Nineteen members of Congress Mark Zuckerberg explains why Meta has allowed ads for cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs to appear on facebook and instagram. The letter comes after the technology Transparency Project (TTP) discovered hundreds of such ads on the company's platform.
The letter refers to the TTP report which used Meta’s ad library to find 450 instagram and facebook ads “selling a variety of pharmaceutical and other drugs.” Many of those ads included “photos of prescription drug bottles, stacks of pills and powders, or bricks of cocaine,” and directed viewers to external apps like Telegram. TTP has since been posting additional examples of such ads on x, including one it posted to its twitter account. twitter.com/TTP_updates/status/1823750165477401055″ rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank” data-ylk=”slk:found yesterday;cpos:3;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link “>.
“Meta appears to have continued to evade its social responsibility and defy its own community guidelines,” the lawmakers write in “What is particularly egregious about this case is that these were not user-generated content on the dark web or private social media pages, but were ads approved and monetized by Meta. Many of these ads contained blatant references to illegal drugs in their titles, descriptions, photos, and advertiser account names, which were easily found by Wall Street Journal and tech Transparency Project researchers and journalists using Meta’s ad library. However, they appear to have gone unnoticed or been ignored by Meta’s own internal processes.”
The letter asks for details about Meta’s policies for enforcing rules against drug-related ads, as well as information about how many times the reported ads were viewed and how many people interacted with them. The letter gives Meta a deadline of September 6 to respond. A Meta spokesperson said the company plans to respond to the letter and directed Engadget to a previous statement. by The Wall Street Journalin which the company said it rejects “hundreds of thousands of ads for violating our drug policies.”
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