At the moment one of the problems faced by Facebook right now would be how they handle fake news reports that are published and shared on their platform. However it seems that Facebook might have another issue brewing, and that is with regards to the selling of ivory and rhino horns by wildlife smugglers.
A report from The Guardian revealed that in an 18-month sting conducted by the Wildlife Justice Commission, it seems that wildlife smugglers are using the social networking platform to sell off their presumably illegally gotten gains. According to the investigators, they visited the Vietnamese village of Nhi Khe and found that over the course of a year, the sales from Facebook and WeChat amounted to a whopping $53.1 million, and that’s just from a single village and from 51 traders, so we can only imagine that on a global scale how much more money is being traded.
How these smugglers manage to sell their items is through secret/closed groups on Facebook in which one needs to be approved before being part of it. This means that these groups are public, which means that even if one wanted to report them, they wouldn’t be able to, unless someone within that group does it.
As to what Facebook is doing about it, when the WJC approached them about the issue, a spokesperson issued a statement that reads, “Facebook does not allow the sale and trade of endangered animals and we will not hesitate to remove any content that violates our community standards when it is reported to us.” However the investigators believe that more needs to be done, like shutting down accounts and cooperating with law enforcement.
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