Keystone Today

The Washington Free Beacon reported on Feb. 1 that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, had announced internally that it would allow the solicitation of human smuggling on all of its platforms moving forward.

The Beacon says it obtained an internal announcement in which Meta claims that this move ensures that people can continue "to seek safety or exercise their human rights."

Meta said that it had debated the practice for five months, and that it consulted with various groups that provided the company with "global perspectives and a broad range of expertise." To help mitigate the risks associated with human smuggling, Meta said that it "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. "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."

Pennsylvania's human trafficking rate is 2.12 persons per 100,000, making it one of 15 best state rates, according to World Population Review. 

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

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

“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,” U.S. 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," Doctors without Borders said in a 2017 report. 

That report also found that 31.4% of female migrants who traveled through Mexico into the U.S. had been sexually abused, according to Doctors without Borders.