According to internal Facebookreviewed by CNN, the platform has been struggling for years to combat content related to human trafficking , and especially what it calls “domestic servitude”: “a form of human trafficking for the purpose of work in homes through the use of force, fraud, coercion, or deception.”
The company has known since at least 2018 that human traffickers were using its platforms in this way. The problem was so severe that in 2019 Apple threatened to remove Facebook and Instagram from the App Store. That would have been a major blow to Facebook, which reaches hundreds of millions of users each year through the App Store. Facebook employees rushed to remove the problematic content and make emergency changes to the company’s policies to avoid what they described as “potentially serious” consequences for the business.
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But while Facebook has managed to allay Apple’s concerns and avoid removal from the app store, human trafficking still exists on the platform. Internal Facebook documents describe women trafficked as physically and sexually abused, deprived of food and pay, and having their travel documents taken away so they can’t escape. Earlier this year, an internal Facebook report noted that “gaps continue to exist in identifying entities on the platform that engage in domestic slavery.” Essentially, Facebook is being used to recruit, buy, and sell what the Facebook documents call “domestic slaves.”
Last week, CNN identified active Instagram accounts purporting to be offering domestic helpers for sale. These accounts were similar to accounts that Facebook researchers had flagged and removed. Facebook removed the accounts and posts after CNN reported them, and spokesman Andy Stone confirmed that they violated Facebook's policies.
“We prohibit human exploitation,” Stone said. “We have been combating human trafficking on our platform for many years, and our goal remains to prevent anyone who seeks to exploit others using our platform.”
The above was revealed to CNN through an examination of internal Facebook documents recently leaked to the media and Congress by whistleblower Frances Haugen. In addition to information about human trafficking content, the documents also discuss the company's approach to misinformation and hate speech, internal research into algorithms, communications related to the Capitol attack and more.
Regarding human trafficking, Haugen representatives wrote: “Investors would be very interested to know the truth about Facebook nearly losing access to the Apple App Store due to its failure to stop human trafficking content on its products.”
Stone directed CNN to a letter Facebook sent last summer to several United Nations representatives about its efforts to combat human trafficking on its platform. In the letter, the company notes that domestic slavery content is “rarely reported to us by users.”
“To address these challenges… we have also developed technology that can proactively find and take action against content related to domestic slavery,” Facebook said in the letter. “Using it, we have been able to identify and remove over 4,000 pieces of such content in Arabic and English, since January 2020.”
Earlier this month, Facebook's Vice President of Communications, John Pinette, said that presenting just a few pieces of evidence from millions of internal documents should not be enough to draw negative conclusions about the company.
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How the story with Apple began
In autumn 2019, the BBC approached Facebook about an investigation it was soon to publish into an illegal online marketplace for domestic helpers – which operated in part through Instagram. In response, Facebook removed 703 Instagram profiles that promoted domestic servitude, but “due to insufficient reporting of this behaviour and a lack of proactive detection”, many more such profiles remained on the platform.
Following the BBC investigation, Apple contacted Facebook on October 23, 2019, threatening to remove its apps from the App Store for hosting content that facilitated human trafficking. In an internal document from November 2019, a Facebook employee explained the actions the company took over a week to mitigate the threat, including removing accounts and proactively screening content.
“Removing our apps from Apple platforms would have potentially serious consequences for the business,” the document states. “To mitigate this risk, a large task force has been formed that operates around the clock to implement the response strategy.”
However, according to the internal investigation, Facebook was aware of the existence of content promoting human trafficking even before the BBC investigation.
In March 2018, Facebook employees flagged Instagram profiles dedicated to selling domestic workers. However, no action was taken at the time to address the content, as it was deemed not to violate the company's policies.
Stone, the Facebook spokesman, said that there was a policy to prevent human exploitation before, but it became stricter after.
Internal Facebook documents show that the platform launched a more expansive “Human Exploitation Policy” on May 29, 2019, which banned content that promoted slavery and human exploitation.
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In September 2019, a Facebook employee posted on the company’s internal website a summary of an investigation into a human trafficking ring that used Facebook apps to facilitate the sale and sexual exploitation of at least 20 potential victims. The criminal network used more than 100 fake Facebook and Instagram accounts to recruit women from various countries and used Messenger and WhatsApp to coordinate the women’s transportation to Dubai, where they were forced to work in alleged “massage centers.”
The company removed all pages and accounts associated with the trafficking ring, according to the report.
Facebook human trafficking: The problem continues
More recent documents show that despite Facebook's efforts to promptly remove this content, the problem still exists.
A report from January 2020 states that “the platform enables all three stages of human exploitation (recruitment, facilitation, exploitation) through complex networks.” Traffickers from “labor recruitment agencies” used “FB, IG, Pages, Messenger and WhatsApp profiles to promote victims for sale and arrange purchases, sales and other fees,” the document said of a human trafficking network it uncovered.
In a February 2021 report, researchers found that recruitment agencies often communicated with victims via instant messaging, but rarely posted inappropriate content, making them difficult to track down.
Stone said the company has implemented interventions on the platform to remind job seekers of their rights and has information in the Help Center for users who encounter human trafficking content.
Source: CNN International
