In an appearance promoting his latest Netflix series, The Ranch, actor Ashton Kutcher shared details about how Thorn, an organization founded by himself and ex-wife Demi Moore, has been working to combat human trafficking — and the unique challenge the internet poses to anti-trafficking groups.
While young girls have been targeted by traffickers through social media such as Snapchat and sites such as Backpage.com have been shut down for allegedly facilitating the prostitution of women, some of whom may have been trafficked, Kutcher said that his organization had saved more than 6,000 victims from human trafficking in 2016, identifying more 2,000 trafficker in the process, thanks in part to the digital tools that the group had developed.
“Basically, the purchase and commerce for human trafficking is happening online, just like everything else now, and so we’re building digital tools to fight back against it,” Kutcher explained.
An additional online menace that Thorn intends to combat, Kutcher added, was online pornography. “My next battle, I figure when Hillary’s in office,” said Kutcher, “I’m going to make a pledge that I’m going to eliminate child pornography from the internet.”
