The research shows that many advertisements feature photos of drug bottles or blocks of cocaine (representative).
San Francisco:
Members of Congress on Thursday called on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to provide them with details about ads for opioids and other illegal drugs on the tech giant's platform.
A letter signed by 19 lawmakers urged more details about such ads, given troubling reports from the Tech Transparency Project and the Wall Street Journal.
“It appears that Meta continues to avoid its social responsibility and ignore its own community guidelines,” the letter reads.
“What is particularly outrageous in this case is that it was not user-generated content on the dark web or on private social media pages, but rather ads that were approved and monetized by Meta.”
The Tech Transparency Project reported in March that it had found more than 450 ads on Instagram and Facebook selling a variety of illegal drugs.
According to the nonprofit, many of the ads made “no secret of their intentions”: They showed pictures of bottles of prescription drugs or blocks of cocaine and encouraged people to place orders.
The investigation involved searching Meta's ad library for terms such as “OxyContin,” “Vicodin” and “pure coke,” TTP reported.
The Congressmen's letter to Zuckerberg asked for a response by September 6.
Questions were raised about how many illegal drug ads Meta placed on its platform, what it did about them, and whether viewers were targeted with such ads based on personal health information.
Meta planned to respond to the letter.
“Drug dealers are criminals who operate on different platforms and in different communities. That is why we work with the police to combat these activities,” a Meta spokesperson said in response to a question from AFP.
“Our systems are designed to proactively detect and take action against infringing content. We reject hundreds of thousands of ads that violate our drug policy.”
Meta continues to invest in improving its capabilities to detect illegal drug ads, the spokesperson said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published via a syndicated feed.)
