Drugs for Sale Plague Social Media Platforms

WASHINGTON, March 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Social media platforms continue to have difficulty removing illegal offers of opioids, steroids and COVID-19 “vaccines.” Even after they have been alerted of specific posts and long past when they have made public pledges to do a better job of making their services safe for U.S. consumers, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Telegram are not backing their words with action, new research from the Digital Citizens Alliance (Digital Citizens) and the Coalition for a Safer Web (CSW) shows.

The Digital Weeds 2021 report revisited past research conducted by Digital Citizens and CSW to determine if social media platforms have truly addressed illicit activity that was brought to their attention. Researchers searched for old posts and previous users who were attempting to conduct illegal activity. In some cases, the research teams found accounts and similar posts from the same users, whose posts were taken down years earlier, still up on the platforms. In some cases, the research teams found current accounts and similar posts from the same users who were identified years earlier.

In addition, researchers also found that the fraudulent sale of COVID-19 vaccines, which was identified by DCA and CSW in February, remains despite calls for action by Facebook’s Advisory Board to address COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and related dangers.

“I find it amazing that the platforms have the ability to pinpoint a 47-year-old resident of Walla Walla, Washington who might be interested in buying retro-styled, minor league baseball caps from teams of the 1950s, but can’t figure out a way to stop the posts pushing illegal and/or illicit activities on their pages,” said Digital Citizens Alliance Executive Director Tom Galvin. “The platforms have had a chance to correct this problem. How much more evidence do we need to present before lawmakers say, ‘enough is enough’ and take the action the platforms themselves have not been able to take?”

Many things have changed since 2013. Google, the parent of YouTube, is now Alphabet. Instagram came along and shot past its parent, Facebook, as a more popular destination for teens. Both Google and Facebook, once enormously popular, respected companies, are increasingly questioned by consumers as well as federal and state regulators for their business practices.

But a lot remains the same:

• Criminal activity and/or illicit activity highlighted in previous research, such as the selling of opioids, steroids, and malware, can still be found easily today.

• Many videos and posts shared in prior DCA and CSW reports and/or with media contacts are still available across numerous social media platforms.

• The platforms still have advertising from premium, respected brands running next to videos and/or posts for illegal and/or illicit item.

• The platforms allow for communication between drug pushers and potential buyers. Whether by containing phone numbers and emails in videos and/or posts or allowing for conversations to happen in chats.

• The platforms’ algorithms amplify connectivity between potential buyers and sellers of illegal and/or illicit items. Researchers, acting as potential buyers looking for drugs, showed that when they look for drugs on Instagram, Instagram will in turn begin directing drug sellers back to the potential buyer.

• When outed by media outlets, platforms will often take down specific videos mentioned by reporters, but not address the larger problem. This leaves consumers vulnerable to similar, or sometimes even the same scams, that inspired the news coverage in the first place.

“The social media platforms rely on its users to report illicit content for free, even though It is humanly impossible for one person – or even a group of people to get all this,” said the Coalition for a Safer Web’s Eric Feinberg, the lead researcher on the Digital Weeds report. “We have offered our tools to the social media platforms so the companies can find this content that puts consumers at risk. So why don’t they use it?” 

Ambassador Marc Ginsberg, President of the Coalition for a Safer Web, added: “Our report is another abject proofpoint that so long as social media companies are unregulated and left to run wild, consumers will be exposed to the criminal web marketplace opened by extremists and terrorists hawking illicit, dangerous drugs to fund their organizations and operations. Until Congress acts, both the FDA (by issuing formal warning letters prohibiting the sale of illegal drugs) and the FTC (by prohibiting criminal operations on social media companies) must step in immediately to protect the American people.”    

For more information, please contact Adam Benson at 202.999.9104 or adam@vrge.us.

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SOURCE Digital Citizens Alliance