Meta Leadership: Thank you for That Question
August 26, 2024
Who needs the Dark Web when one has Facebook? We learn from The Hill, “Lawmakers Press Meta Over Illicit Drug Advertising Concerns.” Writer Sarah Fortinsky pulls highlights from the open letter a group of House representatives sent directly to Mark Zuckerberg. The rebuke follows a March report from The Wall Street Journal that Meta was under investigation for “facilitating the sale of illicit drugs.” Since that report, the lawmakers lament, Meta has continued to run such ads. We learn:
The Tech Transparency Project recently reported that it found more than 450 advertisements on those platforms that sell pharmaceuticals and other drugs in the last several months. ‘Meta appears to have continued to shirk its social responsibility and defy its own community guidelines. Protecting users online, especially children and teenagers, is one of our top priorities,’ the lawmakers wrote in their letter, which was signed by 19 lawmakers. ‘We are continuously concerned that Meta is not up to the task and this dereliction of duty needs to be addressed,’ they continued. Meta uses artificial intelligence to moderate content, but the Journal reported the company’s tools have not managed to detect the drug advertisements that bypass the system.”
The bipartisan representatives did not shy from accusing Meta of dragging its heels because it profits off these illicit ad campaigns:
“The lawmakers said it was ‘particularly egregious’ that the advertisements were ‘approved and monetized by Meta.’ … The lawmakers noted Meta repeatedly pushes back against their efforts to establish greater data privacy protections for users and makes the argument ‘that we would drastically disrupt this personalization you are providing,’ the lawmakers wrote. ‘If this personalization you are providing is pushing advertisements of illicit drugs to vulnerable Americans, then it is difficult for us to believe that you are not complicit in the trafficking of illicit drugs,’ they added.”
The letter includes a list of questions for Meta. There is a request for data on how many of these ads the company has discovered itself and how many it missed that were discovered by third parties. It also asks about the ad review process, how much money Meta has made off these ads, what measures are in place to guard against them, and how minors have interacted with them. The legislators also ask how Meta uses personal data to target these ads, a secret the company will surely resist disclosing. The letter gives Zuckerberg until September 6 to respond.
Cynthia Murrell, August 26, 2024
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