Seattle Weekly’s Parent Company Will Make Changes to Prevent Child Prostitution, but McGinn Says That’s Still Not Enough

Backpage.com will take four steps to prevent its adult services website, which is owned by Village Voice Media (VVM), from being used as a vehicle for child prostitution, according to a 12-page letter the company sent to the city yesterday. But Mayor Mike McGinn, who has been pressuring the company to change its practices to stop an outbreak of child prostitution cases linked to the website, today counters that those reforms are inadequate. He still wants the company to perform in-person ID checks—and will maintain the city’s boycott on VVM-owned Seattle Weekly until they do.

“In-person age verification with a signed model release is the single most effective means of ensuring that persons appearing in adult services ads are of legal age,” McGinn writes.

Backpage.com’s letter is here and the city’s reply is here.

McGinn had requested in July that the company make four changes: (1) monitor its website for suspected child prostitution; (2) conduct age verification; (3) allow the Seattle Police Department to train Backpage.com employees; and (4) cooperate with detectives who seek assistance.

In response, Backpage.com says it already has or will agree to: (1) hire hundreds of employees to comb the site for suspected cases of child prostitution, ban tens of thousands of words from web ads, and implement other oversight to catch illegal activity; (2) implement online age-verification systems similar to those used for selling alcohol and tobacco; (3) allow Seattle police to train its employees by phone; and (4) cooperate with law enforcement in investigations.

But the company stops short of enacting in-person ID checks. Comparing its business to Facebook and Twitter, the company says it would be impractical and unrealistic for a customer of a national internet-based company to travel hundreds of miles to the company’s nearest brick-and-mortar building. “It is true that there would be far fewer misrepresentations on Facebook if users had to sign up in person,” writes Backpage.com vice president Carl Ferrer. “But it would also be the end of Facebook.”

“Your company is in the business of selling sex ads,” McGinn counters. “Your services are a direct vehicle to prostitution… It is not unreasonable to ask you to devote a higher degree of care to screening ads for these services.”

But even if the company did check IDs in person, Backpage.com argues, “Asking our staff millions of times each month to compare a fuzzy thumbnail sized image on a Photo ID that may be years old or even fake to a recent image posted online by a user is impossible to do with any kind of accuracy.” Instead, an online system can identify duplicates more effectively than a person. That sort of system, which the company is willing to create, would verify ages “by tapping into the same types of government databases utilized by Seattle police.”

McGinn has “asked the Seattle Police to further review the on-line technologies you have identified, but I believe these should be a supplement, and not a substitute, for in-person age verification,” he says. In-person age verification is required for ads that appear The Stranger, McGinn has noted in the past.

But Ferrer says, “Comparing the local business plan of the Seattle Stranger to the worldwide, multi-millions of users of Backpage.com is like comparing the practices of a corner bookstore to Amazon.com.”

He further laments: “Unfortunately, the problem of prostitution is as old as we have existed as people.”

Aaron Pickus, the mayor’s spokesman, says McGinn is unsatisfied with the response and will maintain the city’s boycott on the company’s local subsidiary. “We are continuing not to spend taxpayer dollars for adverting in the Seattle Weekly or any other Village Voice Media entity,” Pickus says. McGinn is working with state lawmakers to determine if the legislature could pass a bill next year to “improve practices.”