A really good, thorough article about the nature of the Internet's massive, perpetual game of telephone, the subtitles involved in child exploitation, and why "Nobody's talking about this!!" often means it didn't fucking happen. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/government-did-not-break-up-child-sex-trafficking-ring-georgia_n_5f52b7a1c5b6946f3eb1c5d9?v2&guccounter=1

"400,000 children are reported missing every year and NO ONE'S TALKING ABOUT IT!" Yeah, uh, probably because 99% of missing kids are home within days, if not hours. Out of ~400k cases, maybe 100-ish are actual stranger-danger snatchings. It's very rare and wildly uncommon.

Another obscuring element is the definition of being "trafficked," which doesn't actually require a pimp/kidnapper/nefarious preschool full of devil-worshipers etc. at all. Any kid who who exchanges sex for food/money/shelter is being "trafficked." No force/compelling necessary.

And these kids aren't chloroformed and tossed in the back of FREE CANDY vans. They're being kicked out by family, maybe for being queer/trans, or come from unstable, chaotic environments they just don't feel safe in. They're trapped, but not in a way police busts resolve.

There *are* child sex traffickers that fit the darkest fantasies of the Facebook panic squads, but they're not the source of the vast, overwhelming majority of actual child trafficking.