Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is facing criticism for allowing advertisements that promote illegal drugs including cocaine and opioids on its social media platforms, even as it faces a federal investigation into the practice.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Meta, the tech giant behind Facebook and Instagram, is under fire for continuing to run advertisements that direct users to online marketplaces for illegal drugs. This ongoing practice comes months after the Journal reported that the company was facing a federal investigation over the issue.
Despite Meta’s policies explicitly banning the promotion of illicit or recreational drugs, the company has been found to be collecting revenue from ads that violate these guidelines. A recent review by the Journal uncovered dozens of advertisements marketing illegal substances, including cocaine and prescription opioids, with some appearing as recently as last Friday.
These advertisements often feature images of prescription drug bottles, piles of pills, or even bricks of cocaine. One ad discovered by the Journal in July boldly stated, “Place your orders,” accompanied by a photo of a razorblade and yellow powder arranged to spell out “DMT,” a psychedelic drug.
The Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit organization that investigates online platforms, conducted an analysis of Meta’s ad library from March to June. Their findings were alarming, revealing more than 450 illicit drug ads on Facebook and Instagram during this period.
Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, highlighted the severity of the situation, stating, “You don’t need the dark web anymore when you can just buy a Facebook ad to sell dangerous drugs or even scam people at a scale that wouldn’t have been possible through the dark web.”
Meta employs artificial intelligence tools for content moderation, but these systems have proven ineffective in stopping such drug advertisements. The ads often redirect users to other platforms where purchases can be made. The use of photos to showcase available drugs appears to enable these ads to bypass Meta’s content moderation systems.
When users click on the Facebook pages or Instagram accounts associated with these ads, they often find additional non-sponsored photos or posts containing drug-related content. Some accounts use names that clearly indicate their purpose, such as “DMT Vapes and Notes.”
Clicking on the links in these ads typically leads users to private group chats on Telegram, an app not owned by Meta. These chats often display a stream of posts from dealers, including photos of drugs, price menus, and ordering instructions.
Meta has stated that it works with law enforcement to combat this type of activity. A company spokesperson said, “Our systems are designed to proactively detect and enforce against violating content, and we reject hundreds of thousands of ads for violating our drug policies. We continue to invest resources and further improve our enforcement on this kind of content.”
The company claims to have disabled many of the drug ads spotted by the Journal within 48 hours of their publication. Meta has also banned the users who created these ads from its platform and is using insights gained from investigating these ads to conduct additional sweeps for similar content.
This issue has drawn attention from lawmakers, who have been discussing the need to hold technology companies responsible for content posted by third parties on their platforms. However, efforts to do so have been complicated by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which largely shields online platforms from liability for user-generated content.
The situation has had tragic real-world consequences. Mikayla Brown, a 34-year-old mother, believes Meta is responsible for the drug overdose death of her 15-year-old son, Elijah Ott. Brown found messages on her son’s phone showing how he connected with an Instagram account selling illegal drugs and sought to purchase marijuana oil and a pharmaceutical similar to Xanax. Ott’s autopsy revealed the presence of fentanyl, which was determined to be the cause of his death. “Because of this app, my child does not get to live,” Brown said.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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