Much of the trafficking on Facebook and Instagram was happening in non-public areas of the platforms, such as Facebook Messenger and private Instagram accounts, I would learn later. Sex trafficking is the use of force, fraud or coercion in the buying and selling of non-consensual sex acts, whether or not travel is involved. All said their efforts to flag and escalate possible child trafficking on Meta platforms often went nowhere, and harmful content was rarely taken down by the company. We sat down on the sofas in the living room and recorded our hours-long discussion about how teen girls are targeted by sex traffickers. The investigation was published in April 2023, titled How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking.

Source: The Guardian April 06, 2026 18:26 UTC