Democrats hardest hit.
Via KPTV:
The FBI confirmed Friday that agents raided the Sedona home of Michael Lacey, the founder of Backpage.com.
The website has been seized and shut down by the FBI. Backpage.com is a classifieds website that has been under investigation for years for claims that the site facilitates child sex trafficking on their adult ads page.
The Department of Justice says the site has earned $500 million in revenue from prostitution since it was created.
The site allows users to post ads for ‘escorts’ and investigators say the ads are actually for underage girls.
A report released by a U.S. Senate subcomittee in early 2017 stated that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s data indicates that 73 percent of the child-trafficking reports it receives were related to Backpage.com.
Site executives say they are protected by the Communications Decency Act which regulates pornographic material on the internet. Executives argue that the law states internet publishers cannot be held liable for content created by third parties.
But investigators say the site lost that protection when they alerted posters to key terms related to child sex trafficking. Investigators found proof of these alerts in internal Backpage.com documents.
The site even gave the third party posters a chance to rephrase their ads so they wouldn’t be flagged for child sex trafficking. Some of the terms Backpage.com admins told posters not to use include “Lolita,” young, teenager and even “Amber Alert.”
HT: frozeninbemidji