U.S. prosecutors in Virginia are probing whether Facebook-parent Meta’s social media platforms facilitated and profited from the illegal sale of drugs, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing documents and people familiar with the matter.
The prosecutors sent subpoenas last year and have been asking questions as part of a criminal grand jury probe, the report said, adding that they have also been requesting records related to drug content or illicit sale of drugs via Meta’s platforms.
The Food and Drug Administration has also been helping with the investigation, the newspaper added. It noted that investigations do not always lead to charges of wrongdoing.
Who cares? What a waste of time. The drug laws are insane.
I agree, but I would also say that it highly depends on what we’re talking about here.
If Meta is helping people send weed across the country, this is total bullshit.
If Meta is helping people sell fentanyl or, worse, any doctored illegal substance, then yeah, I think maybe this is worth investigating. In theory, Meta could be responsible for deaths if it facilitates the sale of, for example, tainted heroin.
You could do this for any company that has a messaging platform then, it happens everywhere.
Assuming that meta didn’t go out of their way to court this business, in my opinion this is going to happen on all popular platforms and the deaths are still on our law makers.
Next up: investigating FedEx for profiting off drug trafficking.
This reminds me of Backpage. Trials for that shit are still ongoing because there have been two mistrials so far, with the last one being because the defendants were found guilty of hiding money laundering but not guilty of actual money laundering. It also drove one of the defendants to suicide.
About fuckin time. It’s insane that people openly sell various drugs on instagram and the accounts stay open for way too long. It’s sickening how FB and Google think they can just throw some shitty AI on moderation and depend on reports… then evaluate the reports with some shitty AI.
No, it’s not about fucking time.
Meta needs to be clamped down on for a great many things; their existence making drug sales easier is not one of them
What it is about fucking time for is America to admit defeat and end its drug war.
That’s fine but shady people selling likely counterfeit drugs to just anyone including kids isn’t helping anything. I agree it’s an effect of drug prohibition. However, the same shitty lack of moderation also enables crimes that you might agree are a problem such as child grooming and human trafficking.
shady people selling likely counterfeit drugs isn’t helping anything
Well it’s helping get drugs to the people that want drugs, which is better than the government is doing.
If the government doesn’t want counterfeit (which is vague and stupid; counterfeit Xanax that is perfectly fine alprazolam? Cool. Counterfeit heroin that is actually mostly fentanyl? Not cool) drugs, maybe they should stop creating the conditions that encourage counterfeit drugs.
Wow, I underestimated how upset the Lemmy community would be about saying that meta and people selling fake drugs on Instagram are total shit. If you want to take unknown chemicals from some spam account on instagram, please, by all means, go ahead.
I feel like drugs like Xanax are sufficiently addictive and dangerous that they shouldn’t be freely available. The prescription system is fine and no, shitbags shouldn’t be selling them to 14 year olds on Instagram. You don’t seem to understand that by counterfeit, I’m not concerned about the brand name, more that it could contain RCs, toxic chemicals, unpredictable doses, no Xanax at all… who knows.
You don’t seem to understand that by counterfeit, I’m not concerned about the brand name
You don’t seem to understand what the word ‘counterfeit’ means.
I sure do, thanks - counterfeit drugs are frequently not only imitations of brand names, but are unsafe. Why not let the FDA help you here?
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/buying-using-medicine-safely/counterfeit-medicine
Counterfeit (fake or falsified) medicines may be harmful to your health because while being passed off as authentic, may contain the wrong ingredients, contain too much, too little or no active ingredient at all or contain other harmful ingredients.
Hope that helps.
What it is about fucking time for is America to admit defeat and end its drug war.
Well, yes and no. The outright ban of drugs needs to be lifted but they still need heavy regulation, similar to alcohol and cigarettes to ensure things like what’s happening in the OP don’t happen.
Most people aren’t trying to kill themselves with Fentanyl but black market drug dealers are cutting them that way to increase profits.
Drugs have won the war on drugs.
Legalize it, regulate it, tax it, and put the taxes towards rehabilitation programs.
Bad take, with this logic no website could do user generated content or secure messaging without aiding drug sales. You would have to curate every post.
Facebook and Instagram both have massive amounts if logging, I bet if the police even asked they’d give them everything from their geolocation data to the drug users entire social network.
Well, what do you know. That’s exactly how Facebook feels. They can’t hire moderators or properly police their content to prevent people from being preyed upon, but can ban people for ridiculous shit that makes no sense, because then they’d have to spend money (oh no… tears for Zucky…)
Of course police have access to their data, and they’re lazy and ineffective also.
