Warning, this might be EMOTIONALLY TRIGGERING re: human trafficking.
One of my good friends on Facebook asked me how censorship applies to human trafficking. More specifically: "You're involved in stopping sex trafficking. Should websites that support that be closed down? Shouldn't services/accounts being used to incite/plan/execute domestic terrorism also be shut down?"
I'm completely against opaque corporate censorship.
I have given the 'but human trafficking' aspect of corporate censorship quite a lot of thought. While human trafficking is an epidemic of monumental proportions and we MUST end it, ultimately it is being used as a wedge issue to get us distracted from 1) corporate takeover of individual thought and 2) having our rights taken away by invisible oligarchs based upon however they determine their Terms of Service applies to any situation they wish at any time. See if what I'm saying below makes sense.
There are very few easy answers with regard to human trafficking other than for it to have never happened.
- Sometimes the police will let someone be trafficked for months or years because they "want to catch the bigger fish."
- Sometimes the police know exactly where trafficking is happening, but there's no money to even try to start a case, much less do an arrest that’s only going to result in a victim becoming a criminal. Pimps (can be parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, neighbors, friends, other children, big ag) hardly ever go to prison.
- Sometimes you wind up with people being arrested and prosecuted because the police don't know how to recognize trafficking and think it's just a domestic issue. Or worse.
In Houston you can take a van tour (Elijah Rising) where they literally show you where trafficking is happening RIGHT THAT SECOND. There isn't a desire from the public to shut them down. It's pathetic.
There are also groups on either side of legal sex work.
BACKPAGE
Backpage was a site that definitely had trafficking victims on it (just like many other sites, including Facebook and Fortnite chat). Should it have been shut down? People on both sides here. One side wants to burn down the bridge to keep people apart. Another side says that you should make it harder to cross the bridge so only legal accounts, with real persons, can post legal things.
For this moment, let's consider, with regard to Backpage censorship, I'm only talking about people under 18, so it is definitely illegal. Here are two cases that were making a difference, but without Backpage are impossible.
Police used Backpage to locate children. Having an easy way to find someone online is a big benefit to the police. I have met with people that did that. It was mind-boggling. Those police were DEVASTATED Backpage was being shut down. Emotionally devastated. And they couldn't / can't say it in public because they will be considered EVIL. Same now as it was then.
People even argue about arrest and prosecution instead of rehabilitation.
WHAT IS MY TAKE?
Everyone needs awareness and prevention education. Every front line worker. Police, EMS, Code Compliance, Cable workers, etc. Right now, very few people really understand this problem, and very little is being spent EFFECTIVELY on training. This is what I can go off on for years now. It's the absolutely critical problem and is the easiest one to fix. It's certainly less expensive than our current reality.
The REAL problem isn't censorship or not. The real problem is trafficking itself. It's incredibly lucrative and people in desperate times are put in a position where many that would not have ever done anything like this. Drug abuse, suicide, trafficking, and other problems are diseases of poverty.
Labor trafficking is a disease of corporate greed. And it's also how you get the vegetables and fruit on your table. The chocolate you give children at Halloween. Your clothes. Your phone. Your shoes. Your seafood. Your nails. Your restaurant food. Your beds turned in hotels.
This stuff goes on and on.
IT IS TIME TO GET PISSED OFF
If we are going to get pissed off, we need to get REALLY pissed off. Like change your WORLD GOVERNMENT pissed off.
TO END TRAFFICKING, A SHORT WISH LIST FOR THE WORLD.
We need:
- tools that result in the most pimps arrested and prosecuted as quickly as possible.
- to save as many victims as we can.
- to have places to put those victims.
- to rehabilitate those victims.
- to give them 360 degree healthcare, including whatever therapy they need.
- to use a "victim-centered" mindset. This means to see a trafficking victim as a victim, not a criminal.
- to demand that more money is spent to solve this problem.
- to demand better public defenders.
- tens of thousands of victim-centered experts across the United States and hundreds of thousands across the world.
- people to think of all the OTHER trafficking that is happening. It's not all young girls and we're not just talking about sex trafficking.
- shut down and punish corporations that knowingly or unknowingly hire workers without papers.
- States to stop funding the "anti-trafficking" measures at the border, because that's human smuggling. And that's money that should come from the Feds; not the States.
- sex education. Early sex leads to trafficking.
- our students to all have social workers.
