Major credit card companies, like MasterCard and Visa, have cut ties with Backpage, withdrawing their services so that their cards can no longer be used to process payments to purchase adult ads. This occurred at Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s request for the companies to cease services with the website. Dart criticizes Backpage as fueling the sex trade and wrote in a letter to Talking Points Memo that “the use of credit cards in this violent industry implies an underserved credibility and sense of normalcy to such illicit transactions and only serves to increase demand.”
The website published 1.4 million adult services ads in April and makes $9 million per month from adult entertainment ads alone. Backpage is similar to Craigslist and contains ads for roommates, real estate, and jobs. However, while Craigslist shut down its adult services section in 2010, Backpage has received negative attention for its adult entertainment section, which has been of concern among law enforcement due to the human trafficking that has been linked to the site, according to the Washington Post.
According to the Chicago Tribune, since 2009, more than 800 arrests for sex trafficking or prostitution promotion have been made by Cook County sheriff officers by using the information gathered from ads on the site.
Law enforcers, lawmakers, and anti-trafficking groups have been pressuring the site to shut down advertisements for adult services. After the withdrawal of the credit card companies, Backpage has allowed free ad posting to adult service sections with Bitcoin for the time being.
The credit card companies’ decision to cease their services as payment options on the website can affect Backpage’s revenue if it does not quickly find another steady payment option as an alternative to Bitcoin, which “could yield a long-term win for advocates,” says Shared Hope International, an anti-trafficking group.
In 2013, the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) asked Congress to amend the Communications Decency Act (CDA) to “allow state and local government to criminally investigate and prosecute online classified ad sites that promote prostitution and child sex trafficking,” said in a statement released by the NAAG. The act was not amended as a measure to protect free speech.
