Backpage has always claimed it doesn’t control sex-related ads. New documents show otherwise. By Tom Jackman and Jonathan O’Connell July 11
This is so poorly written and has so many false facts I don’t know where to start. I get phone calls from the yellow pages asking me if I want to renew my escort ad and yet nobody is claiming they are the hub for trafficking. The yellow pages have run escort ads for over 50 years. The yellow pages charges up to 10k a year for the ad. Congress knew that if they shut down the adult section on backpage that those ads would just move to the dating section, because we saw this with Craigslist in 2009, when all their erotic service ads moved to casual encounters.
Another take is that they claim that backpage is soliciting for people looking for sex, but can’t the same be said of Match .com and Plenty of fish and every other dating site. As a matter of fact there are 2 million US college students that have accounts on seeking arrangement .com Poor journalism like this seems to always highlight the few RARE and horrific cases of abuse while they totally ignore that most of the sexual assaults and violence come from the hands of the police and other violent actors, and under criminalization the majority of those violent crimes are not reported. Every day we see headlines of cops sexually assaulting children, getting caught with child porn and sexually assaulting women that they pull over in traffic stops.
The worst insult from this journalist, is him removing the agency from sex workers by claiming that the majority of them have been forced into prostitution by traffickers. So Coyote RI, Desiree Alliance and SWOP Behind Bars have teamed up with Brown university and we are getting ready to release our new research project which is a survey that asks sex workers 145 questions about their experience with family relationships, economics, their condom usage, how often they get tested for STDs, the discrimination they endure in trying to access public services, their experiences with arrest, the police and deferment programs and the rescue industry. We also ask how many people have threatened to out them due to them being sex workers or their immigration status, and we have no doubt once we get 1,000 partipants we will see that most sex workers are under their own control and choice sex work because it is the best option that they have.