- our students to all have nurses.
- Medicare for All.
- mental health services.
- completely replace the foster care system.
- train all medical workers to recognize trafficking.
- our students to all have free, nutritious food at school and at home.
- our students to all have emotional learning classes; these victimizers take advantage of human weaknesses.
- to end poverty. Poverty causes trafficking.
- to shut down the IMF. They cause trafficking on the widest scale imaginable.
- UBI.
- to fund education.
- to give all schools the funds they need - untie the funding from the neighborhood. No more rich schools and poor schools. All equally funded. Or not.
- to arrest and prosecute everyone up and down the whole system that participates in perpetuating this system. This includes all city workers, all state workers, all federal workers, all military members, the clergy, foster care workers, and anyone that has ever violated a child.
- to shut down multinational corporations that profit from trafficking.
- to make it illegal to sell any product made with slave labor.
- to stop child brides in America in all the states.
- to break up any agriculture corporation that benefits from labor trafficking.
- to hold oil companies accountable for their "Man Camps."
- to rehabilitate buyers.
- to change our entire incarceration system to be restorative.
- to legalize all drugs and treat addiction as a mental illness.
- to treat the EPIDEMIC of porn addiction as a mental illness.
The problem as I see it is that human trafficking is being used as a wedge to get people mad at each other and take away our right to free speech. And everyone is lining up to give it away because they are told they should because of (x, y, or z). This time it's trafficking. It'll be something else soon enough.
This is a tactic used to manufacture consent in the public, for whatever the powerful want us to believe: The Common Enemy.
My answer to all of this is to make the signup process for starting an account transparent, so we can know that someone is who they say they are. Or at least make it so the company does. That's where the law can come in, I'm sure. Make it illegal to impersonate someone on retail platforms. This would work on PornHub, to keep your children away from pornography. If you had to have an account attached to your bank statement, verified with a house bill and two factor authentication, you'd see a lot less 10 year olds viewing it. Also, I'm not a lawyer, but I can guarantee someone can come up with an answer to that. I know it seems that way with my bank.
That's all. If a real person sells someone online, then the crime is the crime and you can locate them immediately. No need to end free speech. You can catch the bad guys and rescue the victims. Super easy.
You're not changing anything by burning down the bridge. The bad guys scatter. But one thing is for sure... Those pimps are going to get their money.
Beyond that, I'd like to see a wide variety of experts sit down and come up with the best answer to the online question. There are PLENTY of people in the anti-trafficking world that want to be part of that, and there are PLENTY of legal sex workers that want to be there, too. I'd love to be at that table. Because it's going to be a HUGE fight.
There's nuance everywhere. There's no one clear answer.
If we don't start with the understanding human trafficking is perpetuated by poverty controlled by the IMF and large corporations, worldwide, why are we even having this conversation? Just saying that the IMF, large corporations, churches, and the government is the problem will, eventually, get me censored and deplatformed.
My mission is to fight this epidemic and there are no easy answers. Right now, I'm focusing on domestic minor sex trafficking and labor trafficking because they are definitely illegal. I'm leaving the rest to the experts in other areas, until I feel like I can offer something to those discussions. I will help anyone in any way and I will calmly discuss this over a Zoom call at any time. A Facebook comment is not a conversation. I can also have my mind changed. It's already been changed back and forth about ALL of these issues above since I've been involved in this fight. I am open minded about how to help.
If you think censoring things 'because human trafficking' is good, let me remind you that trafficking happens on:
- EVERY GAME WITH OPEN CHAT.
- Every user generated content platform (Facebook, YouTube, etc.).
- Every MMO.
- Every multiplayer game.
- Discord
- Slack
- Corporate phones
- Corporate business trips.
Do we need to censor all of those? According to the 'because human trafficking' doctrine, the answer is yes. Have the government intercept all communications, hire tens of millions of people to look through them to ascertain their hidden meanings (machine learning can't do this... yet), follow all the emoji cryptograms that constantly change and evolve to stay ahead of law enforcement, review all phone applications and their chats, read between the lines of all the conversations to determine if gaslighting is happening, emotional abuse is happening, listen to the background of all game chat to determine if the child is in an unhealthy environment, etc. You see where I'm going.
The system is broken. There is no easy answer.
Certainly, censorship is not the answer to helping victims.
WAY MORE MONEY is needed to even make a dent. Without that, everything is moot.
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