Backpage.com
In 2004, Backpage.com, the classified ads site, was founded. It was supposed to compete with Craigslist, another classifieds site that had started almost ten years earlier. Both sites allowed users to post ads under numerous categories, like ‘pets,’ ‘jobs,’ or ‘furniture.’ Ads under those categories were free.
But for $2, Backpage users could post ads to its ‘Adult Services’ pages.
For a time, both Craigslist and Backpage hosted ads for ‘Adult Services’.
Under threat of litigation, Craigslist took down their adult services category in 2010. As a result, Wired Magazine called the website “a kind of redlight district for the internet.”
By 2013, the vast majority of Backpage’s revenue was generated by ads for sex work.
And many of those ads promoted services from minors and victims of sex trafficking, like Courtney Baldwin.
That same year, Attorney General Kamala Harris and the CA Department of Justice began a three year investigation into Backpage.com.
Former prosecutor Maggy Krell played an integral role in the investigation. With Harris’s support, Maggy put together a team of law enforcement officers and other prosecutors that spent years working, sometimes undercover, to take down Backpage.
What motivated Krell wasn’t simply that prostitution is illegal in California, it was that the sex work advertised by Backpage was largely abusive in nature. Sex workers were often exploited by pimps, didn’t get to keep their earnings, were underage, or weren’t working of their own volition.
In March of 2016, Harris’ office announced felony charges against the owners of Backpage.com.
In 2018,
Backpage.com was seized by the US Department of Justice and shut down for good.
Less than a week later, Backpage’s CEO, Carl Ferrer, pled guilty to conspiracy to facilitate prostitution and to money laundering.
Credits
Featuring: Courtney Baldwin and Maggy Krell
Production Company: Greencard Pictures
EP: Andrew Jarecki, Deacon Webster and Emily Wiedemann
Director: Zac Stuart-Pontier
Producer: Chazz Carfora
Editors: Lance Edmands and Jesse Rudoy
DP: Jeremy Mcnamara
Gaffer: Oskar Ness, Mike Fischer
AC: Rory Brennan
Sound Recordist: Kevin Crawford, Adriano Bravo
Sound Mix: Michael Odmark
Sound Assistant: Duncan Clark
Music: John Kusiak and Kenny Kusiak
Color: Esme Rogers Smith
Assistant Editor: Sediqua Francis
Archival Producer: Brennan Rees
Co-Producer: Laura Newcombe
Web Design: Remoy Philip