Great Lakes Wire

An internal memo from Meta, formerly known as Facebook, continues to allow the solicitation of human smuggling on all platforms moving forward, according to a Feb. 1 report by The Washington Free Beacon.

In the announcement obtained by the news organization, Meta claims the move ensures that people may continue to “seek safety or exercise their human rights.” According to World Population Review, Michigan has the ninth-highest rate of human trafficking out of all 50 states, with a rate of 3.64 persons per 100,000.

Meta said that it had debated the practice for five months, consulting with a variety of groups, which provided the company with "global perspectives and a broad range of expertise." To help mitigate the risks associated with human smuggling, Meta "proposed interventions, such as sending resources to users soliciting smuggling services" and allowing the "sharing (of) information related to illegal border crossing."

“We observed that a slight majority of stakeholders favored allowing solicitations of smuggling services for reasons associated with asylum seekers," the memo reads, according to 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."

Human trafficking has long been an issue associated with Facebook. According to CNN, internal Facebook documents reviewed by the organization show that the company knew about human traffickers using its platform since at least 2018. In 2019, Apple threatened to remove Facebook and Instagram from its app store over the issue.

“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," Meta spokesman Drew Pusateri told the Washington Free Beacon. "At this time, we have no policy changes to announce."

In the memo, Meta says that it accepts the decision as one of the “tradeoffs,” adding that concerns have been raised by law enforcement and government bodies that allowing this type of content may facilitate illegal activity and put migrants at risk of exploitation or death. 

“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,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) wrote in response to the company’s stagnant policy.  

With this, he said, the company is approving a beacon for human traffickers who can easily reach out to their targets through non-Facebook channels, even if they are not permitted onto the platform themselves.

"Migrants and refugees are preyed upon by criminal organizations, sometimes with the tacit approval or complicity of national authorities, and subjected to violence and other abuses — abduction, theft, extortion, torture and rape — that can leave them injured and traumatized," says a 2017 report from Doctors Without Borders. 

The same report also found that 31.4% of female migrants who traveled through Mexico into the U.S. had been sexually abused.

Internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal showed that when employees raised flags about the issues they found regarding how the platform was being used, the response was often “inadequate or nothing at all.”