Facebook pressed over role in human smuggling

Agencies

April 6, 2018

San Francisco, Apr 6: A United Nations migration official called Thursday for Facebook to police its site and its WhatsApp messaging subsidiary for use by abusive human smugglers.

Leonard Doyle, director of media and communication at the UN International Organization for Migration, said that Facebook and WhatsApp have become the media of choice for people smugglers to advertise their services and make arrangements with migrants.

But many of those groups abuse migrants, taking travelers hostage and beating them to demand ransoms from their families, he said.

As it now blocks violent militant groups from promoting itself on Facebook pages, Facebook should police people smugglers doing the same thing, Doyle said in an online discussion hosted by Refugees Deeply, a migration-focused media group.

"They have turbocharged the access to smugglers," he said.

"Big tech companies have a huge responsibility that they are not living up to."

Smugglers use all kinds of social media and messaging applications to communicate, but Facebook's pages, private groups and the Facebook Live video app, as well as WhatsApp, are by far the most popular, according to experts.

Leonard noted that people searching for child pornography on social media can get warnings that what they are doing is illegal.

Facebook and others need to do the same to help stem migration abuses, Doyle said.

Facebook especially needs to help crack down on the extortion taking place, with West Africans the leading targets. Smugglers kidnap migrants, torture them and use social media to send pictures and video to families to demand money.

"We cannot continue to allow people to be tortured, Doyle said.

He said that Facebook has largely ignored his overtures, putting him in contact with low-level officials who do little to help.

"They say its hard, but they don't really try," he said.

"The motivation of the big tech companies is to get customers.... There's a kind of race for market domination in the developing world."

Comments

Add new comment

Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.

Israeli forces invade southwestern Syria, set up checkpoint in Quneitra

News Network

November 24,2025

Israeli forces have pushed over the Syrian frontier, erecting a checkpoint and stopping vehicles in the southwestern city of Quneitra, in yet another breach of the Arab country’s sovereignty.

The violation took place on Sunday, when the troops made their way across the border, setting up the outpost near the Ain al-Bayda junction in northern Quneitra, Syrian outlets reported.

According to the al-Ikhbariya paper, an Israeli detachment positioned itself at the junction, halting cars and conducting searches.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that three Israeli military vehicles then moved further into the northern countryside, deploying between the town of Jubata al-Khashab and the villages of Ofaniya and Ain al-Bayda. The agency added that a separate Israeli unit mounted a new incursion in the central region, approaching the villages of Umm Batina and al-Ajraf.

Residents said such activities have surged in recent months, pointing to Israeli advances onto farmland, leveling of extensive forested areas, arrests, and spread of mobile checkpoints.

The Israeli regime began markedly increasing its military aggression against Syria last year.

The escalation coincided with increasingly ferocious onslaughts throughout the country by the so-called Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Takfiri terrorist group, which the government of President Bashar al-Assad had confined to northwestern Syria. The HTS, however, managed to overthrow the government as the Israeli attacks would pummel the country’s civilian and defensive infrastructure.

Various reports have shown that, during the escalation, the regime conducted more than 1,000 airstrikes on the Syrian territory and over 400 ground raids into the south.

Following the collapse of the Assad government, Tel Aviv also widened its grip over the occupied Golan Heights by taking control of a demilitarized buffer zone, in defiance of a 1974 Disengagement Agreement. Earlier this month, senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the buffer zone, prompting expressions of alarm on the part of the United Nations.

The United States, the regime’s biggest ally, has, meanwhile, been fraternizing the HTS head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani amid the widely reported prospect of rapprochement with Tel Aviv.

Comments