Media Topic: Social Media and Female Trafficking

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been an increase in social media-based trafficking of women and girls. Predators are using online traps to target victims in recent months on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. Young women have been more active on social media and online platforms since the beginning of the pandemic as a result of social isolation and stay at home orders.  

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) based in Geneva met recently to discuss the potential uses of “’big data, artificial intelligence and analytics to identify any pattern that could lead to trafficking and identification of the involved parties’” to eradicate female trafficking. The CEDAW pitched this urgent issue to different social media and online platforms that predators might be taking advantage of. They also ask that the U.S. government take a firmer stand on stamping out the root-causes of female trafficking. 

 

Since private social media and online companies are able to govern how they track their users, the different platforms are considering taking a strong stand on the issue by complying with the CEDAW’s requests. While this change in operations may help target potential and current predators, platform users will have to be made aware of the changes and agree with the new terms of use to continue the use of their accounts. These new changes coming soon will put into question how the platforms will have to revise their terms of use and what privacy users will have to sacrifice.

Source: https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/11/1077402

Photo: https://medium.com/@disquiet_fem/why-anti-sex-trafficking-campaigns-need-a-makeover-a0da9f511e61