TARU mentions finding an ad on Craigslist's personals section from a few years ago offering Anthony's services as a "model". From its founding in 1995 Craigslist had both a personals section and a section titled erotic services intended for adults to use for both dating and casual sexual encounters. In response to both public and legal criticism from state governments that ads on the erotic services section were largely being used for prostitution, in 2008 Craigslist closed the erotic services section in the United States and replaced it with an adult services section with ads reviewed by Craigslist employees. In 2010 Craigslist closed the adult services section entirely in the United States due to complaints from several state attorney generals that the section's ads were facilitating prostitution and child sex trafficking; they also closed the page in Canada due to public pressure, even though prostitution is legal there. They released a statement that they felt being forced to close the section was a violation of the First Amendment, but they were doing so anyways because they were a small, privately owned company who couldn't afford to fight legal battles against state governments while also fighting the court of public opinion. Free speech and some sex crime victim advocates criticized the removal of the section, saying that it threatened free speech and that it diminished law enforcement's ability to track criminals. While there was never any doubt that the section was being used to some degree for prostitution and sex trafficking it also served as a great tool for FBI and law enforcement to track down these criminals, as those using Craigslist usually weren't very good at covering their tracks and were much easier to track. Some sources in the FBI's Crimes Against Children Unit said closing Craigslist's adult services section wasn't going to do anything to reduce sex trafficking as these people will just post ads on other sites on the dark web that are much harder to trace, making their job even harder to do. They mentioned the company had been a huge asset to their unit, with founder Craig Newmark being given an award from the FBI in 2015 for his ongoing cooperation with law enforcement to fight human trafficking; adding that it's a shame the public & legislature seemed to always forget how much Newmark had helped them fight they very thing they wanted stopped and were more interested in placing blame. When the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act was signed into law on April 11, 2018, Craigslist chose to close its personals section entirely within the US to avoid civil lawsuits; the company released a statement saying that the First Amendment gives people the right to place things like personal ads and the law says they aren't legally culpable for the ads other people post on their site, but the law also doesn't prevent civil suits from being brought against them, despite the fact they hadn't broken the law, so having the personal section jeopardized all their other services.
