Google, Instagram and Apple Slammed for Promoting Modern Slavery

Google, Instagram and Apple are in the spotlight after they allowed some of their apps to be used to trade humans online and therefore seeming to condone modern slavery.

A BBC News undercover investigation in Kuwait exposed the modern slavery trade where humans especially children were being put on sale using online apps.

The illegal slavery business in Kuwait was being carried out using apps programmed by google, Apple and Instagram which also involved hashtags run by the sellers.

The BBC undercover investigations carried out in Kuwait exposed how a mother had offered her 16-year-old child for sale through the online slavery apps.

The mother from Guinea, was offering her child for sale through an app and was selling her child for 3,800 dollars to go and work as a house help in a foreign country.

The undercover reporters for BBC learnt from one of the sellers that the slaves are not allowed to own a cell phone nor are they allowed to go outside the house after they are sold.

Fatou, the 16-year-old girl from Guinea was rescued from the slavery thanks to the BBC investigations.

“If Google, Apple, Facebook, or any other company is promoting apps like these… they are promoting an online slave market,” said a UN official after the BBC reports.

“Selling people is nothing short of draconian savagery and yet why is it a modern-day practice of slavery that takes place in every corner of our world,” said an anti-slavery lawyer Parosha Chandran.

“The business plans of enslavers and human traffickers are built not just on their own greed and their abuse of the vulnerable but on the drive for massive profits by powerful corporations across the globe.”

Facebook-owned Instagram announced that it suspended more than 703 accounts that were involved in promoting the slavery business as well as scrapping off all the hashtags.

Google and Apple said their app developers are working to resolve the situation. Meanwhile, they said they regret that such illegal businesses were being carried out using their apps.

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