Peach Tree Times

An internal memo from Meta, the parent company that operates Facebook, makes no changes to the company's policy allowing the solicitation of human smuggling on all platforms moving forward, the Washington Free Beacon reported on Feb. 1.

In the announcement obtained by the news organization, Meta claims the move ensures people may continue to "seek safety or exercise their human rights." Migrants seeking to enter the United States sometimes use smuggling operations to accomplish that aim.

"We observed that a slight majority of stakeholders favored allowing solicitations of smuggling services for reasons associated with asylum seekers," Meta said in the memo. "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."

Meta said that it debated the practice for five months, consulting with a variety of groups that 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 "sharing information related to illegal border crossing."

Human trafficking has long been an issue with Facebook, CNN reported. Internal Facebook documents reviewed by the organization show that Facebook knew about human traffickers exploiting 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 spokesperson Drew Pusateri told the Washington Free Beacon. "At this time, we have no policy changes to announce."

Meta said in the memo that it accepts that the decision has its compromises. Concerns have been raised by law enforcement and government bodies that allowing this type of content may simplify illegal activity and put migrants at greater risk being exploited or killed.

"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," Doctors Without Borders reported in 2017.

The same report also found that 31.4 percent of female migrants who traveled through Mexico into the United States had been sexually abused.

Internal documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal showed that when employees raised flags about the issues regarding how the platform was being used, Meta's response often did not meet expectations or was nonexistent.

"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) said in a letter responding to the company's stagnant policy. "By declining to remove user posts soliciting smuggling services, Facebook is effectively approving a gigantic beacon for human traffickers, who — even if they're not permitted onto the platform themselves — can easily reach out to their targets through non-Facebook channels."

Georgia has the fifth-highest rate of human trafficking out of all 50 states, with a rate of 3.81 people per 100,000, World Population Review reported.