Backpage Exposed: The Whitewash Backfire

Andrew Padilla

On January 13, 2011, Dan Hyer and Andrew Padilla received an email summarizing instructions that had been provided to members of Backpage’s technical staff. It explained that the technical staff had been instructed “ _not to display the moderation log_” in a particular section of Backpage’s database. You may find yourself wondering why a business as innocent as Tony Ortega tried to make us all believe it was would send such a message to its staff? The email explicitly details it was to cover its tracks of course, saying, “since we pdf this page for subpoenas. I would rather not testify in court as to why my staff ‘approved’ … postings.”

Tony Ortega

Of course Backpage didn’t want its moderation log published because to do so would be to undercut the lie Tony Ortega was busy selling the public on behalf of his Backpage bosses, Michael Lacey and James Larkin.

At the same time this email was being circulated to Backpage staff, Lacey and Larkin were meeting with a representative from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). During this meeting, court documents show Lacey asked which types of sex ads would be acceptable from NCMEC’s perspective. When the NCMEC representative declined to say that any such ads would be acceptable, Lacey made a statement to the effect of “ adult prostitution _is none of your business._”

But Backpage’s callous disregard for human trafficking laws didn’t stop there. On January 31, 2011, and February 1, 2011, Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer engaged in an email exchange concerning whether to remove links to other prostitution websites (such as The Erotic Review) from expired Backpage ads. Carl Ferrer stated that, although Scott Spear and his so-called “internet safety guy” were recommending that such ads be removed, he thought this would “ _be a stupid move_” because it would hurt Backpage financially (by reducing the number of referrals from other sites). Carl Ferrer added bluntly that “ this overly zealous focus on moderation at the expense of other development is a lot of bullshit…”

Then, damningly, on the very next day Carl Ferrer. sent an email directly acknowledging in writing that “ _[t]he strip out affects almost every adult ad._” In other words, Carl Ferrer had for the first time knowingly acknowledged that “almost every adult ad” on Backpage was a prostitution ad that had been edited to remove the most damning text and pictures.

Read that again, “almost every adult ad” had been sanitized to remove text and pictures but not the services being offered. And this was what Tony Ortega was trying to argue was Backpage’s proactive self-moderation!

In reality it was the furthest thing from it. It was an exercise in whitewashing their their thinly-veiled human sex trafficking scheme to fool people into thinking they were something they were not — which sounds an awful lot like something Tony Ortega himself would do, if you ask us.