Excerpt: An investigation into sexual exploitation and trafficking within Meta technology.
Discussions of technological advancements such as social media platforms often center around the same set of pros and cons – connection and communication, but also isolation and cyberbullying. However, in recent years, a much darker side to these powerful communicative tools has come to light: digital sex trafficking and exploitation.
Digital sexual exploitation takes on many different forms. These include sexually explicit messages, photos and videos; grooming; and the treatment of social media platforms as a marketplace for the selling and buying of sexual services.
The Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking cites perceived distance and safety as a key reason for individuals to accept message requests, gifts, and communication from strangers online. However, it is this perception of safety that leads to the very opposite in actuality, providing strangers access to the bodies and lives of those vulnerable to sex trafficking.
At the start of 2023, the United States launched a full-scale investigation into sexual exploitation taking place through Meta’s social media platforms. The findings of that investigation led to a lawsuit in March of 2023 against Facebook and Meta for their failure to address and protect those facing digital sex trafficking and exploitation on their apps.
The lawsuit alleges that both entities knew the extent to which sexual exploitation was occurring on their platforms and yet failed to document and de-escalate the problem. Almost 100,000 children per day receive unsolicited and targeted sexually explicit materials and harassment. Law officials and investigative leads assert, according to a string of emails uncovered as part of the lawsuit, that Meta sent warnings out to their company officials cautioning that sexual abuse on the platforms was becoming an increasingly widespread problem. Despite this, those in power at Meta failed to implement preventative policies and safeguards.
Moreover, perceptive differences in explicit content concerning children on social media platforms, as compared to traditional understandings of pornography sites, complicates public understandings of the issue. According to the lawsuit, sexually explicit content of children is “10 times more prevalent on Facebook and Instagram,” compared to traditional pornography sites. This figure vastly opposes mainstream media and the general population’s perspectives on the saturation of child pornography across digital medias.
The characteristics of the abuse undergone mostly by children, and predominantly girls, on Meta’s platforms includes payments for services and the requesting and sharing of explicit content. In an investigation into Meta’s connection to sex trafficking, The Guardian uncovered the case of a twelve year old girl, under the pseudonym Maya Jones for anonymity. Maya Jones was manipulated by an older man through Instagram direct messages, into sharing naked photos in exchange for $40. The photo exchanges soon escalated to the man using those photos to advertise Maya on Instagram; arranging meetups between Maya and ‘interested’ men and negotiating prices for sex. Maya’s abuser used compliments and threats to control and manipulate her in a discreet manner that went unnoticed by Instagram’s censors and Maya’s circle. She eventually received help from a sex trafficking center in her hometown of Washington D.C., after being found outside a motel where one of the meetups arranged by her abuser had escalated into the drugging and gang raping of Maya.
As was the case with Maya, these payments are often so small that they go undetected by Meta’s flagging software. This may point to an intentional misuse of these platforms. Creators seem to be aware of their technology being used for these purposes, yet simultaneously fail to increase security to intercept such occurrences. Such ignorance to one of the most prominent problems of the 21st century, further widens the gap between innocent victims and services they can access for help.
A common pattern with this sexual exploitation is men initiating digital relationships with young girls in countries abroad for sexual and monetary gain. They will often request content and sexual relations in exchange for payments, which as a result of the conversion rates between countries, leads to small amounts failing to be detected by Meta’s software. These relationships are often developed through a power imbalance where men of Western or wealthier nations are illegally pursuing girls from lower income countries. In more extreme cases, sex trafficking on these platforms occurs when the perpetrators arrange travel and in-person meetups where they can kidnap and sell the children they met through Meta’s platforms.
According to a spokesperson for Meta, the organization “[supports] law enforcement in its efforts to prosecute these criminals and invest in the best tools and expert teams to detect and respond to suspicious activity.” However, they purposefully stray from acknowledging their own responsibility as a corporate entity with significant influence in preventing sexual exploitation on their platforms. Who the responsibility for such heinous crimes falls on is still a widely debated topic and a key facet of the recent Meta/United States Government lawsuit. In any case, the most effective preventative measures result from a combination of governmental policy and corporate action. More intensive policy changes are needed to empower corporate agencies to act on their promises for free and fair technology.
Digital sex trafficking, abuse, and exploitation is “among the most misunderstood crimes that affect society today,” for its complicated and relatively new nature. Unlike traditional crimes which have plagued societies for generations, the induction of media into sex crimes is a newer concept and as such, preventative initiatives continue to be debated over and changed. Sexual abuse online is an intensely convoluted problem which requires an even more robust and extensive solution; one which can only be adopted with the combined effort of governmental agencies and corporate power.
Edited by Willa Morrison
Sophie Hill joined the Catalyst team in September 2023 and is her first year at McGill University studying International Development Communications. Her research interests include media, culture, technology, international conflict and global justice. Sophie aims to approach her writing from an ethical perspective and seeks to provide analysis using a variety of diverse sources to educate and inspire Catalyst readers.