Human Traffickers On Social Media: The Disturbing Reality Behind Your Feed

Parler Fights Back on Human Trafficking

Social media has transformed the way we communicate and share information. It has also changed the entire landscape of how we navigate the world and connect with our friends. From Facebook to TikTok, Instagram to X, every part of our world has been altered and transformed by digital living. And although many have heralded social media as a force for connection and cooperation, it has also unlocked the gates to a horrible underworld: human trafficking. Each time we read about an atrocity, we have been warned that traffickers are increasingly using social media to ply their trade and lure new victims – many of them children and teenagers – into the hands of traffickers, but social media giants have done very little to stop the worst of it.As a platform committed to free speech, accountability, and the power of the individual, Parler has chosen to tackle the issue directly. A robust content policy and state-of-the-art AI moderation make Parler the best that social media can be: a tool for good. Parler is not merely committed to combating human trafficking on social media. It is devoted to eradicating it through action, partnering with organizations that aim to put an end to trafficking at home and abroad. Human trafficking is a plague on society, and it operates in the shadows. This is why the fight to eradicate human trafficking must be joined with modern technologies. This article will examine how traffickers leveraged social media against victims, the scandalous effects, and how Parler is leading the charge against human trafficking.

The Dark Reality: How Traffickers Exploit Social Media

Traffickers are savvy and manipulative, and some are active on social media. With more than two billion active users, these sites present traffickers with boundless opportunities to target, groom and manipulate susceptible victims, especially children and adolescents.

Grooming and Manipulation

Traffickers might lure victims into the grooming process, pretending to be friends, lovers, or an hopeful opportunity. Over weeks or months, they use time and information to build trust. In the early stages, the traffickers appear like friends, peers, or admirers offering affection, attention, or even celebrity. They start with small talk – mentions of posts and likes on photos, direct messages that break the ice and seem entirely innocent. And then they slowly become more intimate: asking questions about what you are up to, prying into your past, your parents, your trauma, until they have probed deep into your wounds and are ready to manipulate.Children and teens, already dealing with bullying, low self-esteem, or a dysfunctional home life, could be especially vulnerable. Traffickers are trained to spot these warning signs and use them for exploitation. Once trust is established, the trafficker might invite a young person to a meeting place or offer something the child might want so much he or she can be convinced to leave home. In more extreme cases, the trafficker might threaten to expose something or hurt the child.

The Role of Social Media Algorithms

Meanwhile, algorithms designed to present users with content that reflects their interests lead them straight into the waiting arms of traffickers. Traffickers can quickly identify children who are insecure, isolated, or craving connection, based on the behavioral markers of those users that the algorithms spot. Crucially, targeted content – be that a comment, DM, or friend suggestion – exposes these targeted children to predators.Additionally, traffickers can deceive their targets with fake accounts that appear to their victims the same way a typical user’s account would. Some social media sites with weak or non-existent moderation policies give traffickers the opportunity to operate for months, even years, before their activity is detected, if detected at all. The capacity to open multiple accounts, combined with crypto or end-to-end encryption and private messaging, also provides more avenues for traffickers of all kinds to operate anonymously.

Kidnapping and Trafficking

Once victims have been groomed, traffickers will often abduct or otherwise compel them to join one of the many human trafficking networks. Because such trafficking operations span across states and countries, it is often too late for law enforcement to intervene once a victim has been rendered helpless. Traffickers will sometimes take pictures or videos of the victims and sell this content on the dark web to the highest bidder.Few children trafficked are seen again. The United Nations estimates that 2.5 million people are in forced labor at any given time, victims of trafficking. Many of these are trafficked for sex work, a crime spawned by and spreading through social media. Worst of all, children are being trafficked at ever younger ages, as traffickers target them early on mainstream social media as young as 12 or 13 years old.

