The report revealed how despite regulations in place, Meta still has a growing illegal wildlife trafficking market
A report by several NGOs on Monday accused Meta of hosting “the largest known illegal wildlife trade market” on its Facebook platform, with environmentalists saying the company actively encourages the trade by allowing users to monetize content.The report follows research by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), which found more than 20,000 ads for more than 260,000 wildlife products on social media platforms between April 2024 and March 2026. Nearly three-quarters of the ads were on Facebook, with researchers describing the platform as “the central public infrastructure through which online wildlife trafficking is concentrated, detected and expanded.”The illegal wildlife trade generates up to $23 billion a year, with nearly a million plant and animal species threatened with extinction, according to a UNEP report. Facebook’s Prohibited Goods and Services policy prohibits the trade of endangered species, but experts have described its implementation as “intermittent and insufficient.”
Conservationists say Meta’s monetization policies incentivize trafficking
Meta declined to respond to AFP’s questions, citing its policies that restrict the sale of endangered species on its platforms.
However, conservationists say these policies have done little to prevent the trade from booming.“Even the unredacted calculations and collections we reported publicly in the report are still alive and active,” said Russell Gray, a data scientist and ecologist who co-authored the GI-TOC report. Gray noted that moderation appears to be primarily in English, while most wildlife-related trade publications are in other languages.Not only does Meta fail to remove infringing content, it may actively encourage it by allowing popular accounts to monetize through ad revenue and subscription models, conservationists say. “The more interaction and engagement they have on their accounts, the more money they can make,” said Daniel Stiles, an independent wildlife trafficking investigator who co-authored the NGO report released Monday.The researchers found that about 84% of animals for sale on Facebook are banned from commercial cross-border trade under CITES, and more than half are endangered or critically endangered species. The total declared value of the products discovered exceeded $66 million.
Animals and their parts are sold openly across the platforms despite policies
The trade includes live animals and wildlife products, including scaled pangolins, rhino horn for traditional medicine, chimpanzees for pets, and protected birds.
While some of the content is indirect, much of it is explicit – including public Facebook accounts offering dead pangolins and monitor lizards for consumption in Thailand.Meta was among 11 tech companies, including Google, TikTok and Alibaba, that announced earlier in June that they would work to eliminate wildlife trafficking on their sites during London Climate Action Week. The alliance also includes cryptocurrency analysis firms such as TRM Labs and Chainasis to disrupt trade-related financial flows.However, Meta has been a member of the Alliance to End Online Wildlife Trafficking since 2018, and the problem has continued to grow. Steve Galster, Freeland’s founder, warned that the latest announcement may amount to “more word of mouth.”“Until Meta is forced to rid its platforms of the illegal wildlife trade, and prove that it does not profit from it, online wildlife trade is only going to get worse,” Galster said.
