Underworld Unplugged: The Shocking Tale of Facebook Ads and Fentanyl-Laced Deceit

The digital marketplace is replete with opportunities, but some of these are decidedly less savory than others. Meta, the tech behemoth overseeing Facebook and Instagram, finds itself entangled in controversy, not for the first time and likely not the last. This time, the matter at hand involves an illicit trade conducted right under their virtual noses. Despite a federal investigation into the sale of illegal drugs on its platforms, Meta continues to host advertisements peddling cocaine and other narcotics, including fentanyl—a lethal opioid linked to hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths in recent years.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta’s advertising marketplace has been generating revenue from these dubious ads. This troubling trend is especially alarming given that federal prosecutors in Virginia have already opened an investigation. The ads violate Meta’s own policies, which ban such content, but tech-savvy dealers have managed to skirt these rules. Instead of writing out what they are selling in product descriptions—something that would trigger Meta’s AI censors—dealers post photographs of their illicit wares. One especially audacious ad spelled out “DMT” (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, a powerful hallucinogen) in powdered form.

Clicking on these ads typically redirects users to third-party sites or social networks, often leading them into dealer chat feeds hosted on Telegram. Telegram, a less-regulated messaging app similar to WhatsApp, provides a haven for these illegal activities. Even as recently as last week, the Wall Street Journal found ads selling cocaine and prescription opioids in Meta’s Ad Library. Once alerted to their existence by the Journal, Meta promptly removed the ads—a predictable yet insufficient reaction from the tech giant.

The extent of this issue is daunting. While the Wall Street Journal didn’t specify how many ads it found in July, the Tech Transparency Project watchdog group reported that between March and June, over 450 such ads were running on Meta’s Ad Library. A Meta spokesperson claimed that their systems are designed to detect and enforce against violating content proactively and that they reject hundreds of thousands of ads that breach their drug policies. Despite these assurances, the persistence of these ads demonstrates that their enforcement mechanisms are far from foolproof.

The human cost of these digital drug deals is not merely hypothetical. One particularly tragic case involves a teenager who died with a fatal amount of fentanyl in his system. His mother, Mikayla Brown, believes the drugs were laced with the deadly opioid and were purchased via Instagram. Even more distressingly, the accounts that the teen had interacted with remained active for months after his death, only being taken down once the Wall Street Journal highlighted them to Meta.

The fact that Meta can inadvertently profit from such life-threatening activities is deeply concerning. While the company claims to invest significant resources in improving its enforcement mechanisms, the evident gaps in their system reveal a pressing need for more robust and effective measures. Until then, the digital world remains a risky terrain where the algorithms meant to protect us can sometimes fail in the most tragic ways.