Backpage


Backpage was a classified advertising website founded in 2004 by the alternative newspaper chain New Times Inc./New Times Media as a rival to Craigslist.
Similar to Craigslist, Backpage let users post ads to categories such as personals, automotive, rentals, jobs and adult services. It soon became the second largest online classified site in the United States.
Craigslist closed its "Adult Services" section in 2010 in response to pressure from state attorneys general and other critics claiming the section facilitated prostitution. Much of Craigslist's share of the adult ad market migrated to other sites, with Backpage being the main beneficiary.
Craigslist's former critics focused on Backpage, which resisted moves to censor the site until January 2017; Backpage closed their adult section prior to a Congressional hearing.

History

''New Times'' and founding of Backpage

Backpage founder Michael Lacey founded the Phoenix New Times in 1970, saying it was a response to the Vietnam War and the Kent State shootings. Backpage co-founder Jim Larkin joined the New Times in 1971. The New Times papers were free and relied on advertising. The New Times especially relied on classified advertising to earn money.
Due the rise of Craigslist, a classified-ads website that competed with newspapers for advertising revenue, Lacey and Larkin in 2004 founded Backpage.com, which Wired magazine described as "a bare-bones interface wrapped in Facebooky blue, similar to Craigslist in form and function." The site's name was a nod to the classified ads in the back section of every New Times paper, "culminating in a premium-priced ad showcase on the paper's back page." The idea for Backpage.com came from New Times salesman Carl Ferrer; Larkin put him in charge of the new venture.
Backpage helped sustain first New Times, then Village Voice Media's papers, and expanded to become the second-largest online classifieds site next to Craigslist. Lacey and Larkin sold Village Voice Media to company executives in 2012. The pair sold Backpage to Ferrer in 2015.
Craigslist and Backpage had listings for a variety of goods and services, such as real estate, yard sales, personals, work wanted and jobs offered. Backpage's adult-themed advertising section gained the most attention.
After Craigslist took down its adult advertising section in 2010, Backpage continued to maintain adult advertising on its site. As Backpage's popularity grew, the site's adult advertising section began to attract lawsuits and investigations regarding allegations of prostitution and sex trafficking.

Adult advertising

After Craigslist ended its adult advertising section after pressure from law enforcement and anti-sex trafficking advocates, some adult listings almost immediately migrated to the Backpage's "personals" section. They scattered to other sites as well, but Backpage, already number two in the classified ads market, received most of the post-Craigslist-era adult-content migrated listings. Many of the same controversies regarding content moderation and adult advertising that plagued Craigslist would now target Backpage.
In an internal email after Craigslist's takedown of its adult category, CEO Ferrer said it was "an opportunity for us. Also a time when we need to make sure our content is not illegal".
In September 2010, a Missouri girl sued Village Voice Media, claiming that she had been trafficked at age 14 via ads placed on the site, and that Backpage had been negligent. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, based on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
A month after the suit was filed, Backpage hired former federal prosecutor and NCMEC board member Hemanshu Nigam to come up with a strategic plan to combat the misuse of the site for trafficking. Nigam and Backpage consulted with anti-trafficking organizations about measures to take, such as preventing the use of suggestive terms such as "Lolita", "incest" and "new in town". According to Wired, Backpage had implemented most of these new protocols by January 2011.
In October 2011, in a full-page ad in The New York Times, 36 clergymen demanded that VVM and Backpage remove the latter's adult classifieds section, citing reports of adult ads connected to underage prostitution, stating, "Even if one minor is sold for sex, it is one too many." In a response to the ad, VVM asserted that it had "extensive working relationships with law enforcement from FBI to the local police", and claiming it had "spent millions of dollars and dedicated countless resources to protecting children from those who would misuse an adult site".
According to both Reason and Wired, law enforcement and Backpage frequently cooperated, with Backpage receiving praise from various police agencies for its help in finding trafficked persons and convicting their exploiters. In May 2011, the FBI awarded a certificate of recognition to Ferrer, then VP of Backpage, "for your outstanding cooperation and assistance in connection with an investigation of great importance."
In November 2011, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women organized a demonstration outside of The Village Voices offices in New York City, with some people chanting slogans and waving signs in protest against "Backpage.com's facilitation of sex trafficking".

