I was mormon. Thankfully my parents paid to traffic me, so I could afford to go to college and cut them off relatively soon after I got home.

I was threatened by local leaders and family if I didn’t go on a 2 year mission in another country, then when I got there, they:

• took my passport immediately and locked it in a building I couldn’t access
• required 12 to 16 hours of work a day, with discipline if productivity dropped
• refused to provide adequate food or medical care
• restricted my communication with my family
• assigned me a companion to surveil me 24/7 and report disobedience to leadership (and assigned me to surveil someone else)
• disciplined me when I was physically and sexually assaulted by other missionaries

I didn’t want to call it trafficking for a long time. I figured maybe God just had a weird way of doing things. But my spouse works at a recovery center for survivors of violence (including trafficking) and helped me realize that’s what it was.

A pretty big misconception is that trafficking has to look like selling slaves, and I agree that’s an egregious thing, but it can be a lot more broad than that.

There are a lot of resources at https://humantraffickinghotline.org/en if you’re curious. My mission experience checked just about every box for labor trafficking, and I’ve heard very similar stories from a lot of other people who have been missionaries.

The church in the ad is particularly harmful. I had to fight to get out of it, and only after they took 10% of my income for years and trafficked me. They want money, power, and control, not increased numbers at their services.

Surprisingly little discourse for a nearly 1:1 vote ratio lol

Honestly I pretty much just use Lemmy to see the good old fashioned memes. Like everyone is saying, mastodon is the one if you want to follow people.

Poor explanation. No images of non-birds for comparison.

… I usually don’t stand on a soapbox in my shower

It’s not my job. If it’s vital work, someone can pay me for it. Otherwise it happens on my own terms.

I downloaded all my comments before I deleted the data, and I’m slowly putting all the stuff that was actually important in places where I have a bit more control over how it’s used (i.e., the fediverse, my own websites, etc). Not a perfect solution, but if Reddit wanted to keep it forever they should have treated us better.

Maybe in certain nsfw communities but c certainly not here lol

Corporate America and its constant need for fucking validation