Human traffickers used the social network to sell victims

Apple threatened to kick Facebook from its app store after a 2019 BBC report was detailed how human traffickers used Facebook to sell victims, as the Wall Street Journal reveals.

The outlet saw company documents showing that a Facebook investigative team was tracking a Middle East human trafficking market. whose organizers used Facebook services.

What appeared to be employment agencies actually advertised domestic workers who could offer against your will, according to the Journal.

The BBC published a large covert investigation into the practice, prompting Apple to threaten to remove Facebook from its app store, the US newspaper said.

An internal memo revealed that Facebook was aware of the practice even before that: a Facebook researcher wrote in a 2019 report, “Was this problem known on Facebook before the BBC investigation and Apple’s escalation?“.

Under the question it is clearly stated: “Yes. Throughout 2018 and the first half of 2019, we conducted the global understanding exercise to fully understand how domestic servitude manifests itself on our platform throughout its lifecycle: recruitment, facilitation and exploitation ”.

The Wall Street Journal also reported on Thursday how Facebook’s artificial intelligence content moderators they cannot detect most of the languages ​​used on the platform, a necessary skill if the company wants to monitor content in the foreign markets where it has developed.

It’s problematic: The document revealed that human moderators cannot speak the languages ​​used in these markets, leaving a blind spot in the company’s efforts to crack down on harmful content.

One of the results was that drug cartels and human traffickers used the platform to conduct their business, according to the Journal.

Apple and Facebook did not immediately respond to the Journal’s requests for comment.

The “Facebook Files”

This week the Wall Street Journal began to publish a series of articles on the basis of an internal Facebook document to which he was able to access.

It emerged on Tuesday that an internal investigation by the company recently concluded that its popular image and video platform Instagram, owned by the company run by Mark Zuckerberg, is toxic to its users, especially teenagers.

“32% of girls say that when they feel bad in their body, Instagram makes them feel worse “, details the internal report entitled ‘The Facebook Files’, to which the Wall Street Journal had access.

“Comparisons to what they see on Instagram can change the way young women see and describe themselves,” the document concludes.

According to the document, Facebook has studied for years how Instagram affects its users for three years. In 2019, an internal presentation revealed that the social network “It worsens mental self-image issues in one in three teenagers.”

Another of the slides cited in the research states that “among teens with suicidal thoughts, 13% of UK users and 6% of US users pointed out that the root of their suicidal desire was Instagram.”

The information released by the US media consists of messages, slides and internal company documents, which show that its top executives were aware of the damage, they chose to ignore it.

Anything that is published can be found on the Wall Street Journal website, under the “The Facebook Files” newsgroup.