Will Backpage Come Back

If you were using Backpage frequently you have heard about it seizure. It has been shut down by the federal authorities with the accusation of illegal sex trafficking ads. Now, if you try to enter Backpage.com you will see the message: “Backpage.com and affiliated websites have been seized.” and that is as far as you can go.
Since 2010 Backpage had come to prominence and quickly reached to the second place for classified ads websites. This happened because Craigslist closed it's adult services section and Backpage quickly took its place and a successor of the field. As you can understand the money that this site was making were really big. It is rumored that Backpage made more than $100 million in revenue per year for the sex adds alone. Federal authorities claim that on this platform were posted more than 1 million prostitution ads per day.
Something like that could never go without coming to the federal government's attention. In 2017 Backpage was seized and more than 1000 thousand people associated with its sex trafficking ads were arrested. Among them were all the leading officials of the website.
Now, two years later, Backpage is still down and there is no plan for it to return. The charges that were made against Backpage and its officials are too heavy to be allowed to continue its operation. But this has another unintended side effect. The number of sex workers that were using Backpage as a platform for their ads was enormous. The use of this website to find clients gave them the chance to screen the clients much better and thus have a much safer work environment than working in the streets.
When Backpage seized its operation, they lost that safe heaven and the majority of them are forced back to the street. That involves a much higher percentage of risk as they are no longer able to carefully screen their clients. While prostitution is illegal in the U.S. the sure thing that there is the demand and supply out there and wherever those two are present there will always be someone ready to take risks and make money out of it.
We believe that Backpage is not coming back anytime but soon there will be other platforms out there that will facilitate sex trafficking ads. As we mentioned before it is the simple law of demand and supply. Probably, the best thing that the federal government can do is control that traffic in order to provide a safe environment for both clients and workers and not try to stop it as it is pretty much impossible.