Report: Most Online Sex Trafficking Recruitment Cases Occur On Facebook

Facebook has long struggled to keep bad actors off its platform, but the problem may be even worse than previously thought. The Human Trafficking Institute released its annual report this week, revealing that an astonishing 59 percent of all online sex trafficking recruitment occurs on Facebook, and 65 percent of child exploitation.

“The internet has become the dominant tool that traffickers use to recruit victims, and they often recruit them on a number of very common social networking websites,” said Victor Boutros, CEO of the Human Trafficking Institute. “Facebook overwhelmingly is used by traffickers to recruit victims in active sex trafficking cases.”

For its part, Facebook said that this content is obviously not allowed, and that it relies on technology to detect and remove it before it can reach users.

“Sex trafficking and child exploitation are abhorrent and we don’t allow them on Facebook,” the social media giant said in response. “We have policies and technology to prevent these types of abuses and take down any content that violates our rules.”

However, if the majority of online sex trafficking content lives on Facebook, it’s clear the platform still has a lot of work to do to clean up the problem.




Recommended Resources

bitdefender The Choice of Tech Experts Worldwide. Try 90 days free of Bitdefender and experience the highest level of digital safety.

PIA Surf the web truly incognito. Try Bitdefender Premium VPN, the ultra-fast VPN that keeps your online identity and activities safe from hackers, ISPs and snoops.

System Mechanic 14 – Make your computer run like new. Winner of 200+ Editor’s Choice awards!

Lawsuit Wants Facebook To Be Held Responsible For Ad Discrimination Previous post Lawsuit Wants Facebook To Be Held Responsible For Ad Discrimination Expert: Facebook Users Should Have The Power To Decide Who Is Banned Next post Expert: Facebook Users Should Have The Power To Decide Who Is Banned