Wildlife in Peril: Animals are Traded, Tortured on Social Media

The Problem

With the planet reeling from a mass extinction crisis, the world’s biggest markets for illegal wildlife products and exotic pets are located on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and China’s WeChat.
In just a few clicks, it’s easy to ﬁnd pages, groups and postings selling big cats, reptiles, birds, primates, and insects for the exotic pet trade, as well as wildlife products made from endangered species such as elephant ivory, rhino horn, pangolin scales and marine turtle shells.
Social media offers wildlife criminals and unscrupulous traders with an unprecedented global customer reach, as well as anonymity and payment systems.
This vast, unregulated trade in live animals and their parts exacerbates risk of another animal-human spillover event, such as the ones that caused Ebola, HIV and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several social media platforms, including Facebook, are also home to private groups where animal torture content is traded and sold, including videos and live events featuring things like dog ﬁghting and baby animals being clubbed to death.
Experts agree that monitoring online animal markets offers signiﬁcant opportunities to interdict criminals and save animals.

The Specifics

Because of the wide range of wildlife species being traded, it’s hard to determine the full scale of online markets where animals and their parts are traded. Taken together, multiple studies in recent years have logged millions of social media posts, groups, and pages where wildlife goods are illegally sold.
A 2020 ACCO study found that most wildlife trading on Facebook takes place in the open; groups and pages that operate as markets for live animals and wildlife products don’t bother to disguise their purpose, meaning the firm is failing to impose its own community standards.
The 2020 study also found that 58% of the Facebook pages or groups had the term “sale,” “sell” or “buy” in their title, meaning the firm could utilize simple “if” code to identify and block these pages and groups. Many images showed animals in clear signs of distress.
The World Parrot Trust, an ACCO member, reports that online platforms have enabled traders to procure birds and other animals more efﬁciently and also expand their networks and consumer base, contributing to the collapse of key African parrot populations.
A 2017 investigation by CINTOC, an ACCO member, identiﬁed multiple ivory traffickers operating internationally, connecting to and communicating with customers entirely through social media.
Former Facebook moderators who joined ACCO in ﬁling a whistleblowers complaint to the U.S. government there are hundreds of private and secret groups where animal torture video and images are sold and traded.
Multiple ACCO members have developed cutting-edge machine-learning tools able to single out wildlife trafﬁckers operating on social media, but ﬁrms have been slow to adopt such available technology.

Key Facts and Figures

Social media use has grown rapidly in Asia, a huge market for illegal wildlife. China’s WeChat has 1.2B users, or more than 85% of China’s smartphone users. Facebook, which is WeChat's prime competitor in the region, has 400 million users across Asia, making it Facebook's largest market.
In a 2016 investigation, the Wildlife Justice Commission, an ACCO member, identiﬁed 51 Vietnamese trafﬁckers who trafﬁcked more than $53 million dollars-worth of ivory, rhino horn and tiger parts. Up to a third of this trafﬁcking took place online, including on Facebook and other platforms.
The Project to End Great Ape Slavery, an ACCO member, estimates more than half the global trade in Apes occurs on social media, with Facebook and Instagram accounts selling young apes to collectors mainly located in the Gulf.
The Cheetah Conservation Fund, an ACCO member, reports that upwards of 70% of the illegal trade in cheetahs online takes place on Instagram. An ACCO investigator identiﬁed more than 200 Instagram accounts moving roughly 200 live cheetahs a year.
ACCO member Lady Freethinker is tracking some 50 Facebook Groups with a combined membership of hundreds of thousands of members that post dog-ﬁghting content, including live-streamed ﬁghts and ﬁghting dogs for sale.

How It Works

Wildlife trafﬁckers post an image of themselves, or an item for sale.
Interested parties “like” the image or DM the trafﬁcker
The trafﬁcker may invite the user to a private or secret group, or encrypted chat.
Often the trades take place openly, with no obfuscation.
Payments may occur on the platform, or using another system. The product is delivered offline.
If the product being sold is an image or video, such as animal torture content, every step of the criminal supply chain occurs on social media.

Current Law

Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act grants expansive immunity to any provider of an “interactive computer service” for user-generated content, even if a tech ﬁrm knows it’s hosting illicit content. Trading endangered wildlife and animal torture violates various U.S. laws and global treaties.

Proposed Legal Reform

ACCO seeks legal reform to make the tech industry liable for monitoring their platforms for illegal activity, including wildlife crime. ACCO seeks regulation requiring platforms to provide criminal evidence to the relevant law enforcement body. Without such reforms, iconic species are threatened with extinction and the world risks another pandemic.

ACCO’s Mission

The Alliance to Counter Crime Online is a team of security experts, academics, NGOs and citizen investigators that have come together to push serious organized crime and terror activity off Internet platforms.

It’s free to download a pdf copy, but please consider making a $5 donation towards our research.

Learn more about wildlife trafficking on social media

Wildlife Trade on e-Commerce Sites in China, with a Focus on Mammoth Ivory

In August 2020, the Wildlife Justice Commission conducted four months of research into the illegal wildlife trade on Chinese e-commerce platforms. Read the report here.

Two Clicks Away: Wildlife Sales on Facebook

This study was aimed at surveying whether Facebook has taken substantial action in fulfilling its pledge to remove 80% of wildlife trafficking content from its platforms by 2020. Read the report.

Wildlife seizures are down—and an illicit trade boom may be coming

A Nat Geo article assessed rates of wildlife trafficking in 2020, asking our experts for their opinions. While seizures for wildlife products such as pangolin scales, elephant ivory and rhino horn appear to have dropped, ACCO experts, who were widely consulted for the article, reported no significant difference in the number of online posts offering the sale of wildlife animals and their parts.

The black-market trade in wildlife has moved online, and the deluge is 'dizzying'

llegal wildlife ads have increased on Facebook despite its steps to combat animal trafficking. Crime watch groups are calling for broad legal reforms. Read the Nat Geo article on our wildlife report.

UNODC World Wildlife Crime Report 2020

The latest UNODC - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime wildlife report gives new insights on wildlife crime trends around the world with contributions from several ACCO experts including the Wildlife Justice Commission, Dan Stiles and Patricia Tricorache. Read the report.

The Illegal Wildlife Digital Market: An Analysis of Chinese Wildlife Marketing and Sale on Facebook

At an estimated US$19 billion, the illicit wildlife trade is a serious threat to global conservation efforts. This criminal enterprise is now digital, expanding its footprint to consumers internationally by using the Internet and social media platforms. Read the report.

Illegal Online Trade in Endangered Parrots

This study of online trade in wild-sourced parrots is the first study of its kind about this highly threatened group of birds. By analyzing information contained within social media posts and public databases regarding trade in grey parrots over a four- year period, this investigation provides new insight into the scope and scale of trade, trade routes, modes of transport and the extent of compliance with national laws and international agreements. Read the report.

Smuggled, Beaten and Drugged: The Illicit Global Ape Trade

Follow Daniel Stiles, a self-styled ape trafficking detective in Kenya, on a sting, which began on social media. Read the New York Times article.

Automatic Detection of Potentially Illegal Online Sales of Elephant Ivory Via Data Mining

In this investigation, ACCO member David L. Roberts developed an automated system to detect potentially illegal elephant ivory items for sale on eBay. This work is an important step towards reducing poaching. Read the report.

How Facebook Groups Became a Bizarre Bazaar for Elephant Tusks

This investigative article by Wired looks at how Facebook Groups hawk wildlife and their products buyers across the globe. A team of experts, including ACCO Executive Director Gretchen Peters, weigh in on how to stop them. Read the article.