Old North News

Meta is not going to change its policy on allowing solicitation of human smuggling services on Facebook, despite criticism that the social media platform is inviting human traffickers to exploit migrants who are searching for smuggling services, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Meta announced that it would continue to allow the solicitation of human smuggling on all of its platforms moving forward, the story said, citing an internal announcement that claims this decision ensures that people can continue "to seek safety or exercise their human rights."

North Carolina ranks in the bottom 20 of all state human trafficking rates, with a rate of 2.46 persons per 100,000, according to a World Population review.

Meta said that it debated the practice for five months, consulting with a variety of groups that provided the company with "global perspectives and a broad range of expertise," the Free Beacon reported. In order to help mitigate the risks associated with human smuggling, Meta "proposed interventions such as sending resources to users soliciting smuggling services." It also said it would allow "sharing information related to illegal border crossing," the story said.

"We regularly engage with outside experts to help us craft policies that strike the right balance between supporting people fleeing violence and religious persecution, while not allowing human smuggling to take place through our platforms," Meta spokesman Drew Pusateri said to the Free Beacon. "At this time, we have no policy changes to announce."

"We observed that a slight majority of stakeholders favored allowing solicitations of smuggling services for reasons associated with asylum seekers," the internal memo reads. "We decided that this was indeed the best option since the risks could be mitigated by sending resources, whereas the risks of removing such content could not be mitigated."

In the memo, Meta said it accepts that the decision is one of "tradeoffs." Allowing the solicitation of smuggling services "can make it easier for bad actors to identify and connect with vulnerable people," the memo said. It added that "law enforcement and government bodies … raised concerns that permitting this type of content on our platforms   facilitates illegal activity and puts migrants at serious risk of exploitation or death."

A May 2017 report by the group Doctors without Borders found that 31.4% of female migrants who traveled through Mexico into the United States had been sexually abused.

"Migrants and refugees are preyed upon by criminal organizations, sometimes with the tacit approval or complicity of national authorities, and subjected to violence and other abuses – abduction, theft, extortion, torture, and rape – that can leave them injured and traumatized," the report said.

Human trafficking has long been an issue with Facebook. According to CNN, internal Facebook documents reviewed by the organization show that Facebook knew about human traffickers using its platform for illegal activities since at least 2018. In 2019, Apple threatened to remove Facebook and Instagram from its app store over the issue.

Internal documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal showed that when employees raised flags about the issues they found regarding how the platform was being used, the response was often “inadequate or nothing at all.”

The Free Beacon reported that U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), in response to the recent claims that Facebook’s human smuggling solicitation policy will remain unchanged, wrote a letter that included the following statement: “As you no doubt are aware, your company has an uncommonly sordid record when it comes to trafficking. Your company ignored its own employees who sounded alarms about human traffickers using their website. Those employee concerns included identification of traffickers in the Middle East who used Facebook and Instagram to lure women into abusive domestic servitude and sex slavery.” 

Hawley also rebuked Facebook in his letter when he wrote: “No matter what 'humanitarian' rationale your company can come up with for allowing individuals to solicit criminal activity, or what 'resources' your company intends to provide potential migrants, its current approach is inflicting incalculable damage. By declining to remove user posts soliciting smuggling services, Facebook is effectively approving a gigantic beacon for human traffickers, who – even if they’re not permitted onto the platform themselves – can easily reach out to their targets through non-Facebook channels.”