Top Official Calls on Mark Zuckerberg to Stop ‘Public Safety Threat’ Occurring on Facebook

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees Joint Hearing in Washington on April 10, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is demanding Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg provide an explanation to the alleged high volume of human trafficking across Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms, after a report revealed that children are being exploited via Zuckerberg’s platforms.

“Before launching new products or wasting time preparing for a cage match that will likely never happen, Zuckerberg should be working to make Meta’s existing platforms safer for users and to prevent vulnerable people from being forced into illicit sex work,” Mrs. Moody wrote in a news release this week, apparently referring to a possible MMA fight between Mr. Zuckerberg and Twitter owner Elon Musk.

The Republican official cited what she described as major findings from a Florida-wide survey with state agencies that found 146 of 271 reported instances of social media-driven human trafficking incidents occurred on Zuckerberg-run platforms. That includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. Meta’s new platform, Threads, which was recently launched as a Twitter competitor, was not yet included.

The Meta CEO “needs to immediately turn his attention to this public safety threat and testify to our council about what Meta is doing to prevent its platforms from being used to assist, facilitate or support human trafficking,” the attorney general added.

And between 2019 and 2022, Facebook was allegedly the top platform used in the recruitment of human trafficking victims, said a 2022 report (pdf) on the topic. The report found that about 53 percent of traffickers use the internet to solicit potential buyers.

“Additionally, major social media sites self-reported increases in suspected child sexual abuse materials, including child sex trafficking incidences. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s 2022 CyberTipline Reports by Electronic Service Providers, more than 27 million, or 85%, of the incidents reported were from Meta platforms,” said Mrs. Moody’s letter.

In 2019, Mr. Zuckerberg, Meta’s billionaire co-founder and chief executive, admitted to Congress that child exploitation was “one of the most serious threats that we focus on.” At the time, he added that Facebook works to “build sophisticated systems to find this behavior.”

Two years later, internal Facebook documents that were published online revealed that company executives knew the social media giant had a human trafficking problem but were struggling to crack down on the phenomenon known as domestic servitude that appears to be common in Arabic-speaking countries.

“While our previous efforts are a start to addressing the off-platform harm that results from domestic servitude, opportunities remain to improve prevention, detection, and enforcement,” the document said, according to CNN.

In her Tuesday letter, Mrs. Moody requested a response from Zuckerberg by Sept. 5. Neither Mr. Zuckerberg nor Meta have issued public responses to her letter.

The Epoch Times has contacted Meta Platforms for comment on Tuesday.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody speaks at a press conference in Brandon, Fla. Nov. 18, 2021 (Jann Falkenstern, The Epoch Times)

Lawsuit Filed

Earlier in 2023, a lawsuit was filed against Meta and Zuckerberg for allegedly failing to do enough to stop sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation on Facebook and Instagram.

The complaint said that several pension and investment funds that own Meta stock said Meta’s leadership and board have failed to protect the company’s and shareholders’ interests by turning a blind eye to “systemic evidence” of criminal activity.

Given the board’s failure to explain how it tries to root out the problem, “the only logical inference is that the board has consciously decided to permit Meta’s platforms to promote and facilitate sex/human trafficking,” the complaint said.

Meta rejected the basis for the lawsuit, which was filed in Delaware Chancery Court. “We prohibit human exploitation and child sexual exploitation in no uncertain terms,” it said in a statement when it was filed. “The claims in this lawsuit mischaracterize our efforts to combat this type of activity. Our goal is to prevent people who seek to exploit others from using our platform.”

Meta, which is based in Menlo Park, California, has long faced accusations that its platforms are a haven for sexual misconduct. In June 2021, the Texas Supreme Court allowed three people who became entangled with their abusers through Facebook to sue, saying Facebook was not a “lawless no-man’s-land” immune from liability for human trafficking.

Meta separately faces hundreds of lawsuits from families of teenagers and younger children who claimed to suffer mental health problems by becoming addicted to Facebook and Instagram. Some school districts have also filed lawsuits over the problem. Monday’s lawsuit is a derivative case, where shareholders sue officers and directors who allegedly breached their duties.

Meanwhile, Mr. Musk, who owns rival Twitter, promoted “Sound of Freedom,” an anti-human trafficking film with actor Jim Caviezel, via his platform last month. The film has become a breakout success and was No. 1 at the U.S. box office at times in the past week.

“I recommend putting it on this platform for free for a brief period or just asking people to subscribe to support (we would not keep any funds),” he wrote in mid-June.

Reuters contributed to this report.