Backpage was seized & its owners arrested BEFORE FOSTA became law, and @WIRED & @GiladEdelman need to issue a correction
The reason this matters is because members of Congress LIED about the pretenses for passing FOSTA & rushed it through against DOJ advice so they could keep up that lie, hoping it would be signed before DOJ separately took down Backpage. They still still failed—
Trump didn’t sign FOSTA into law until after the feds had taken down Backpage. But it was close enough that many politicians are still lying — and getting journalists to play along — about FOSTA being what took Backpage, even FOSTA actually has nothing to do with that prosecution
But if people start realizing FOSTA has nothing to do with the Backpage prosecution, they might start realizing that the entire premise of FOSTA (and a whole lot more Section 230 “reform”) was also a big fat lie all along
It’s clear why authoritarians in Congress & the feds want to spread disinformation (or lies, or fake news, or propaganda, or whatever you want to call it) about Backpage & FOSTA. But I cannot understand why so many in the media seem invested in spreading it too
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CNN was one of the biggest spreaders of this erroneous story about "sex trafficking" in Florida and never issued a correction. Instead, they're doubling down on the fake news cnn.com/videos/us/2020…
CNN was also an enthusiastic spreader of this story about Josh Hawley & sex trafficking at massage parlors that turned out to be totally false. (@CNN never issued a correction here either). Do the folks there literally never learn???? reason.com/2020/07/14/sen…
What makes @CNN so invested in this fake massage parlor sex trafficking narrative, that they're willing to keep repeating despite boatloads of evidence to the contrary? And why do people treat this as somehow different than QAnon......?
While charges against Robert Kraft were dismissed, an immigrant masseuse accused of giving him a handjob has to pay $31,573 and spend a year on probation reason.com/2020/12/02/flo…
"Soliciting another to commit prostitution" cases against Kraft & other men were (rightfully) dismissed in Sept.
The three women from the spa they patronized were just sentenced
No one was ever charged with human trafficking.
In fact, women providing massages & sex acts—the group authorities said they were in it to rescue—faced the most severe charges & were the only ones ultimately convicted in this "human trafficking" bust reason.com/2020/12/02/flo…
They invoked the magic words "sex trafficking" & made a special Section 230 carve out....
And most people in media & tech policy were OK with it bc they a) are cowards who will never question anything about "trafficking" & b) don't care about & didn't listen to sex workers
There were about six people in tech & media saying HEY FOSTA IS A TEST CASE. BACKPAGE IS A TEST CASE. But even @TechFreedom was like "Well, if we just let them shit on Backpage and on sex workers, maybe they'll leave Section 230 alone otherwise...."
It was a cowardly, immoral bargain and also an incredibly naive & foolish assessment of the gov't & tech landscape. And they were all clearly and very very very very wrong.
Anatomy of Fake News: Notice that @MiamiHerald doesn't both listing what charges were brought in this "human trafficking" bust, just puts up a big dramatic headline and a lot of fluff about the "signs" of trafficking and then some police reports showing prostitution arrests...