Great scribes sometimes think alike, and when it comes to the U. In separate posts to their respective outlets, Grant and Masnick, two of the sharpest intellects on the web today, each lambaste an announcement from the U. Travel Act. Both Grant and Masnick note that it took the government two years to finally use FOSTA, but that in doing so, the government further endangered the already-precarious lives of sex workers.
In the release, Lee states :. The man in question, however, was not charged with being a sex trafficker himself. He is accused of operating a website called CityXguide, among several others, which ran advertisements for sex work. The president congratulated himself for his toughness in signing the law, which, to date, has largely resulted in impoverishing sex workers and making anti-trafficking investigations more difficult, perhaps even leading to their decline.
Backpage was a much larger operation and, like Craigslist. Sex-for-money references were forbidden, and Backpage employed both computer and human moderation to scan for more than 26, banned terms, phrases, URLs and email addresses.
But, as noted above, the feds seized Backpage before FOSTA became law, using existing statues to falsely indict the ex-owners for the facilitation of prostitution, as well as money laundering and conspiracy. However, where they started to push back on law enforcement was when law enforcement wanted to go after non-trafficked sex workers.
This is true. Backpage had a standing policy of complying with subpoenas within 24 hours of receipt and assigned an executive to oversee that task.
