{"id":786,"date":"2021-11-19T17:26:11","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T16:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/11\/19\/apple-once-threatened-facebook-ban-over-mideast-maid-abuse-associated-press\/"},"modified":"2021-11-19T17:26:11","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T16:26:11","slug":"apple-once-threatened-facebook-ban-over-mideast-maid-abuse-associated-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/11\/19\/apple-once-threatened-facebook-ban-over-mideast-maid-abuse-associated-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple once threatened Facebook ban over Mideast maid abuse &#8211; Associated Press"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"cfbc967f0983488262956e73eca9483a\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3859091246952232\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- blok -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3859091246952232\" data-ad-slot=\"1334354390\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n\n<\/div>\n<p>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 Two years ago, Apple threatened to pull Facebook and Instagram from its app store over concerns about the platform being used as a tool to trade and sell maids in the Mideast.<br \/>After publicly promising to crack down, Facebook acknowledged <a class=\"\" href=\"\/hub\/the-facebook-papers\">in internal documents obtained by The Associated Press<\/a><!-- --> that it was \u201cunder-enforcing on confirmed abusive activity\u201d that saw Filipina maids complaining on the social media site of being abused. Apple relented and Facebook and Instagram remained in the app store.<br \/>But Facebook\u2019s crackdown seems to have had a limited effect. Even today, a quick search for \u201ckhadima,\u201d or \u201cmaids\u201d in Arabic, will bring up accounts featuring posed photographs of Africans and South Asians with ages and prices listed next to their images. That\u2019s even as the Philippines government has a team of workers that do nothing but scour Facebook posts each day to try and protect desperate job seekers from criminal gangs and unscrupulous recruiters using the site. <br \/>While the Mideast remains a crucial source of work for women in Asia and Africa hoping to provide for their families back home, Facebook acknowledged some countries across the region have \u201cespecially egregious\u201d human rights issues when it comes to laborers\u2019 protection. <br \/>\u201cIn our investigation, domestic workers frequently complained to their recruitment agencies of being locked in their homes, starved, forced to extend their contracts indefinitely, unpaid, and repeatedly sold to other employers without their consent,\u201d one Facebook document read. \u201cIn response, agencies commonly told them to be more agreeable.\u201d<br \/>The report added: \u201cWe also found recruitment agencies dismissing more serious crimes, such as physical or sexual assault, rather than helping domestic workers.\u201d <br \/>In a statement to the AP, Facebook said it took the problem seriously, despite the continued spread of ads exploiting foreign workers in the Mideast.<br \/>\u201cWe prohibit human exploitation in no uncertain terms,\u201d Facebook said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been combating human trafficking on our platform for many years and our goal remains to prevent anyone who seeks to exploit others from having a home on our platform.\u201d<br \/>This story, along with others published Monday, is based on disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by <a class=\"\" href=\"\/article\/facebook-science-technology-business-congress-frances-haugen-80e92043b7211590b6be84dcc7a05b4a\">former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen\u2019s <\/a><!-- --> legal counsel. The redacted versions <a class=\"\" href=\"\/10e59530a699db5345ac3931509778b2\">were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including the AP<\/a><!-- -->. The Wall Street Journal <a href=\"https:\/\/on.wsj.com\/3b6aXv3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"\">previously<\/a><!-- --> wrote about Apple\u2019s threat to remove Facebook and Instagram. <br \/>Taken as a whole, the trove of documents show that Facebook\u2019s daunting size and user base around the world \u2014 a key factor in its rapid ascent and near trillion-dollar valuation \u2014 also proves to be its greatest weakness in trying to police illicit activity, such as the sale of drugs, and suspected human rights and labor abuses on its site.<br \/>Activists say Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, has both an obligation and likely the means to fully crack down on the abuses their services facilitate as it earns tens of billions of dollars each year in revenue. <br \/>\u201cWhile Facebook is a private company, when you have billions of users, you are effectively like a state and therefore you have social responsibilities de facto, whether you like it or not,\u201d said Mustafa Qadri, the executive director of Equidem Research, which studies migrant labor.