This entire episode will heavily discuss sex trafficking of both adults and minors as well as sexual assault.

Please click away if you find mentions of these topics upsetting. Thank you. Thank you. Well, it's very hip to be on the internet right now.

What is the internet?

Internet is that massive computer at work.

When the Internet was just starting to explode in popularity around the turn of the

millennia, sites like Craigslist, AOL, Yahoo, and eventually My Space took the world by storm.

Many of you probably wouldn't recognize the internet from two decades ago,

but that's not just because of the websites themselves changing.

It's also due to the laws around how we use the internet adapting and shaping our online experience today.

One of the largest and most controversial websites from the early internet, which later became a catalyst for this law changing was backpage.

This was in many ways a sort of red light districts of the internet.

It was essentially the old classifieds that you'd see in newspapers just in internet form.

You could get car parts, gig work, and rentals.

Posting these ads was free and easy to do,

so it's not hard to see the appeal.

Again, a fairly similar concept to a Craigslist

for all intents and purposes. However, Backpage also had an adult section that was only

a click of a yes I'm an 18 plus button away. It only cost two dollars to make a

post there and though the terms of the site did not allow for unlawful harmful or

obscene content people certainly jumped rope with that line.

According to Wired, some of the titles were laden with innuendo, like one that read,

Come, C-U-M, lay your hot dog on my bun for Memorial Day.

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