According to a complaint filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Facebook has been making a profit by selling ads on pages that are operated by illegal wildlife traffickers for the purpose of selling the body parts of endangered species.
That means the social media giant has been making money off of the sale of items like elephant ivory, rhino horns and tiger teeth. There's even an Associated Press article that includes a screen grab of a Facebook group page displaying buckets full of the teeth.
An anonymous whistleblower complaint was filed in August 2017 by the law firm of Kohn, Kohn and Colapinto. The complaint states that Facebook is violating its responsibilities as a publicly-traded company by knowingly profiting from the criminal trafficking of endangered species. Just how much it's profiting isn't known, since the company hasn't disclosed the information in its regulatory disclosure. An SEC investigation is needed to determine exactly how much of the company’s annual $41 billion revenue is from the sale of endangered animal parts. The law firm points out that “Part of the SEC’s responsibility is to ensure that Facebook investors aren’t unwittingly involved with the criminal trafficking of endangered species.”
Ironically, Facebook was one of 21 technology companies, including Google and Microsoft, that joined the Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online just one month ago.
Facebook released its own statement saying it doesn’t permit the sale of wildlife, endangered species or their parts, and that it removes groups that have been identified as engaging in illegal conduct. However, a months-long investigation of various social media platforms by Kohn, Kohn and Colapinto's undercover team found “rampant wildlife activity in two places: Facebook and Instagram.” Instagram, of course, is owned by Facebook.
The firm's undercover team identified more than a dozen wildlife trafficking networks operating on Facebook. In Vietnam and Laos, they to meet with ivory traders who confirmed they were actively marketing their products on the social media platform.
Gretchen Peters, is executive director of the Center on Illicit Networks and Transnational Organized Crime, a nonprofit dedicated to helping governments and communities more efficiently counter these groups. She told the AP, “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 could do a lot to save endangered species by turning over the information it has about wildlife traffickers to authorities – just like it turned over information about users to Cambridge Analytica. Doing so could help lead to the largest wildlife law enforcement operation ever, the law firm of Kohn, Kohn and Colapinto said in its statement.
Care2.com has posted a petition urging Facebook to stop advertising on the pages of illegal wildlife traffickers, remove the pages and report these criminals to authorities.
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