. Concentrate on adapting.

 

[Captain Gh]

I've noticed today what I truly believed was "Backpaged Forced Daygame". The gentlemen in question was inside of a Subway station, and did a question style opener on 2 slender birds. I absolutely knew it was not going to fly well due to the gentlemen being grossly overweight, and approaching from the side, which is extremely low value approaching during the Daytime. The 2 Birds didn't even bother stopping one bit, and kept going... not even turning their heads! I truly applaud the gentlemen for approaching... but the first taught in my head was damn he gotta hit the field now no choice!

He was easily in his mid 40's, and looked like he was set up for a Day of gaming since he was dressed quite statistically. Truly hope the "Incels" do the same... but I'm not holding my breath! I myself will fallow suit soon & un-retire from Daygame soon since the Canadian section of Craigslist personal is now also closed. My revolving ads were giving me solid returns... in the 6 to mid 7 range with a virtually guaranteed Smash! Thank God I moved away from Backpage in 2015, and I'm thankful for that! A money pit! If not I'd be shook! Not "Incel" shook... but shook nonetheless!