Grand Canyon Times

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, announced internally that it would continue to allow solicitation of human smuggling on its platforms despite criticism from lawmakers, according to a report by the Washington Free Beacon. This hits home in the state of Arizona, as World Population Review reports that it is in the top 20 of all state human trafficking rates at 3.06 persons per 100,000.

According to a Feb. 1 report, the Washington Free Beacon said that it obtained a private announcement by the company that says Meta will continue this policy to ensure that people can continue to “seek safety or exercise their human rights.” Meta said it consulted with various groups that gave the company global perspectives and expertise over a five-month period. Meta proposed sending resources to users soliciting smuggling services and also said it would share information about illegal border crossings.

“We observed that a slight majority of stakeholders favored allowing solicitations of smuggling services for reasons associated with asylum seekers," the memo reads, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon. "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 says that it accepts the decision as a “trade-off.” It also states law enforcement and government bodies raised concerns that permitting this content facilitates illegal activity and puts migrants at risk of being exploited or killed.

The Wall Street Journal reported that employees did raise flags about issues they found regarding how the platform was being used, but often got a response that was inadequate, or no response at all. CNN reported that human trafficking has been an ongoing issue with Facebook, as documents show that Facebook knew about human traffickers using the platform since at least 2018. Apple even threatened to remove Facebook and Instagram from its app store in 2019 due to this.

According to Doctors Without Borders, a 2017 report found that 31.4% of female migrants that traveled through Mexico into the U.S. had been sexually abused. It said that some migrants and refugees are preyed upon by criminal organizations and are subjected to violence, abduction, theft, torture, and rape.

Meta spokesman Drew Pusateri told the Washington Free Beacon that there were no policy changes to announce at that time.

“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,” Pusateri said.

The Free Beacon reported that Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley wrote a letter to Meta in response to the unchanged policy regarding human smuggling, saying that the company ignored its own employee concerns about human traffickers using the website. These included identifying traffickers in the Middle East who used the platform to lure women into sex slavery.

“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,” Hawley wrote. “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.”