Drug dealers are using social media advertising to promote the sale of illegal substances, new studies have revealed.
Reports this year by the Wall Street Journal and the Tech Transparency Project discovered hundreds of paid adverts on Facebook and Instagram.
These adverts were reaching thousands of people and often used images to circumvent the restrictions the platforms have in place.
Easy access
A report from the National Crime Agency (NCA) in the UK stated: “Social media and encrypted messaging apps provide dealers with a quick, efficient, easy and anonymous way to advertise and facilitate the supply of drugs to large numbers of end users.”
Graeme Biggar, the NCA Director General, said: “There has never been a more dangerous time to be taking drugs.
“The number of people that have died from the misuse of drugs has increased by 60 per cent over the last 10 years and tripled over the last 30 years. That gives us one of the highest death rates for drugs in Europe.”
Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, explained: “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”.
Profit over harm
A spokesman from Meta responded to the concerns: “We continue to invest resources and further improve our enforcement on this kind of content. Our hearts go out to those suffering from the tragic consequences of this epidemic—it requires all of us to work together to stop it.”
Paul Raffile, a threat intelligence analyst, challenged Meta to do more, saying the social media giant had the resources to do so and was “putting profits over potential harms”.
Katie Paul stated: “Whatever they claim to be doing is simply not enough.” She added that the team at the TTP believes that the scale of this problem is much larger than is known.
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