The epic battle that several American mothers are waging on behalf of their middle-school daughters, victims of sex trafficking on Backpage.com, the adult classifieds section that for years was part of the iconic Village Voice.
Not to sound insensitive, but I did not find the part of this film about trafficking all that interesting. In fact, it was largely glossed over. The girls were not kidnapped and could have gone home at any time. A more interesting question would be why this lifestyle appealed to them. Not to excuse the pimps by any means, but what more can we do at home to prevent girls from thinking this is a wise choice? But I did find the issues about the legality of running such a website quite interesting. After seeing the film, I went to the website and sure enough it is incredibly obvious that the "escorts" and "massage parlors" listed are fake. There was nothing quite as explicit as the film showed, and nothing suggesting underage women... but despite that, it was apparent that if Backpage wanted to remove such content, it would be really, really easy to police. So why do they not do it?
Not to sound insensitive, but I did not find the part of this film about trafficking all that interesting. In fact, it was largely glossed over. The girls were not kidnapped and could have gone home at any time. A more interesting question would be why this lifestyle appealed to them. Not to excuse the pimps by any means, but what more can we do at home to prevent girls from thinking this is a wise choice? But I did find the issues about the legality of running such a website quite interesting. After seeing the film, I went to the website and sure enough it is incredibly obvious that the "escorts" and "massage parlors" listed are fake. There was nothing quite as explicit as the film showed, and nothing suggesting underage women... but despite that, it was apparent that if Backpage wanted to remove such content, it would be really, really easy to police. So why do they not do it?