Much of the trafficking on Facebook and Instagram was happening in non-public areas of the platforms, such as Facebook Messenger and private Instagram accounts, I would learn later. Traffickers were searching for teens to target and groom, and to later advertise to sex buyers.
Sex trafficking is the use of force, fraud or coercion in the buying and selling of non-consensual sex acts, whether or not travel is involved. Under international law, children cannot legally consent to any kind of sex act, therefore anyone who profits from or pays for a sex act from a child – including profiting from or paying for photographs depicting sexual exploitation – is considered a human trafficker.
I have no dount that what I would call sex trafficking – the capture, transportation and sale of children for the purpose of rape – dopes happen and that some of it gets discussed or even organised upon Facebook. I’d think it’s a fairly rare crime as there aren’t all that many people who get off on raping children.
But do you see how they’ve elided that definition of sex trafficking? So, kids cannot consent. Piccies – because no consent – defined as exploitation. So, selling piccies of a 17 year old showing her nekkid titties is sex trafficking.
I’m even willing to be persuaded that flogging piccies of 17 year old nekkid titties is a problem but I’d still insist that it’s something very different indeed from sex trafficking.
I was able to pull transcripts of sale negotiations for teen girls that traffickers were engaging in on Facebook Messenger, the private messaging function. In exhibit documents, there were pictures of trafficking victims being advertised for sale in Instagram’s Stories function. Money and logistics had been discussed. In the cases we found, none of these crimes had been detected or flagged by Meta.
And that’s a wholly different issue. How much is the phone company responsible for crimes planned in phone calls?
‘ I’d think it’s a fairly rare crime as there aren’t all that many people who get off on raping children.‘
We’re importing them by the boatload every day.
Keeping in line with the USA, it is now law that naughty images have to be of consenting over 18s, even of oneself. Fair enough.
To get by this, pictures of schoolgirls are purposefully not naughty, but enough to tempt the perv. I’ve seen such pictures on Instagram and complained about them, but IG’s bot can’t see the problem.
Also I see complaints from TV presenters that their published pictures are being used for not very deep at all fake sex pics. It prompted me to think “Well dear, if you weren’t pouting and bending over etc to your iPhone so much, perhaps it would not be quite so easy to create the fake pictures.”
I have gone cold turkey on social media now. Enough Doom scrolling, I am going back to shouting at people on buses.
“And that’s a wholly different issue. How much is the phone company responsible for crimes planned in phone calls?”
There was probably a time when writers complained about cars, because they allowed cads and bounders to do unspeakable things with young ladies.
The question with most of this is, can you actually stop the trade by (sorta) willing participants? 19% of women in the UK lost their virginity before the age of 16. Without crunching numbers too hard, that’s thousands of 15 year olds in every town shagging. How hard would it be to find one that would willingly take £100 to get naked on camera? Now, I’m not saying that men should be doing that. Girls can’t legally consent. But knowing some of the slappers I knew, they would take the money with a smile. At which point, who is going to go to the police? They don’t see themselves as victims, but as someone who got nice shoes in exchange for what they show lots of lads.
The force against this was always parents, not the state or businesses. Mothers watching what their daughters were up to, and dads who could kick the shit out of a bloke. It’s why no-one used to care that much about rockstars shagging jailbait, because they’d just view it as a tragedy that the girl hadn’t been parented right.
The likes of The Guardian see everything in terms of the state or businesses. Expand the state, put more regulations on business, even though it’s generally worthless in many situations.
There’s a reason Terry Thomas was oft shown in an open top sports car.
Girls beware of cads & founders indeed
That just reminded me of the Doris Thatcher joke in Hot Fuzz.
“Must have hit the sign at some speed. Took the whole top off.”
“I’ve had my top off in this lay-by.
Moral Guardians *did* complain about bicycles as it allowed youngsters to meet up unsupervisored. Oh no! They may *do* things! You see how it is repeated every time in history whenever people have the ability to travel, horrified prodnoses try to ban it.
The geneticist Steve Jones reckoned the bicycle was the most important invention in recent human evolution as lads could go chasing girls further away, improving genetic diversity.
Oh, so the Graun’s started caring about kids who get raped now?
Weirdly, if 12-year-old girls are bundled into taxis outside schools in Yorkshire and taken to rooms above chip shops to be force-fed Blue Wkd and banged senseless by lots of cousins, they’re prostitutes and anyone who says otherwise is evil.
Zactly what I was going to say.
As always with the commies, the issue is not the issue. They pretend to care about this issue so they can stop free speech and easy communication on platforms.
I believe Sam Fox was 16 when she first posed topless for the Sun. Does this mean that everyone who bought the news paper back then was guilty of sex trafficking?
It would be a hard case to win even for Sam Fox herself as according to reports she was smart enough to hire a lawyer to assist with the contract negotiation. She most definitely wasn’t being exploited.
I wonder whether it would be legal to own or offer for sale a copy of the Blind Faith album of 1965ish. Or see a picture of the sleeve.
I do sometimes wonder what newspaper archives do about this.
Do they have to employ someone who does the black marker equivalent of the Victorian fig leaf?
Well, lets face it, Meta is happy to censor all sorts of content it thought of as “insufficiently woke”. So IMHO, if Meta wants common carrier protections, it needs to knock that stuff off. If not, then it’s going to be losing billions in lawsuits and I’m cool with that 🙂
Agreed. The very nature of ‘platforms’ is to not be involved with content. Like the phone company, as Tim points out. The legal difference between them and publishers.
Which infuriates the commies. Pre-Musk Twitter had government agents on premise managing content. Just like a publisher. Post Musk it was found government had their hands in all the cookie jars.
If no travel is involved, why is it called “trafficking”?
Given the state of British roads, these days traffic often doesn’t involve any actual travel.
Why do you park in a driveway? And drive in a parkway?
I’ll get my coat.