How Backpage Became MILFS.com
The Backpage.com URL now redirects to MILFS.com, a webcamming platform that offers users live erotic chat and pornographic shows with a cornucopia of women who may or may not actually be moms.
In case anyone isn’t aware, here’s what the acronym MILF stands for…though as Julian Sanchez quipped on BlueSky, perhaps in this instance, it could also stand for “Moms I’d Like to Federally Seize.”
Backpage was once a thriving platform for classified advertisements, particularly favored by people posting “adult” ads. But the federal government decided there was too much free speech happening on Backpage, so it seized the website and put its founders and executives on trial for facilitating prostitution.
From April 6, 2018, until very recently, visitors to Backpage.com would be greeted by the logos of several federal agencies and a notice stating: “backpage.com and affiliated websites have been seized as part of an enforcement action by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division.” It looked like this:
Here’s what visitors to Backpage.com today will see:
How did Backpage.com come to be redirected to MILFS.com?
It seems as if the feds let the Backpage.com domain name lapse, and ICF Technology—the company behind MILFS.com—snapped it up.
According to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Backpage.com registry information was updated on February 21, 2025 and again on February 24.
The site is now registered to NameBrightPrivacy.com, but this is a proxy.
“Proxy services allow a domain name to keep certain identity and contact details from appearing in public Whois information,” notes ICANN. “The proxy service becomes the registered name holder of record, and its identity and contact information is displayed in Whois data.”
ICANN lists the Backpage.com registrar—the entity responsible for registering and maintaining a domain name—as DropCatch.com, a domain auction site.
“Each day, thousands of domain names fail to be renewed and become available to the public,” the DropCatch website states. “A small percentage of these domains have a high value potential, so they can be utilized for monetization or development.” DropCatch snaps up these high-value domains and auctions them off.
It’s unclear how much the Backpage.com domain went for. ICF Technology did not respond to my requests for comment.
It’s also unclear whether the federal government intentionally let the Backpage.com lapse or whether it was an oversight. It’s not even clear what agency would be responsible for the maintenance of seized domains. The FBI did not provide comment.
In any event, it’s unbelievable that authorities would have simply let such a high-profile and controversial domain name expire. Surely, they could have found a nonprofit group in alignment with the government’s goals to take it—a group opposed to sex work or an anti-trafficking group. Or the government could have held onto it and had it redirect to something like the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
Yes, the idea that Backpage mainly or intentionally facilitated sex trafficking is a myth. But it’s a myth that was pushed by government actors for more than a decade. From the feds’ perspective, wouldn’t redirecting the Backpage website to an anti-trafficking resource make sense?
Simply letting Backpage.com go up for auction seems like a missed opportunity for federal authorities, both in terms of money and message promotion. But, boy, what a win for MILFS.com and for irony.
On some level, Backpage.com now redirecting to MILFS.com is hilarious. After all the time that authorities spent preening about stopping sex work by taking down Backpage, the website now leads to a platform wholly and explicitly devoted to selling sexuality. And the MILFS.com website also links to Cougar.com, a membership platform that bills itself as facilitating “passionate interactions.” The situation exposes the lie at the center of the misguided crusade against Backpage—the idea that the government taking down one website could ever stop or even make a dent in people engaging in and seeking sex work.
But, on another level, the way this turned out just makes me angry.
The government put Backpage’s founders and former executives through hell for years because they provided a forum for adult advertising. Two of them are currently in prison. One is out on bail but still facing prison. One is dead, having taken his own life after years of being “backed into a corner, and pretty much impoverished” by what he saw as a “political prosecution” stemming from his years as a government-critical newspaper publisher.
Federal authorities claimed all along that this was about stopping Backpage’s facilitation of prostitution—not a political prosecution over Backpage founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin’s years of publishing sometimes spicy newspapers or mocking and exposing powerful politicians. Not an act of vengeance against Larkin and Lacey for daring, loudly and repeatedly, to tell the government that they wouldn’t squelch protected speech.
Then the government went and let a new group of tech executives facilitate people peddling companionship and sex through Backpage.com. After everything the feds put Lacey, Larkin, and their colleagues through—not to mention the many sex workers who relied on Backpage—they couldn’t even keep up the charade that it made a difference.
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