The founders have been ad hominem attacked but they are big in civil rights [3], personal freedoms and started the New Times and Village Voice alternative media which is a check on authority [1][2], Backpage was originally the New Times classified section.
The government filter/firewall is the authoritarian goal in this journey. Backpage and SESTA/FOSTA are solely about censorship and a step towards the internet filter/firewall [4].
Meanwhile Backpage really only added a filter to block words as any profanity/bad word filter does per direction from the government and lawyers [5].
The Backpage report claims of 'trafficking' amounts to simply a profanity filter that backpage created to PREVENT people posting bad ads or possible 'trafficking' not encouraging it [5].
The report says Backpage 'knowingly concealed evidence of criminality' for removing bad terms being posted due to a profanity/word filter? They didn't want people posting ads with these terms because they were bad words, not that they supported it[5].
That argument is like saying, because a site profanity filter removed racial slurs that the site was 'knowingly concealing evidence of racism'.
New Times has been kicking up dust on authoritarianism since the 70s. Lacey and Larkin also won a lawsuit against Arizona as recently as 2013 for false arrest which is still used to attack them [1][7]. They had exposed Sheriff Joe Arpaio's real estate corruption and his home address was in the article and is public information. Arpaio demanded all information on every visitor to the website, the article and previous articles about him for who knows what, they refused and published that and they were arrested for not turning over private user data for merely reading an article about Arpaio [7].
> In December 2013, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay Phoenix New Times founders Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin $3.75 million to settle their false arrest lawsuit against the county defendants.
Massive authoritarian overreach is happening on the internet from many sides.
When authoritarian overreaches begin, you first go towards censorship, attacking civil rights, alternative media and funders of rights.
The crazy thing is they literally had these guys in a jail cell in the courtroom [6] like they were Hannibal Lecter, it feels very authoritarian and a bit scary considering their civil rights / alternative media / anti-war background and they merely ran a website [6]. The money laundering charges are because they tried to move ownership of the site offshore due to authoritarian overreach attacking it [5][6].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_New_Times
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Voice_Media
[3] http://www.laceyandlarkinfronterafund.org/
[4] https://www.wired.com/2017/04/internet-censorship-is-advanci...
[5] https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Backpage%20Report...
[6] http://time.com/5233804/backpage-prostitution-money-launderi...