Illegal Products Advertisements: Firearms, Drugs, and Online Casinos Found on Meta Platforms

2023-10-06 08:00:00

Firearms, LSD, MDMA, magic mushrooms, cannabis, cloned credit cards, online casinos: this is a sample of the advertisements for illegal products that Decryptors have been able to list on Facebook and Instagram in recent days.

One of the ads promotes a small, collapsible .22 caliber pistol. It looks like a phone… BUT IT’S ABSOLUTELY NOT A PHONE, the ad promises, before adding that it’s ideal for self-defense and is easily concealable.

The ad, which had been circulating for four days, was removed following Decryptors asked Meta regarding it. However, the company did not respond to any of our multiple questions.

Despite this, ads for firearms abound on Facebook. A simple search for the term handgun in Meta’s bank reveals several dozen publications aimed at Canadians promoting firearms.

One of these ads promotes a .357 Magnum type revolver. Another sells a semi-automatic pistol, perfect for children of all ages. The advertisements clearly state that these are not toys, but functional firearms.

Photo album: Weapon advertisements

However, not only is the sale of handguns prohibited in Canada, but these advertisements go once morest the Meta conditions of use (New window). These clearly state that advertisements must not promote the sale or use of weapons, ammunition or explosives. Even the ads for pistols paintballrelatively harmless, are prohibited there.

The advertisements spotted by the Decryptors are not, however, very subtle: they contain the word handgun or even photos or videos of handguns.

Although all of them contravened Meta’s regulations, they were able to be posted online and the company earned revenue from them.

An advertisement reading LSD: the #1 source in Canada has been online since May 3.

Other sites claiming to sell illegal narcotics are also advertised on Facebook and Instagram.

Some publications promote cannabis in flower and cannabis distillate cartridges, all delivered by Canada Post, while others tout the benefits of macrodoses of hallucinogenic mushrooms, which can be obtained by clicking on a link .

The image of the Montreal Casino usurped

Many advertisements that invite people to download a gambling application that is illegal in Quebec use the logo and facade of the Montreal Casino to attract customers.

Casino de Montréal, Casino Montreal and Casino de Montréal en ligne are just some of the names of the pages that broadcast these advertisements. Some include the establishment’s logo in their profile photo, others falsely claim to announce the first official application of the Montreal Casino.

Loto-Québec says it has been aware of the existence of these advertisements for several weeks.

Several fraudulent pages using the image of the Montreal Casino were also closed thanks to our interventions with Meta. We invite customers to remain vigilant in this situation. We monitor and report each page we capture, says Renaud Dugas, spokesperson for Loto-Québec.

While writing these lines, we were able to find no fewer than 31 active advertisements on Facebook and Instagram that used the image of the Montreal Casino under false premises. Some of them had been active for five days.

This is not the first time that illegal gambling applications have been distributed on Facebook in Canada. In July, Les Décrypteurs reported that such announcements used hyperfakes from Radio-Canada hosts to lure users.

Readers continued to report similar ads to us in the months following the publication of our article.

Meta’s priorities

In August, the independent media 404 Media shed light (New window) on the preponderance of advertisements for illegal products on Meta platforms.

The company then claimed that only 0.05% of content viewed on Facebook and Instagram violated Facebook’s restricted goods and services policy.

Recently, a former employee of Meta’s integrity team told Decryptors that Facebook had its hands full when it came to ad moderation.

According to him, it mainly acts once morest problematic content of a political nature, due to lack of resources. Several members of the integrity team were fired this summer.

Meta raked in more than $113.6 billion in ad revenue in 2022. That’s more than 97% of its revenue for the year.

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