Hi! I'm a researcher doing work around modern slavery and human trafficking. Sometimes i do work on other crime and security issues too.
This is the first in-depth study into the role of online social spaces in the facilitation of modern slavery, including the role that platforms themselves can play in prevention and discovery. Online social spaces, or ‘online communities,’ increasingly play a role in modern slavery, providing a vector through which nefarious actors can lure, coerce, deceive and groom the vulnerable into a range of exploitative situations: from offers of employment and accommodation that result in labour exploitation, and offers of travel and companionship that result in forced sex work, to the grooming of children that results in criminal exploitation through ‘county lines’ child criminal exploitation.