On January 8, 2017, the Senate subcommittee released its final report, titled “Backpage.com’s Knowing Facilitation of Online Sex Trafficking.” It pushed the theory that Lacey, Larkin, Ferrer, and their employees had invalidated their liability protections under Section 230: Rather than removing illegal and obscene content, the Senate clearly established that Backpage had helped develop it, using manipulative moderation practices to “sanitize the content” and conceal it from the eyes of the law—all in the name of earning a few extra dollars.
We have seen how Backpage had used litigation tactics by manipulating legal loops to keep from itself from facing the music.
Most courts had had no choice but to grant them temporary victories because of the unduly broad language of the Section 230 loophole.
But following the subpoena blitz we previously reported on, Portman and his colleagues on Capitol Hill had what they considered incontrovertible evidence in the way of Backpage’s own internal communication.
Simon Ho-On
We’ve been looking a lot lately at the vast number of cases working their way through the courts in virtually every state in the nation. It’s worthwhile remembering, however, that the damage done by Backpage — the child sex trafficking website Tony Ortega stood on many a soapbox to defend — spread across the globe.
Today we learned of a shocking story out of Canada. Its details, while particularly gruesome and inarguably evil, should be published here and elsewhere if for no other reason than to shine a light on the true depravity of the site Tony Ortega stridently insisted was merely exercising its right to ‘freedom of speech’ by hosting scores of advertisements selling minors for sexual use.
Tony Ortega
In our article “Tony Ortega’s Village Voice: A Backpage Front” we drew your attention to the grand scheme behind The Village Voice and Backpage, specifically how they were from the beginning planned to be separated in order to fully concentrate on the mega profits produced by Backpage in its lust to sell young women for sexual services.
It bears repeating, however, that this came as no surprise to Tony Ortega who from the beginning was in on the scam.
It’s that time again! Time for your Backpage Sex Peddling trial update, brought to you by Tony Ortega and his criminally indicted bosses.
This week, we heard the first words Backpage.com co-founder and Tony Ortega’s former boss, Michael Lacey, offered about allegations he faces for running a prostitution ring and shady money laundering operation.
“Nonsense!” was all he said before his attorney added that his client had no further comment. Nonsense, as if to imply that all the lives he and the people who worked for him ruined and left discarded behind them were nothing but a joke to him.
This last month was designated by the White House as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, dedicating the month to raising national awareness of the issue of human trafficking and highlighting efforts to combat this violent crime and those who would enable and endorse such practices.
There’s no mistake that last year saw a decided series of devastating blows to human trafficking in general and Tony Ortega’s former employer, backpage.
Way back when Tony Ortega’s bosses in Phoenix were dreaming about shredding and burning all the evidence implicating them in the global sex-for-profit scandal that was starting to spiral so out of control they were once again at risk of going to prison, a deal was struck.
Tony Ortega was promised that as long as he toed the party line and played nice, he’d be rewarded with an executive assignment as chief editor at a far “more lucrative and prestigious” rag than the “lowly” _Village_Voice.
