Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is demanding Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explain why child sex trafficking continues to flourish across his META platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
Moody’s demands come following a report revealing pedophiles are using the metaverse to sexually exploit children.
Moody on Monday sent a letter to Zuckerberg, “inviting the CEO to speak with Florida’s Statewide Council on Human Trafficking on what preventative measures, if any, the tech giant is taking to end human trafficking on sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp,” Fox News reported.
Before getting down to the business at hand, Moody mocked Zuckerberg for accepting Elon Musk’s cage-match challenge.
“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,” Moody said.
“The findings of our statewide survey and other reports make it clear that Meta platforms are the preferred social media applications for human traffickers looking to prey on vulnerable people.”
“Zuckerberg 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.”
Moody’s office said:
To meet the statutory objective set by the state legislature, the council worked with law enforcement agencies to review instances in which social media may have been used to facilitate human trafficking. The findings show more than half of all reported instances of social media platform use in Florida trafficking cases since 2019 involved Meta platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
According to the 2022 Federal Human Trafficking Report, Facebook was the top platform used in recruitment of human trafficking victims from 2019-2022. Facebook and Instagram combined to make up 60% of the top ten platforms included in the study.
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.
Despite the reports, a Meta spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the company prohibits all forms of human exploitation, including child sex trafficking.
“We prohibit all forms of human exploitation in no uncertain terms, and we work aggressively to fight these abhorrent crimes on and off our platforms,” the spokesperson said.
“The claims in this press release inaccurately depict our efforts to remove this kind of illegal activity and work with law enforcement so that the criminals behind it can be arrested and prosecuted.”
Maybe if Zuckerberg were more rigorous in removing child sex trafficking from his platforms as he does with Conservatives content, they wouldn’t have such a problem.
While the spokesperson assured Fox that Meta “will continue to inform and partner with the state attorneys general on these critical matters,” they did not say whether Zuckerberg would respond to Moody’s letter by the Sept. 5 deadline.
Unlike Facebook, Elon Musk addressed Twitter’s longstanding issue with child sexual exploitation content before he took over the company.
While many platforms actively fight against pornographic content showing child sexual exploitation (CSE), Twitter, before Musk acquired it, failed to make any significant effort to address the issue.
In September, before Musk finalized the deal to buy the platform, Twitter was already facing trouble after several advertisers complained that their ads appeared next to child pornography.