<br \/>\u201cThese workers are being recruited and going to places to work like the Gulf, the Middle East, where there is practically no proper regulation of how they\u2019re recruited and how they\u2019re treated when they end up in the places where they work. So when you put those two things together, really, it\u2019s a recipe for disaster.\u201d<br \/>Mary Ann Abunda, who works with a nongovernmental Filipino workers\u2019 welfare group called Sandigan in Kuwait, similarly warned of the danger the site can pose.<br \/>\u201cFacebook really has two faces,\u201d Abunda said. \u201cYes, as it advertises, it\u2019s connecting people, but it has also become a haven of sinister people and syndicates who wait for your weak moment to pounce on you.\u201d<br \/>Facebook, like human rights activists and others worried about labor across the Mideast, pointed to the so-called \u201ckafala\u201d system prevalent across much of the region\u2019s countries. Under this system, which allowed nations to import cheap foreign labor from Africa and South Asia as oil money swelled their economies beginning in the 1950s, workers find their residency bound directly to their employer, their sponsor or \u201ckafeel.\u201d<br \/>While workers can find employment in these arrangements that allow them to send money back home, unscrupulous sponsors can exploit their laborers who often have no other legal recourse. Stories of workers having their passports seized, working nonstop without breaks, and not being properly paid long have shadowed major construction projects, whether <a class=\"\" href=\"\/article\/coronavirus-pandemic-business-health-dubai-united-arab-emirates-37fc464d7d28b8f37d97dbd04436c015\">Dubai\u2019s Expo 2020<\/a><!-- --> or <a class=\"\" href=\"\/article\/europe-international-soccer-world-cup-migrant-workers-coronavirus-pandemic-5a3b0c7ccc5cd98535d0fb11224dbf2d\">Qatar\u2019s upcoming FIFA 2022 World Cup<\/a><!-- -->.<br \/>While Gulf Arab states like the UAE and Qatar insist they\u2019ve improved working conditions, others like Saudi Arabia still require employers to approve their workers leaving the country. Meanwhile, maids and domestic workers can find themselves even more at risk by living alone with families in private homes. <br \/>In the documents seen by the AP, Facebook acknowledges being aware of both the exploitive conditions of foreign workers and the use of Instagram to buy and trade maids online even before a 2019 report by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/technology-50228549\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"\">the BBC\u2019s Arabic service on the practice in the Mideast<\/a><!-- -->. That BBC report sparked the threat by Cupertino, California-based Apple to remove the apps, citing examples of pictures of maids and their biographic details showing up online, according to the documents.<br \/>Facebook engineers found nearly three-fourths of all problematic posts, including showing maids in videos and screenshots of their conversations, occurred on Instagram. Links to maid-selling sites predominantly affected Facebook.<br \/>Over 60% of the material came from Saudi Arabia, with about a quarter coming from Egypt, according to the 2019 Facebook analysis. <br \/>In a statement to the AP, Saudi Arabia\u2019s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development said the kingdom \u201cstands firmly against all types of illegal practices in the labor market\u201d and that all labor contracts must be approved by authorities. While keeping in contact with the Philippines and other nations on labor issues, the ministry said Facebook had never been in touch with it about the problem. <br \/>\u201cObviously illegal ads posted on social media platforms make it harder to track and investigate,\u201d the ministry said.<br \/>Saudi Arabia plans \u201ca major public awareness campaign\u201d soon as well on illegal recruitment practices, the ministry added.<br \/>Egypt did not respond to requests for comment.<br \/>While Facebook disabled over 1,000 accounts on its websites, its analysis papers acknowledged that as early as 2018 the company knew it had a problem with what it referred to as \u201cdomestic servitude.\u201d It defined the problem as a \u201cform of trafficking of people for the purpose of working inside private homes through the use of force, fraud, coercion or deception.\u201d<br \/>The issue appeared a wide-enough problem that Facebook even used an acronym to describe it \u2014 HEx, or \u201chuman exploitation.\u201d Users at the time reported only 2% of problematic content, likely due to the desire to travel abroad for work. Facebook acknowledged it only scratched the surface of the problem and that \u201cdomestic servitude content remained on the platform.\u201d<br \/>After a week, Facebook shared what it had done and Apple apparently dropped the threat. Apple did not respond to requests for comment, but Facebook acknowledged how seriously it took the threat at the time.