Human trafficking is the trade in human beings, most commonly for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labor or for the extraction of organs or tissues… – Wikipedia
Every year thousands of women and men become victims of human trafficking, millions are being forced into labour and get exploited by private agents. And although here it is not physical, human trafficking also exists on the main social networks, most prominently on Facebook, where millions of people are being sold to private businesses just to be exploited by them later on. So let’s tweak our definition a little bit:
Facebook like trafficking is the trade in human beings, most commonly for the purpose of Facebook page slavery, forced engagement or the extraction of attention, time, money and intelligence… – Adomas Baltagalvis
How does it happen, you wonder? 🙂
It starts in the exact same way: something wonderful is promised to the victim by tapping into her deepest desires. In real life, that might be a very well-paid job abroad, on Facebook – some breaking news about a celebrity (“VIDEO: Justin Bieber vomits on the stage!!!”), includes some nudity (“EXCLUSIVE: Britney Spears is seen completely naked!!!”), sometimes violence (“A fifteen-year-old girl is beaten to death by her father.”), humour (“The funniest video of the year!..”) and many others… In both situations, the traffickers are great psychologists who know how to manipulate the emotions of their victims very well.
What’s next? You click on the link but (surprise surprise!) you cannot watch it until you do something what they ask first. No, you don’t need to give away your passport, but you will need to type in some numbers, use their Facebook application, or simply click on the video – and here, my friend, is the moment when you lose the ownership of your life (or your like, to be exact). 🙂
What’s even worse is that these Facebook like traffickers can use social evidence to reach more victims and sell them to the companies. Every time you were fooled into liking a page, the same link will become visible to all of your friends on your Facebook wall. As you’ve just checked it out and shared the link, your friends will feel less threatened to click on it as well… Add the curiosity factor into the equation, and that’s a killer combination for you!
So, your like (AND your Facebook feed, AND attention, AND time, AND money…) had just been sold to some untrustworthy company – are you interested in how much they paid for you?
Prices vary from one seller to another, but, by using these dirty techniques, you can easily buy one like for less than 3 dollar cents – that’s how much they value your following!.. Considering the value they extract from you, it’s rather disappointing, right? 🙂
Anyway, there’s no time to be sad!
You have two options: a) you don’t do anything, keep receiving crappy promotional messages, are exploited by those companies for their financial gains and even kill your brain cells because of all the nonsenses that you keep seing every day… OR b) you take action against the Facebook like traffickers, you never click on such links again, and when you see them, you report the page as SCAM or SPAM.
Now, please go to your Facebook profile and check the pages that you currently like. I am very confident that you will be very surprised about what you find there (and if you see something that shouldn’t be there, report it as SCAM). 😉
Take control of your like and stop being a victim of Facebook human traffickers.
Let’s clean it from all the social trash and make Facebook more valuable for us, our friends and everyone the entire world, shall we? 🙂