Backpage and ''Village Voice'' split

Increasingly, Backpage critics and law enforcement accused Backpage of being a hub for sex trafficking of both adults and minors despite claims by the website that it sought to block ads suspected of child sex trafficking or prostitution and reported hundreds per month to the NCMEC, which in turn notified law enforcement.
Backpage supporters claimed that by providing prompt and detailed information about suspicious postings to law enforcement, including phone numbers, credit card numbers and IP addresses, the website helped protect minors from trafficking. They contended that shutting down Backpage would drive traffickers to other places on the internet that would be less forthcoming about crucial information for law enforcement.
Numerous writers, non-governmental organizations legal experts and law enforcement officials including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive, and the Cato Institute, argued that freedom of speech and potentially the internet itself would be threatened if adult-themed ads were prohibited on Backpage. These groups cited both the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which holds that service providers were not liable for content produced by third parties.
In 2012, at the behest of a number of NGOs including Fair Girls and NCMEC, Fitzgibbon Media created a multimedia campaign to garner support for the anti-Backpage position. They enlisted support from musicians, politicians, journalists, media companies and retailers.
The Fitzgibbon campaign created a greater public dialogue, both pro and con, regarding Backpage. Some companies, including H&M, IKEA, and Barnes & Noble, canceled ads for publications owned by Village Voice Media. Over 230,000 people including 600 religious leaders, 51 attorneys general, 19 U.S. senators, over 50 non-governmental associations, musician Alicia Keys, and members of R.E.M., The Roots, and Alabama Shakes petitioned the website to remove sexual content.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof authored a number of columns criticizing Backpage, to which Backpage publicly responded. In a March 17, 2012, column, "Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods", Kristof told the story of a young woman whose "street name" was Alissa. Kristof wrote that pimps had coerced Alissa into a life of prostitution and posted ads for her on Backpage while she was underage. He also urged mainstream advertisers to boycott Village Voice Media and linked to a Change.org petition asking VVM to stop allowing its users to post adult ads on Backpage.
In response to the article, the Village Voice criticized Kristof's reporting, noting that Backpage had not existed in the cities where Alissa had been prostituted at the time she was underage. The unsigned Voice article also contended that Backpage dedicated "hundreds of staff to screen adult classifieds in order to keep juveniles off the site and to work proactively with law enforcement in their efforts to locate victims".
In 2012, Village Voice Media separated its newspaper company, which then consisted of 13 weekly alternative newspapers and their affiliated web properties from Backpage, leaving Backpage in the control of shareholders Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin.
In interviews with Phoenix media, Lacey explained that the controversies over Backpage had become "a distraction" for the editors of VVM's papers and that Backpage had come to monopolize his and Larkin's time.
Executives for the spinoff holding company, called Voice Media Group and based in Denver, raised "some money from private investors" in order to purchase the newspapers; the executives who formed the new company were lower-ranked than Lacey and Larkin. In December 2014, Village Voice Media sold Backpage to a Dutch holding company. Carl Ferrer, the founder of Backpage, remained as CEO of the company. Michael Hardy of the Texas Observer stated that since Lacey and Larkin remained at Backpage, "it would be more accurate to say that Backpage spun off Village Voice Media."

Legal decisions

Beginning in 2011 a number of legal challenges were brought in attempts to eliminate the adult section of Backpage or shut down the website entirely. Backpage successfully argued that the First Amendment protections of free speech would be compromised by any restriction on postings by individuals on the Backpage website.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 served as an additional cornerstone in the defense. Section 230 says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." This portion of the CDA was drafted to protect ISPs and other interactive service providers on the Internet from liability for content originating from third parties. The enactment of this portion of the CDA overturned the decision in Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. in which Prodigy was deemed by the court to be a publisher and therefore liable for content posted on its site. Many observers have credited the passage of section 230 of the CDA as the spark that ignited the explosive growth of the internet. The protection afforded to website owners under section 230 was upheld in numerous court cases subsequent to the passage of the legislation in 1996 including Doe v. MySpace Inc., 528 F.3d 413 and Dart v. Craigslist, Inc., 665 F. Supp. 2d 961.
Some of the most important civil cases involving Backpage are described below: