On Thursday, a coalition of 19 Democratic and Republican lawmakers sent an open letter to Meta outlining concerns that the company was failing to prevent “blatant” advertisements for illicit drugs on its platforms. Published reports this year revealed that federal prosecutors have been probing whether Meta has profited indirectly from drug sales on Instagram and Facebook.
The letter came on the heels of a rare scene earlier this year, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg stood up in a Senate hearing regarding child safety on social-media platforms, turned around, and apologized to a gallery of parents whose children had been victims of online abuse. Some of the children had committed suicide.
“At a hearing before the U.S. Senate … you personally apologized to the parents of children who have died following their exposure to exploitation, harassment, and drugs online,” the letter states. “Despite this and your company’s own Community Standards, Meta approved ads throughout 2024 that displayed obvious drug sales, including ‘packages of OxyContin and piles of unidentified, brightly colored pills,’ as well as MDMA, ecstasy, cocaine, and others.”
The legislators include House minority whip Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), and Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), who is also vice chair of the House subcommittee on telecommunications and technology. They were outraged over the fact that, rather than user generated content such as listings on Facebook Marketplace, the drug ads appeared to be promoted by Meta itself.
“What is particularly egregious about this instance is that this was not user generated content on the dark web or on private social media pages,” they wrote. “But rather they were advertisements approved and monetized by Meta.”
Meta did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment, but in a statement to CNBC, the company said their systems reject hundreds of thousands of ads for violating Meta’s drug policies.
“Drug dealers are criminals who work across platforms and communities, which is why we work with law enforcement to help combat this activity,” they said. “We continue to invest resources and further improve our enforcement on this kind of content.”
The Wall Street Journal reported in March that federal prosecutors were investigating whether Meta had facilitated or profited from the sale of illicit drugs on Instagram and Facebook. At the time, a spokesperson for the company told the Journal that Meta was proactively cooperating with law enforcement authorities to limit the sale and distribution of illegal products.
Yet just a few months later, in July, the Journal published another report showing that Meta’s platforms were running “dozens of ads marketing illegal substances such as cocaine and prescription opioids.”
On the same day, the Tech Transparency Project, a watchdog group covering major technology companies, reported an investigation detailing over 450 ads running on Instagram and Facebook that were selling pharmaceutical and other drugs, including images of “piles of pills and powders, or bricks of cocaine,” often directing users to send the sellers encrypted messages on WhatsApp or Telegram.
“Meta appears to have continued to shirk its social responsibility and defy its own community guidelines,” lawmakers wrote. “Protecting users online, especially children and teenagers, is one of our top priorities. We are continuously concerned that Meta is not up to the task and this dereliction of duty needs to be addressed.”
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