79% of ALL child sex trafficking. 4 out of 5 child sex slaves exist thanks to Facebook's policies.

But sure, go on and talk about "leeway" and "limited capabilities" for a company worth nearly a trillion dollars. Do you honestly believe this is acceptable? What are your vested interests here?

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kstrauser 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Do you have a citation for that? You may be right for all I know. I don't know much about it. But that seems unlikely to me, and if it's true, I'd like a reference I can show others when I'm trying to get them to finally close their account.

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pinkmuffinere 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The claim is made in the main article, supported by this link [1]. But I agree, I suspect it’s sensationalized, just because that number is _so high_.

[1] https://techoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/08-2023...

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kstrauser 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh! Wow, so it is. Thanks!

> [the report] found that 65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media were recruited from Facebook

Even in 2020, I'm very skeptical that so many children were on Facebook that it could account for 2/3 of recruitment. My own kids say that they and their friends are all but allergic to Facebook. It's the uncool hangout for old people, not where teens want to be.

I may be wrong, and I'm certainly not going to tell someone that they're wrong for citing a government study. Still, I doubt it.

	▲	jacobsimon 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The number is wrong / the citation is misleading. It’s closer to 20-30% according to that study, the 79% is referring specifically to cases involving social media, of which Meta platforms are obviously going to make up a large percentage. There’s also a reporting bias here I’m sure - if Meta is better at reporting these cases then they will become a larger percentage, etc.
	▲	saalweachter 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		You don't really need a majority of potential victims to go to location X for victims from location X to make up a majority of victims; that just means that location X is a low-risk, high-reward place for criminals to lurk looking for victims.
	▲	pinkmuffinere 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Thanks for looking into it and pulling out that quote. I notice there are some moving goalposts — the parent article claims 79% of _all_ minor sexual trafficking (emphasis mine), but the govt report found > 65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited _on social media_ were recruited from Facebook, with 14% being recruited on Instagram (Emphasis mine). I think the parent article is repeatedly lying about the facts, that’s super annoying. I’m not at all surprised that Facebook and Instagram have the lions share of social-media victims, because they also have the lions share of social media users.

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amluto 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 4 out of 5 child sex slaves exist thanks to Facebook's policies.

Even if your 79% number is correct, this does not follow. It like if someone said, 30 years ago, that 95% of total advertisements were in the classified section that 9 out of 10 retail sales happened thanks to the classifieds.

(I’m not trying to excuse Facebook’s behavior. But maybe criticisms of Facebook would be more effective if they stayed on track.)

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kelseyfrog 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Observer take: until your parenthetical it looks like you're supporting Facebook's actions by nitpicking weird edge cases.

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amluto 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I’m not nitpicking a weird edge case. I’m nitpicking a completely unsound inference. Even if Facebook indeed accounts for 79% of total instances of children being trafficked, it does not follow at all that removing Facebook from the picture would have reduced the number by anywhere near 79%.

	▲	kelseyfrog 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ok? It still looks like that. Maybe improve your writing or rhetoric if you want it to portray yourself differently?

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Lerc 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There lies much of the problem.

Nobody in Salem wanted to be seen to stand up for witches.

I have never had a Facebook account because I never liked what they do, but this 'evidence' against them seems like they are relying on the seriousness of the allegations more than the accuracy.

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ceejayoz 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The problem with witch hunts is witches aren't real; every witch you find is guaranteed to be a false positive.

A witch hunt that finds actual witches everywhere isn't really a "witch hunt" in the sense the term is usually used.

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Lerc 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You are saying that from our perspective. I don't think the argument that witches are not real would have gained you much ground back then.

We don't have the years on analysis of what actually happened for things happening right now.

While a lot of people feel a lot of certainty about all manner of social media harms, the scientific consensus is much less clear. Sure you can pull up studies showing something that looks pretty bad, but you can also find ones that say that climate change is not occurring. The best we have to go on is scientific consensus. The consensus, is not there yet. How do you tell if Jonathan Haidt is another Andrew Wakefield?

	▲	kelseyfrog an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The most important question is, how do you know you're not the next Andrew Wakefield? I'm genuinely curious how you keep your own epistemic house in order.

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3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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SpicyLemonZest 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Since you're emphasizing the ALL, I am obligated to nitpick that it is not all. The source article says that, but it's wrong; the underlying link clarifies that it's 79% of sex trafficking which occurs on social media. As has been discussed downthread, a social media platform with large marketshare is always going to have a large percentage of every bad thing that can happen on social media.

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LanceH 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

80% of people die within 20 miles of their home. So...if they just don't go home, 80% of people would be immortal.