Christine Biederman has a detailed article in this
month’s “Wired” detailing the history of how the “fibbies” seized Backpage,
after a nearly two decade legal battle, right after FOSTA passed in April 2018.
The link is here. This has a free-article paywall (I have a
print subscription). The initial raid in
Arizona was quite sudden and broke up a wedding. The title is “Inside
Backpage.com’s vicious battle with the Feds”.
Section 230 was used to defeat most attempts to seize
it. At some point, Backpage began to “sanitize”
ads to remove keywords and memes so that they would not appear to be supporting
sex trafficking. It is arguable that such activity would have canceled their “moderation
privilege” (or “good Samaritan clause”) even under Section 230 before FOSTA. It
is certainly arguable that such behavior amounts to contributing to the crime
intentionally (it is no longer “stochastic”).
The government also used civil asset forfeiture
against Backpage to make it harder for it to defend itself legally in terms of financial
burden. Civil asset forfeiture is
unusual in free speech cases with digital assets.
The long article warns about another state
attorneys-general letter to weaken Section 230 with respect to other crimes,
including opioid distribution, identity theft (another blog in my setup),
election meddling, and a new problem, deep fakes.
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