Doesn’t the three-letters do that like… all the time? That’s basically the definition of honeypotting

As I recall, the FBI did exactly that fairly recently, when they pwned some credit card trading site and ran it themselves for years.

They ran a child porn dark web site for two weeks:

"Playpen was a notorious darknet child pornography website that operated from August 2014 to March 2015.[1][2] The website operated through a hidden service through the Tor network which allowed users to use the website anonymously. After running the website for 6 months, the website owner Steven W. Chase was captured by the FBI. After his capture, the FBI continued to run the website for another 13 days as part of Operation Pacifier." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playpen_(website)

Australian police did the same thing with another captured site, for more than six months if I recall correctly. They actually even posted material to it themselves in status updates impersonating the admins, because the admins who set up the site had established that protocol because they believed police would never do that…

Seems reasonable to me. Limited timespan to gather information with potentially large payoff.

I don't agree with "entrapment" arguments and "faciliting spread" here. The site was already up, and the users were going to go there regardless. Running it for a week or two more is at worst marginal harm, considering it was already there for a good 6 months.

I don't think entrapment is the problem here - it's that the government is distributing child porn. It's still wrong even if the government is doing it. The ends don't justify the means.

The real tragedy is it had a massive chilling effect on other sites.

A major escort site (not BP) was ethically ran by a retired sex worker. The site sold out of fear of prosecution and the new owner is a horrible person in my opinion.

"the government" isn't a single person with consistent motives.

half the government wants to keep sex work illegal and doesn't really want to stop trafficking that much.

Yes, and at least a few of them want it still available for them.

I thought the issue with backpage was that they were actively editing / editorializing prostitution ads to increase traffic. Even if they were helping the government they crossed the line from being a neutral carrier to actively aiding prostitution.

A better analogy would be overlooking the weed in your CI's yard because he turns in meth cookers.

The only reason for the government to see it that way is because someone powerful wanted them to.