Exploring Legal Accountability of Global Technology And Social Media Companies for the Cyber Exploitation And Online Human Trafficking of Yezidis and Other Minorities By ISIS

Abstract

New legal and regulatory challenges are emerging as technology infiltrates every aspect of public and private life on a global scale. The growing dominance of largely unregulated global technology and social media companies presents grave concerns for international and national lawmakers and regulators grappling with health, safety and security issues such as cyber exploitation and discrimination, digital harassment and violence, online human trafficking and cyber sexual exploitation, particularly of vulnerable populations living in conflict zones. Additional issues relate to the biases and discrimination programmed into artificial intelligence and how global technology and social media companies are using powerful algorithms to expand their global audiences without possessing the technical language competency needed to enforce their community standards prohibiting the dissemination of hate speech, illegal content and unlawful activities on their platforms. While social media has benefits, it can also facilitate crimes such as cyber exploitation, sexual terrorism and online human trafficking that especially harm socially marginalized and economically vulnerable people—specifically women and children. This law article focuses on the nexus between cyber exploitation, enslavement, sexual torture and online human trafficking on global technology and social media platforms and its connection to terrorism financing with a detailed discussion of what happened to Yezidi women and children and other religious and ethnic minorities during the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, ISIL, IS or the Islamic State). This law article will also explore the legal frameworks in the United States, Europe and Iraq that might allow victims of cyber exploitation to pursue criminal and civil accountability against corporate actors.