from the tragic-end dept

Some unfortunate news. AZ Central reported yesterday that James Larkin, who was a free speech pioneer who built an alt-weekly newspaper empire, and then spun out the controversial classifieds ads site Backpage, died by suicide, one week before his latest trial.

While there’s been plenty of discussion about Backpage, related to questions around Section 230, sex trafficking, and a variety of other things, much of the public perception about it is completely misleading. The actual details suggest that the media, prosecutors, and some politicians basically concocted an astoundingly misleading narrative about Larkin (and his partner Michael Lacey) and what they did at Backpage.

Larkin, going back to his days running the alt weekly New Times (which eventually took over the famed Village Voice) always believed in fighting strongly for his free speech rights, including getting arrested a decade and a half ago for going public about a bullshit subpoena they had received from then-sheriff Joe Arpaio.

As some actual reporting details regarding Backpage, contrary to the public story about how Backpage was actively encouraging and enabling sex trafficking, the company worked closely with law enforcement to help them track down and arrest those responsible for sex trafficking. They literally hired a former federal prosecutor who was on the board of NCMEC to help them stop anyone from using Backpage for trafficking. In an internal note by the DOJ (which the DOJ tried to hide from the trial), it was noted:

“unlike virtually every other website that is used for prostitution and sex trafficking, Backpage is remarkably responsive to law enforcement requests and often takes proactive steps to assist in investigations.”

However, where they drew the line was when law enforcement started demanding similar help in tracking down non-trafficking consensual sex work. Larkin (and Lacey) found that to go too far. From an excellent and thorough breakdown of the situation from Wired magazine (written by a former DOJ assistant US attorney):

Lacey and Larkin say they were more than willing to help crack down on child abuse.