Big Tech’s Failure to Act

Few social media companies have taken measures to curb human trafficking on their platforms. When they do, their content moderation efforts have haphazard, predominantly optics-driven and aimed at achieving good PR rather than impact. Human Trafficking Search has called out Facebook and Instagram, two of the leading social media sites, for allowing activity on their platforms that goes unchecked for months or even years. When crack downs finally happen, it is frequently with the help of high-profile stories in international media.Because these sites are not end-to-end encrypted, they are relatively easy to infiltrate. Since the number of daily posts on these websites alone is in the billions, human moderation cannot review all the uploads for trafficking-related content. A few platforms have been using so-called artificial intelligence (AI)-based moderation, but often they have failed terribly. Traffickers have ample opportunities to game the system, for example, by communicating in coded language or through encrypted messaging.

Parler’s Commitment to Combating Human Trafficking

Parler is also the only social media to date that appears to have taken the issue of human trafficking seriously, implementing a no porn policy and AI moderation tools that flag traffickers in real time.

No Porn Policy

Parler completely bans all pornography and nudity and restricts adult content. Without any pornography to market, traffickers cannot use the platform to sell victims or target new recruits. Importantly, Parler’s policy is much more rigorous than X’s or Reddit’s policies, where adult content is rife and is actively used by traffickers to advertise victims.Not only does this zero-tolerance approach to adult content mitigate user exposure to dangerous material, it means that traffickers have no easy avenue to operate on the site either. Parler’s policies serve as a disincentive for traffickers to ‘know that they won’t have that easy freedom to groom, manipulate or traffic people on Parler as they might on a site like Instagram,’ as Julie Cordua, the CEO of the anti-trafficking organization Thorn, told the Progressive Magazine last year. In fact, it might be argued that Parler’s attitude toward removing adult content reveals a more wholesome attitude toward child safety than other sites, such as Instagram.

AI Moderation to Catch Traffickers in the Act

Parler’s most sophisticated tool in the battle against human trafficking, is AI moderation. We scan for behavior and language patterns that traffickers use to hook people to intervene before something bad happens. The ‘something bad’ is an index of what has taken place on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and most other social platforms, where moderation is primarily reactive. When someone is upset enough to type ‘hurt’ on Facebook, the keyword-based text-moderation AI responds with something like ‘are you okay?’ – a somewhat belated intervention. In contrast, Parler’s AI-fortified moderation is upstream, sensing the swirl of something troubling and flagging it for review in real time.By leveraging AI alongside human moderation, Parler has developed an anti-trafficking system that hits traffickers before the first report comes in, rather than waiting for a user or victim to lodge a complaint.

Supporting Anti-Trafficking Organizations

Our mission to fight human trafficking does not end with internal moderation. Parler also donates parts of its profits to anti-trafficking organizations that work to rescue and rehabilitate victims. This includes both on-the-ground rescue operations and educational programs that help prevent human trafficking before it begins.In devoting a portion of its income to these charities, Parler makes clear that it is both a social media and a socially responsible company. It allows non-profits to continue their work in high-risk locations; to improve methods of identifying victims of trafficking; and to provide critical services, including legal counsel, medical assistance, and psychological support to survivors.

The Fight is Far From Over

Human trafficking is a global pandemic. As the world continues to become more interconnected, social media has emerged as a primary vector for traffickers to use to market victims for commercial sex and slave labor. Platforms with loose moderation policies and unwillingness to strictly enforce rules are a prime real estate for traffickers to buy, sell, and peddle human beings, contributing to millions of lives in danger.There is hope. While Parler is not perfect, its human trafficking prohibition via its no porn policy, its use of AI moderation tools, and its financial support of anti-trafficking organizations makes the case that social media can be an ally in fighting this cause. If other platforms realize the reality of what is occurring on their networks, we may be able to make a shift in the way traffickers operate – and ultimately how many lives are saved.The fight is not over yet, but Parler proves that with the right technology, with the right policies, and the right mission, human trafficking can be ejected from the internet. In a world where too many sites are looking the other way, Parler stands as a glimmer of hope for those who need it most.If you haven’t yet today, login to Parler or join the Parler community now and ‘Be Heard.’