Online Sex Trafficking Market Has Evolved Since 2018, GAO Report Reveals
The online sex trafficking industry has become more fragmented since passage of a new federal sex trafficking law and the seizure of online sex trafficking marketplace backpage.com in 2018, according to a report released last Monday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The GAO report, which started in May 2020, reviews the
online commercial sex market from 2014 through 2020, examining the US
Department of Justice’s enforcement efforts against online sex trafficking and
the extent to which federal criminal cases have been brought against
traffickers under the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking
Act of 2017 (FOSTA).
Investigators highlighted two events in April of 2018 that
have disrupted traffickers’ business online.
First, federal authorities seized backpage.com, a classified
ads site akin to Craigslist, which had been the largest online marketplace for
commercial sex. And second, Congress passed the FOSTA-SESTA package, which
established criminal penalties for people promoting prostitution and sex
trafficking through operating or owning online platforms.
A market for commercial sex has proliferated on the
Internet. The GAO’s interviews with Department of Justice officials found that
“nearly all federal cases brought against sex traffickers involve an online
dimension, whether that be recruitment of victims, advertisements to solicit
buyers, reviews of providers, or communications among parties involved.”
In 2019, defendants used the internet as their primary means
of soliciting buyers in 84 percent of federal sex trafficking cases and
recruited 37 percent of their sex trafficking victims online.
Most online advertisements for commercial sex are posted on
easily accessed sites most people can visit, as opposed to the dark web, the
report said. That might be because the success of commercial online sex markets
depends on their ability to easily connect buyers and sellers.
Since the passage of FOSTA and the takedown of backpage.com
occurred within days of each other, it’s not possible to attribute changes in
the market to one event or the other.
Nevertheless, the report said that these events have led to
the “relocation of platforms overseas, fragmentation of the market, and
increased use of hobby board and sugar dating platforms.” (Sugar dating refers
to sites that connect young women with older clients willing to pay them for
their time, which may or may not include sex).
After 2018, managers of online platforms promoting sex
trafficking moved their platforms overseas, largely to Europe, to dodge US
prosecutors. Since backpage.com was taken offline, no single platform has
emerged to dominate the market.
According to the report, FBI officials say there has also
been an increase in the use of “hobby board platforms” — that is, sites which
allow buyers to review and discuss commercial sex services in discussion
forums. The CEO of childsafe.ai, an artificial intelligence platform designed
to protect children from online traffickers, told auditors that hobby boards
present a way to check the “legitimacy and reputation” of sellers in light of
an increase in spam and advertising scams.
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