Sex Trafficking Essay

Considering the fact that many trafficking victims are being forced to sell their bodies on Backpage.com, it is understandable that many people would want the website to be taken down. Backpage.com was launched in 2004 and has infamously become one of the largest classified advertising websites in the world. On a typical classified advertising site, users have the ability to post and search for housing, vehicle, or job advertisements. Ads for personal activities such as dating or sex can be found as well. Although it was unintended, Backpage.com’s “adult” section eventually became a hotspot for illegal prostitution as well as the sex trafficking of young women and children. Backpage was completely aware of the trafficking that was happening

An investigation determined that the site knowingly profited as its revenue increased “from $5.3 million in 2008 to $135 million in 2014” (Ovalle) and the company “failed to use algorithms and other ‘readily available measures’ to reduce the number of children advertised for sex; and it did all that with the aim of dominating the market” (Syre). On top of that, “‘Backpage...knowingly concealed evidence of criminality by systematically editing’ its ads to disguise the fact that they involve prostitution and child sex trafficking” (Aradillas 70). The site helped to perpetuate sex trafficking sales by filtering out words in ads that would draw attention from law enforcement such as, “young,” “schoolgirl,” and “rape.” For these reasons, it is unsurprising that people are fighting to get the website shut down along with many sex trafficking victims suing

Sex traffickers have progressed from luring victims in person, to messaging them on social media. They frequently use social media as a way to trick vulnerable people into working for them, but this can be used as a method to catch sex traffickers. Many sex traffickers use social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc to form relationships with victims, deceiving them into thinking that there is a real connection. They may also trick victims by promising them jobs. However, in May of 2016, two teenaged girls were able to turn the tables in their mission against sex trafficking. Tejasweeta Pradhan and Shivani Gond “took it upon themselves and helped the police smash a cross-border human trafficking racket, leading to the arrest of suspects in the cases of missing girls from both India and Nepal” (Krishnan). Pradhan and Gond were able to meet a conduit of a trafficking ring after creating a fake Facebook persona to pose as a girl looking for work. This would have been a dangerous thing to do alone but since the police were in on the mission, they were able to help the girls and arrest the traffickers at the meetup. Catching traffickers through social media takes a large amount of time and is difficult to do unless the traffickers are the ones to initiate contact, but Pradhan and Gond’s commitment prove that this method is not completely