Mexican Drug Cartels, Other Crime Groups Have Weaponized Social Media

Mexican drug cartels and other violent criminal gangs like MS-13 have weaponized social media, just like ISIS, using the Internet as a literal force multiplier to intimidate, stalk and extort their victims.

Much like Hollywood celebrities, Mexican cartels have vast social media followings. The notorious Sinaloa Cartel, for example, has more than 88,000 followers on Twitter, while Los Zetas, an uber-violent Mexican cartel that has broadcast murders on YouTube, has a Facebook universe with approximately 47,000 connected accounts like these.

To some extent, young, net-savvy criminals use social media the same way as young people everywhere: To document and brag about their lives. Instagram and Twitter posts featuring cash, gold plated guns, luxury cars and even pet tigers are a powerful recruitment tool for jobless young men who see the gangster life as a path out of drudgery.

According to The Dark Side of Social Media: The Case of the Mexican Drug War, social media also provides strategic value for criminal cartels, allowing them to disseminate intimidating messages to the public and authorities on a far wider scale than they ever had before, and to broadcast warnings and threats to rivals and potential rivals. Visuals on cartel accounts range from love letters to decapitated bodies to gruesome videos of beheadings and torture. Drug cartels and gangs also send threatening messages directly to government authorities and civilians alike, using encrypted systems like WhatsApp and Facebook messenger.

Activities in cyberspace drive violence in real life. In one horrifying 2014 event, a Mexican physician who often tweeted about the drug war was herself murdered, with her killers using her own Twitter account to announce her death and broadcast grisly images of her dead body. This violence has often spilled into the United States, in particular with MS-13 using the internet to identify victims, and lure them to their death.

Even though these accounts often contain highly graphic violent content, just few ever get shut down. For law enforcement, the cross-border nature of this criminal activity presents a big challenge. But since most major social media firms are based in the United States or are listed on U.S. stock markets, there’s one area where Washington could have supreme authority: over the Internet.

Instead, a quarter-century-old law continues to provide broad immunity to tech firms, even when they knowingly host and spread content uploaded by drug cartels, violent gangs, terrorists and other illegal groups. ACCO is fighting to have that law reformed, to make the Internet a safer place.

The most research on the utilization of social media by Mexican drug cartels has recently published in the book Mexico's Drug War and Criminal Networks: The Dark Side of Social Media by ACCO expert Dr. Nilda M. Garcia.

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Articles

The Dark Side of Social Media: The Case of the Mexican Drug War

Research exploring the use of social media platforms has largely ignored the fact that these communication outlets provide major opportunities for criminal organizations, such as the Mexican Drug Cartels, to engage in public relations strategies, ease their recruitment tactics, send threatening messages to government authorities, civilians, and to warn off potential rivals. Read the report.

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Mexico's Drug War and Criminal Networks: The Dark Side of Social Media

Mexico's Drug War and Criminal Networks by ACCO expert Nilda M. Garcia examines the effects of technology on three criminal organizations: the Sinaloa cartel, the Zetas, and the Caballeros Templarios. Buy the book.