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Instagram and Facebook, already under federal investigation, still collect revenue from ads that violate its policies

Read the original article on the Wall Street Journal website (subscription may be required)

Meta Platforms is running ads on Facebook and Instagram that steer users to online marketplaces for illegal drugs, months after The Wall Street Journal first reported that the social-media giant was facing a federal investigation over the practice.

The company has continued to collect revenue from ads that violate its policies, which ban promoting the sale of illicit or recreational drugs. A review by the Journal in July found dozens of ads marketing illegal substances such as cocaine and prescription opioids, including as recently as Friday. A separate analysis over recent months by an industry watchdog group found hundreds of such ads.

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Read the original article the Futurism.com website.

“BECAUSE OF THIS APP, MY CHILD DOES NOT GET TO LIVE.”

Despite a federal investigation into the practice, Meta continues to run ads on Facebook and Instagram selling cocaine and other illicit drugs — some of which have been found to contain fentanyl, a deadly opioid linked to hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths in recent years.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, the company’s ad marketplace was until recently still making money from ads for illicit drugs months after it was revealed that federal prosecutors in Virginia are investigating the troubling trend.

Despite running counter to its own policies banning such ads, tech-savvy dealers manage to skirt Meta’s rules by posting photos of their wares instead of writing out what they’re selling in the product description, which would trigger the AI censors deployed on the social networks. In one such ad found by the WSJ, the letters “DMT” are spelled out in what is presumably a powdered version of the powerful hallucinogen, which is short for the chemical name N,N-Dimethyltryptamine.