U.S. lawmakers have sent a letter directly to Meta‘s CEO – Mark Zuckerberg expressing concern over the company’s failure to remove ads of banned substances from its platforms.
It is worth noting that in the spring, US federal prosecutors had already started investigating Meta for “facilitating the sale of illegal drugs,” but the corporation did not respond in any way and continued to run ads.
“Instead of quickly addressing the problem and removing the illegal content entirely, The Wall Street Journal again reported on July 31, 2024, that Meta “placed ads on Facebook and Instagram directing users to online marketplaces with illegal drugs.”
Among the 19 authors of the letter to Zuckerberg are prominent American political figures (Tim Wahlberg, Gus Bilirakis, Kathy Castor, etc.).
They believe that “the ads were approved and monetized by Meta and were not hidden in any way on private pages, but were published in the public domain. Media representatives and researchers of the issue were easily able to find ads that contained links to illegal drugs, while Meta’s internal algorithms did not notice them.”
The letter contains 15 questions regarding Meta’s efforts to address the issue. Zuckerberg should send his response no later than September 6, 2024.
Meta has confirmed the receipt of the appeal and is planning to send a response. Representatives of the company in an interview with CNBC also noted:
“Drug dealers are criminals who work across platforms and communities, which is why we work with law enforcement to help combat this activity. Our systems are designed to proactively detect and enforce against violating content, and we reject hundreds of thousands of ads for violating our drug policies. 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”
- More information on the situation is available here.
