The parent company of Facebook has chosen not to alter its rules that can exploit soliciting human smuggling services on its platform, despite mounting criticism that the company is a medium for human traffickers to exploit victims, according to one report.
Meta announced in an internal memo that Facebook “would allow the solicitation of human smuggling on all of its sites,” according to a recent report by the Washington Free Beacon.
World Population Review reports that in the U.S., Texas has the 10th highest rate of human trafficking with a ratio of 3.59 persons per 100,000.
The practice was debated among Meta officials for roughly five months with Meta consulting with "global perspectives and a broad range of expertise" to curtail human smuggling risks and the company "proposed interventions such as sending resources to users soliciting smuggling services” that would allow "sharing information related to illegal border crossing,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.
"We observed that a slight majority of stakeholders favored allowing solicitations of smuggling services for reasons associated with asylum seekers," the memo reads, according to the Washington Free Beacon. "We decided that this was indeed the best option since the risks could be mitigated by sending resources, whereas the risks of removing such content could not be mitigated."
"We regularly engage with outside experts to help us craft policies that strike the right balance between supporting people fleeing violence and religious persecution while not allowing human smuggling to take place through our platforms," Meta spokesman Drew Pusateri told the Washington Free Beacon. "At this time we have no policy changes to announce."
According to the news site, the memo stated there were “tradeoffs" because permitting the offering of smuggling services "can make it easier for bad actors to identify and connect with vulnerable people." In addition "law enforcement and government bodies … raised concerns that permitting this type of content on our platforms facilitates illegal activity and puts migrants at serious risk of exploitation or death."
"Migrants and refugees are preyed upon by criminal organizations, sometimes with the tacit approval or complicity of national authorities, and subjected to violence and other abuses [abduction, theft, extortion, torture, and rape] that can leave them injured and traumatized," according to a 2017 report from Doctors Without Borders. The report stated that 31% of female migrants who came to United States through Mexico had been sexually exploited.
CNN reported that the company has long had a human trafficking problem with Facebook knowing about human exploitation on its platform since 2018, and Apple considered removing the app from its store in 2019 over concerns that the company was failing to address.
The Wall Street Journal found that employees of the company raised concerns about human trafficking that were often met with a reaction that was “inadequate or nothing at all.”
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, in response to the recent claims that Facebook’s human smuggling solicitation policy will remain unchanged, wrote a letter that that included the following statement: “As you no doubt are aware, your company has an uncommonly sordid record when it comes to trafficking. Your company ignored its own employees who sounded alarms about human traffickers using their website. Those employee concerns included identification of traffickers in the Middle East who used Facebook and Instagram to lure women into abusive domestic servitude and sex slavery.”
Hawley also rebuked Facebook in his letter when he wrote: “No matter what 'humanitarian' rationale your company can come up with for allowing individuals to solicit criminal activity, or what 'resources' your company intends to provide potential migrants, its current approach is inflicting incalculable damage. By declining to remove user posts soliciting smuggling services, Facebook is effectively approving a gigantic beacon for human traffickers, who—even if they’re not permitted onto the platform themselves—can easily reach out to their targets through non-Facebook channels.”
