Facebook remains a thriving market for online wildlife trafficking despite the tech giant’s promise to help crack down on illegal trade, according to new research.
Tiger cubs, leopards, ocelots, African gray parrots and the world’s smallest monkey, the pygmy marmoset, were among the endangered animals that researchers from the global campaign group Avaaz found on Facebook pages and public groups.
Illegal wildlife trafficking is the the fourth largest illicit transnational activity in the world, falling closely behind narcotics, human trafficking, and counterfeits. The multibillion-dollar business is linked to a myriad of harms including cruelty to animals, endangering species and ecosystems, and encouraging the transmission of diseases from animals to humans, such as coronavirus, Ebola, dengue, anthrax and bird flu.
In 2018, Facebook, which has more than 2.9 billion monthly users, co-founded the Coalition to End Wildlife Online Trafficking with experts like WWF, which has set out to reduce illegal trade by 80% by 2020.
The company says it has made progress, but Wednesday’s report suggests Facebook remains a popular platform for animal traffickers.
In two days earlier this year, researchers found 129 pieces of potentially harmful content “within a matter of clicks” through the Facebook search bar, including posts selling or looking for cheetahs, monkeys, lion cubs and tusks. elephant, animals listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites).
This included a Facebook page called “Wildlife Trade, Pangolin Scale and Rhino Horn” that asked bidders for their animals by posting a photo of a pangolin in a cage.
“Traffickers are not shy about putting their wares up for sale in public groups, or including their phone numbers in their posts,” said Ruth Delbaere, senior legal advocate at Avaaz. “On Facebook, wildlife trafficking takes place in broad daylight.”
In the following weeks, Facebook made 95 wildlife-focused recommendations to researchers through notifications and the “suggested groups” feature. Of these, 76% were posts seeking to buy or sell live animals, which likely violated Facebook’s own policies.
The ease with which they were directed to these sites suggests that Facebook’s algorithms are not aligned with its own policies or public commitment to curbing the online wildlife trade, the report concludes.
“Instead of using data to help combat wildlife trafficking, its algorithms help criminals grow their business,” said Gretchen Peters, executive director of the Alliance to Counter Crime Online.
Four Avaaz researchers with no background in wildlife trade research entered search terms such as “exotic pets,” “monkey for sale,” and “pangolin scales” in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. They searched for potentially harmful posts, which they defined as content that warrants further investigation to determine if it constitutes illegal wildlife trafficking activity.
According to the report, Facebook appeared to remove 13% of the suspected wildlife trafficking posts they found before the researchers reported them. After the posts were reported, Facebook had removed just 43% a week after Avaaz alerted the company through its “report post” tool.
“Facebook not only knows that wildlife trafficking is thriving on their platform, they have known it for years. Yet they continue to blatantly ignore the problem, or worse, enable it, even violating their own self-proclaimed position against criminal activity and physical harm to animals. The findings of this investigation are noted,” said Raúl Grijalva, a Democratic congressman and chairman of the House natural resources committee.
In 2018, Grijalva called for an investigation into the social network’s role in illegal wildlife trafficking.
In a statement, Facebook parent company Meta questioned the validity of the study’s methodology and sample size, saying the results did not reflect the work they had done to combat wildlife trafficking.
A spokesperson for Meta said: “We have pioneered technology to help us find and remove this content; launched pop-up alerts to discourage people from engaging in this trade. As a result, between January and May 2021, in Indonesia and the Philippines alone, we removed more than 1,900 Facebook groups linked to wildlife trafficking. However, this is an adversarial space, and the people behind this horrific activity are persistent and constantly evolving their tactics to try to evade these efforts.”
The report calls on Facebook to strengthen and enforce policies to crack down on wildlife trafficking, including restricting certain search results and changing its algorithms, as well as cooperating with law enforcement and government agencies to combat wildlife trafficking online.