Facebook acting as ‘marketplace’ for endangered animal body parts by selling ads on pages for traffickers selling Bengal tiger belts and black rhino horns
Facebook has been accused of acting like a 'marketplace' for the trade in illegal body part of endangered animals
FACEBOOK has been accused of allowing adverts to be displayed on group pages operated by wildlife traffickers dealing in illegal body parts of endangered animals.
The illegal traffickers are dealing in banned goods such as elephant ivory, rhino horn and tiger teeth.
Wildlife preservation activists have filed a complaint in the US with the Securities and Exchange Commission which alleges Facebook has failed to stop illicit traders using its service for illegal activity – a move that would violate the social network’s responsibilities as a publicly listed company.
The complaint was initially filed in August on behalf of an undercover informant represented by the National Whistleblower Center, a non-profit legal advocacy group.
The identity of the informant, who recorded video of face-to-face meetings with wildlife traffickers set up over Facebook, has been kept confidential out of safety concerns.
Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblower Center, said: "Facebook is not an innocent bystander to these crimes.
"Facebook sold advertisements on the very pages the illegal ivory was being marketed."
Gretchen Peters, executive director of the Center on Illicit Networks and Transnational Organized Crime, which has analysed online groups where wildlife goods are being marketed, said: "The amount of ivory being traded on Facebook is horrifying.
"I have looked at thousands of posts containing ivory, and I am convinced that Facebook is literally facilitating the extinction of the elephant species.”
Facebook is one of 20 technology companies that last month joined the Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, which was organized by Google and the World Wildlife Fund.
Among the items available were belts made from what appeared to be the fur of Bengal tigers, a critically endangered species with only about 2,500 still living in the wild.
Also advertised were horns from black rhinos, a species heavily targeted by poachers with little more than 5,000 still roaming Africa.
Negotiations over price and delivery are often initiated by Facebook Messenger. Instagram and WhatsApp, two social media platforms also owned by Facebook, are also sometimes used by traffickers.
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The allegations come as Facebook is already trying to recover after the concerning revelations over breaches of data privacy and the selling of personal information to third parties.
Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm connected to Donald Trump's successful presidential 2016 campaign, had exploited weaknesses in Facebook's privacy controls to collect personal information about 87 million people without their consent.
Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify to Congress in regard to those allegations in two days of testimony starting today.
Zuckerberg is expected to give evidence over Cambridge Analytica and concerns Russian agents manipulated Facebook's network to spread false information that may have swayed the 2016 election.
The Sun Online has contacted Facebook for comment.
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