<br \/>\u201cRemoving our applications from Apple platforms would have had potentially severe consequences to the business, including depriving millions of users of access,\u201d the analysis said. <br \/>The problem, however, continues across both Facebook and Instagram. Facebook appears to acknowledge that in more recent documents seen by the AP. It described engineers accessing problematic messages in maid-recruiting agencies\u2019 inboxes, including one in which a Filipina specifically is mentioned as being \u201csold\u201d by her Kuwaiti employers. <br \/>\u201cSometimes my head and ears hurt from being hit,\u201d another batch of messages from a Filipina in Kuwait read. \u201cWhen I escape from here, how will I get my passport? And how can we get out of here? The door is always locked.\u201d<br \/>Another Filipina housemaid in Kuwait, who described being \u201csold\u201d to another family through an Instagram post in December 2012, told the AP that she knew of other cases of Filipinas being \u201ctraded online like merchandise.\u201d<br \/>\u201cI was like an animal that was being traded by one owner to another,\u201d said the woman, who spoke from Kuwait on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals. \u201cIf Facebook and Instagram won\u2019t take stronger steps against this anomaly, there will be more victims like me. I was lucky because I did not end up dead or a sexual slave.\u201d<br \/>Authorities in Kuwait, where the Philippines temporarily banned domestic workers from going after <a class=\"\" href=\"\/article\/typhoons-kuwait-manila-international-news-asia-pacific-d946b469114246dda613f1be84abeb19\">an abused Filipina was found dead in a refrigerator in 2018 over a year after disappearing<\/a><!-- -->, did not respond to requests for comment.<br \/>In the Philippines, the billions of dollars annually sent home from overseas workers represent nearly 10% of the country\u2019s gross domestic product. Those wanting to go abroad trust Facebook more than the private recruiting agencies monitored by the government in part over past scandals, said Bernard Olalia, who heads the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, which has the team monitoring Facebook postings.<br \/>Job seekers mistakenly believe the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration endorses some of the Facebook and Instagram accounts, in part as they misused the office\u2019s logos, he said.<br \/>With the coronavirus pandemic locking down the Philippines for months, those wanting to work abroad are even more desperate than before for any opportunity. Some see \u201capplication fees\u201d stolen by criminal gangs, he said. Others have been trafficked or sexually exploited.<br \/>\u201cWords are not enough to describe their predicament but the situation is devastating for them,\u201d Olalia said. \u201cThey expected to recover again, they invested just to ensure they\u2019ll have a destination only to end up as victims of illegal recruitment. That\u2019s devastating on their part.\u201d<br \/>Facebook suggested a pilot program to begin in 2021 that targeted Filipinas with pop-up messages and banner ads warning them about the dangers working overseas can pose. <br \/>It remains unclear whether it ever began, though Facebook said in its statement to the AP that it delivers \u201ctargeted prevention and support ad campaigns in countries such as the Philippines where data suggests people may be at high risk of exploitation.\u201d Facebook did not answer specific questions posed by the AP about its practices.<br \/>Olalia said his office for the last two years had a direct line to Facebook to be able to flag suspicious accounts. But even that isn\u2019t enough as more and more pop up to replace them.<br \/>\u201cIt will affect their income so they don\u2019t want to address this,\u201d he said. <br \/>That leaves some of the most-desperate job seekers in the world vulnerable to promises and possible trafficking on Facebook.<br \/>\u201cWe\u2019ve seen since the pandemic that these low-wage workers who literally raise our children, they build our buildings, they cook our food, they deliver our meals. They\u2019re not just low-wage workers, they\u2019re essential workers,\u201d said Qadri, the migrant rights expert. \u201cSo we really have a duty to address these problems because our entire civilization is dependent on these people.\u201d<br \/>___<br \/>Gomez reported from Manila, Philippines.<br \/>___<br \/>See full coverage of \u201cThe Facebook Papers\u201d here: <a class=\"\" href=\"\/hub\/the-facebook-papers\">https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/the-facebook-papers<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/the-facebook-papers-maid-abuse-94909f43c725af09522704348e35bd25\">source<\/a><\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 Two years ago, Apple threatened to pull Facebook and Instagram from its app store over concerns about the platform being used as a tool to trade and sell maids in the Mideast.After publicly promising to crack down, Facebook acknowledged in internal documents obtained by The Associated Press that it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow1sXXCw:productID":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}