Online Sex Work Ads Make Comeback Despite Backpage Closure, FOSTA

Only nine months after the federal government seized and shut down the top online classified ad site used by sex workers and sexual service industry advertising, Backpage.com, internet sex ads now appear to have made a full comeback—with, in fact, more sex ads posted online per month than the number that appeared on Backpage, according to a new study. “Online sex ads plunged in April following Backpage’s seizure and President Donald Trump’s signing of legislation [i.e. FOSTA/SESTA] aimed at websites that facilitate sex trafficking,” the Associated Press reported this week. “But a new analysis finds the drop in the number of ads may have been short-lived.” The AP reported that new study by Pittsburgh-based software company Marinus Analytics tallied the number of sex ads placed on Backpage in the final month of its existence, a number that totaled 133,000. But from mid-September to mid-October of this year, the Marinus study recorded an average of about 146,000 sex ads placed online across numerous sites every day.  And the number is trending upward, with even more sex ads expected to find their way online in upcoming months, the company told the AP. What’s going on? After the industry-dominating Backpage was put out of business by the feds, with its founders now facing prosecution on dozens of serious charges and forfeiture of hundreds of millions worth of assets,  smaller sites specializing in escort and sexual service advertising moved in to fill the void left by the Backpage takedown. And for those smaller sites, the business of selling sex—or at least selling advertising that sells sex—is good. “Instead of backing away amid the government crackdown on sex trafficking, some escort websites are doubling down on their business model and see the Backpage shutdown as an opportunity to expand, said Emily Kennedy, Marinus Analytics' president and co-founder,” according to the AP report this week. While Backpage was in operation, smaller sites took in minimal revenue from sex ads, the AP said, and many of the ads they were able to run simply duplicated ads appearing on Backpage.  While law enforcement was able to use the centralized resource of Backpage to track illegals sex trafficking and sex trafficking victims, as AVN.com reported, their job has become more difficult since Backpage was forced to disappear from the internet.   Marinus Analytics has created a software package for use by law enforcement that aggregates online sex ads from numerous sites, allowing investigators a new, single resource for tracking illegal activity, the AP reported. Photo By Unknown/Wikimedia Commons Public Domain