Wildlife trafficking increases on Facebook despite ban

What about Facebook’s regulations?

Facebook has been unwavering in its mission to protect freedom of speech.

Due to the lack of government legislation which enforces a duty on social media companies to protect users through better censorship, the platform has become a breeding ground for illicit activity.

The website has been completely self-regulated for almost two decades, by an in-house team of content moderators who manually scan through posts to remove any that are harmful, abusive or exploitative.

Seeing as Facebook has already paid £52 million in compensation to its employees over their development of PTSD while working these roles, the amount of graphic content on the website is immeasurable.

Although it’s unfortunate, it is somewhat understandable that the moderation of dangerous human activity takes precedent over the illegal sale of wild animals.

However, organisations lobbying for governments to create stronger social media guidelines argue that any action considered to be a crime when made in person must also be treated as just as unlawful when it occurs online.

Their worry is that without legislation, Facebook will continue to absolve itself of any real responsibility for acting as a host for the sale of endangered wild animals and products from illegal poaching.

Why is the illegal animal trade a problem?

Besides the detriment to bio-diversity and natural population levels, and the fact that these animals don’t have a great (or long) life outside of their habitats, there is another important reason the sale of wild animals needs to stop.

In a highly lucrative illegal industry generating approximately £15 billion per year, there are no real parameters of health safety.

When animals are trafficked together in small cages, pathogens living inside one animal can easily jump to the another. This mixing process can result in the creation of complex, new diseases which – you guessed it – can later spill into the human population.

It’s no real comfort to know that amongst the millions of live animals imported into the USA and the UK annually, many come from parts of the world which are ‘hot zones’ for viruses.

Wildlife protectionists believe that social media companies will be subjected to further probing about their regulatory practices as awareness grows about online trafficking of endangered species.

As life slowly returns to normal, it will be interesting to see if traffickers return to their traditional methods of sale. If not, it’s more than likely that Facebook will have another legal inquiry on its hands.