If you were paying attention to the internet news, last week the CEO of backpage was arrested and the site itself was taken down. There are some updates which basically say that the CEO will take a plea deal and never bring the site back online, but the whole idea of why it was taken down and the unintended side effects are never considered. I am actually in favor of legalizing prostitution in the US and having it regulated and made safe compared to what currently goes on. While I dont know how long it will take for that to happen I want to talk about the downsides of why taking backpage offline is a bad idea.
Backpage wasnt the first when it came to wanted ads that had prostitution sections and it wont be the last. Craigslist famously had a big problem until they cracked down which ultimately made backpage the place to go. When backpage started accepting bitcoin in order to avoid problems with bank accounts and banks, they became a hot spot for the escort and prostitution industry. It was very successful and backpage really served that purpose. That is until this week when they were taken offline, which has sent many escorts to various different places.
This is the problem in a nutshell, the Hydra effect where if you cut off one head and two more grow out. Taken backpage offline is only going to stop things for a month or so at max. Other sites will open up and compete until a few end up being used by people in the industry and users will flock to them. The FBI can hi five each other all they want but they literally wasted countless resources doing nothing. Just like when they took down the Silkroad, other markets emerged and are still available today. There is nothing they can do to stop it so why not embrace it and at least regulate it.
The FBIs reasoning for doing all of this comes down to trafficking girls, but theres statistics that the VAST majority of girls are prostituting themselves by their own free will and without a pimp, which is essential. The internet changed the game for prostitution and it has never been safer. Do we want to go back to the 80s where women stood on street corners and were addicted to drugs that they had to get from a pimp? The experience today is better for the users and the providers in total. The amount of girls who do get trafficked is never going to go down because it happened even without the internet. If they want to be of use focus on tracking down the trafficked girls rather than the entire website itself.
This whole thing seems to stem from the FBI just not caring about what effect their actions really have versus the publicity they get. To most people, the FBI taking down backpage was a good thing and something that needed to be done, but these people dont know the industry and dont care. The people that are going to get hurt are the girls who make a living doing this, by increasing risk on their end. As long as it is profitable to sell your body, this industry will NEVER disappear. Even if the FBI takes down 5 more sites, more will pop up.
-Calaber24p
