Nineteen members of Congress Mark Zuckerberg will explain why Meta allows ads for cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs on Facebook and Instagram. The letter comes after the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) uncovered hundreds of such ads on the company’s platform.
The letter refers to the TTP report Using Meta’s ad library, it found 450 Instagram and Facebook ads “selling a range of pharmaceuticals and other drugs.” Many of these ads featured “photos of prescription bottles, stacks of pills and powders, or bricks of cocaine” and directed viewers to third-party apps like Telegram. Since then, TTP has posted additional examples of such ads on X, including a dog .
“It appears that Meta has continued to shirk its social responsibility and violate its community guidelines,” the lawmakers wrote. this is addressed directly to Zuckerberg. “What’s particularly egregious about this example is that it’s not user-generated content on the dark web or personal social media pages, but Meta-approved and monetized ads. Many of these ads contained explicit references to illegal drugs in their headlines, descriptions, photos and advertiser account names, which were easily found by researchers and journalists from the Wall Street Journal and the Tech Transparency Project using Meta’s Ad Library. However, they appear to have gone undetected or been ignored by Meta’s own internal processes.”
The letter asks for details on Meta’s enforcement policy against drug-related ads, as well as the number of times reported ads have been viewed and interacted with. He gives Meta a September 6 deadline to respond. A spokesperson for Meta said the company plans to respond to the letter and referred Engadget to an earlier statement. by The Wall Street Journalwhere the company said it rejected “hundreds of thousands of ads for violating our drug policy.”
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