Top official urges Zuckerberg to halt Facebook’s ‘public safety threat’.

Florida Attorney General Demands Explanation from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg

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.

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