By Christine Murray
NEW YORK – (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Internet conspiracy theories from furniture corporations that encourage young people to wear face masks to help kidnappings have led to an increase in calls for people’s traffic lines, experts said Wednesday, urging others not to disseminate misinformation.
A cyber hotline through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received 1.6 million reports in May, more than double the estimated 700,000 estimates it reported receiving in May 2019.
Feeding the outbreak is a shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic and online sex trafficking publications that have viruses, experts said in the box.
“While we’re in this pandemic and we have to deal with the closures, we know that traffickers capitalize on the chaos that has been created,” U.S. ambassador to human trafficking John Richmond said at a panel organized through the U.S. State Department.
Anti-trafficking teams will have to deal with the increase in Internet publications without discouraging reports, he added in comments to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“Obviously, there’s been a massive influx,” he said.
Online publications that disseminate incorrect information have gone viral on the Internet, said Melissa Snow, executive director of child sex trafficking programs at NCMEC.
“Report it, pass it to the application of the Array law … but don’t continue to divide it virally, because it only overwhelms the hotlines,” he said, speaking to the State Department panel.
In recent months, false rumors have been circulating on the Internet, such as the claim that the US home products site Wayfair traffics with children, which led the company to reject the claim.
Other viral messages on the face mask that help with child abduction fueled calls to the information line, Snow said.
“These two examples are out of what we see,” Snow said. “It doesn’t tell other people very well what traffic is like.”
In July, Polaris, which manages the national anti-trafficking hotline, said the volume of calls similar to Wayfair’s publications made it more complicated for those in need of help.
Beyond viral messages, the NCMEC’s information line has noticed a disturbing increase in reports of pandemic child sexual abuse lockdowns, Snow said.
Activists around the world have warned that online child sexual abuse has a greater global coronavirus pandemic.
The ambassador said the U.S. government is launching a fund to help anti-trafficking organizations deal with the destructive effects of pandemic blockades on their work.
Grants of $100,000 to $1 million would be available, he said.
He added that greater attention to the factor of trafficking presents an opportunity “to bring to light good, evidence-based facts.”
An estimated two five hundred million people worldwide are victims of forced labour, with nearly five million more people in the forced sex trade, according to the International Labour Organization and the nonprofit Walk Free Foundation.
Reporting through Christine Murray; Edited through Ellen Wulfhorst. Please give credence to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.