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I see tons of drug dealers going live and posting reels of them counting their money on Facebook, Tiktok, and Instagram. They have 100’s or 1000’s of viewers en

I see tons of drug dealers going live and posting reels of them counting their money on Facebook, Tiktok, and Instagram. They have 100’s or 1000’s of viewers enthusiastically asking questions on how to “get a bag”. I’ve reported them each time and each and every time the same response: “No violation found.” If anyone is working for the DOJ and wants evidence of their willful ignorance and collaboration with drug dealers, contact me and I can provide screenshots and usernames of the accounts and reports I’ve made.

xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
The problem is that short of actual drugs appearing there is no way to verify anything illegitimate has transpired. This is just like Twitter's "this is a parody account" debacle. And for the most part the people making the videos know this. The platforms don't work if they have to police everything. Proper moderation results in an increase in false positives which paints an overzealous image and will draw the ire of users while driving them elsewhere. What do you reasonably expect?
- toofy 3y ago
  > What do you reasonably expect? the argument i hear quite a lot is: No real world business would be allowed to continue operation if it repeatedly did little or nothing to address—or worse allowed the patrons to flaunt—illegal activities on premises. If any business had solid and precise evidence that a specific person was committing crimes and they did nothing, it would likely lose its business license. there are obviously good arguments to be made for and against this, but its not something that many want to interrogate.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Why do we have to give up? Why is OK with "Company is too large to police, nothing to see, move on"? Maybe the platforms shouldn't work, in that case. And where is elsewhere, exactly? They are welcome to register their own domain and web site if they want to. Why is it OK for Meta to make money on not policing their platform? We as a society are expected to pick up the tab.
  - Nasrudith 3y ago
    Because we would rather not live in a permission society dystopia where one can be called to answer "Who gave you the right to change society?".
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      Can you expand on that argument, because I dont' get it. If I open a large mall in the physical world where drug vendors roam free and I give them cover to hide, because I like the money they pay on ads, that's OK too? When someone complains, I just say "I have the right to change society, who are you to tell me I can't".
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  > The platforms don't work if they have to police everything. Proper moderation results in an increase in false positives which paints an overzealous image and will draw the ire of users while driving them elsewhere. I'm unequivocally against any sort of drug prohibition, but this argument is pretty silly. You know what other business model doesn't work if we enforce laws mandating anti-drug morality? Drug dealing. If your business model doesn't work without doing unethical things, your business model should not work.
  - jobs_throwaway 3y ago
    Is selling pens and paper unethical? Because drug dealers can use those too. Same for food. I guess we should make grocery stores screen every person to make sure they're not using the food for anything illegal.
    - arjunaanand 3y ago
      Sure pen and papers won’t be unethical as much as keyboards they are using to type today. However if they use a shop as a platform to start selling drugs, that shop owner will be held liable by law, just like facebook.
      - mewpmewp2 3y ago
        What about phones? I'm sure they use phones in general, should we also ban phones or listen in on everybody by default to avoid it? The phones allow them to make trades much more effectively. In addition, they probably use their hands, feet, voice, maybe these should be disabled for people since birth.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        moefh 3y ago
        You're comparing apples to oranges. We don't expect phone manufacturers or phone companies to prevent people from using phones to send death threats, but Facebook regularly removes death threats sent via Facebook. The argument being argued here is that it's not viable in practice for Facebook to police every single post, not that it shouldn't do it in principle. Your argument seems to be that Facebook shouldn't police messages at all, like phone companies don't monitor conversations. That's a completely different position that even Facebook wouldn't agree on.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  > Proper moderation I would point to oldschool forums (and HN!), where the communities were just large enough to moderate themselves and stop nasty off topic junk like that from appearing. One problem is modern social media has (mostly) yanked this self-moderation power from users. And, as you said, they are too big and too cheap to hire enough mods on payroll to replace them. Another, that I have, is that they make money from the drug dealer posts! If Facebook has to leave it up, OK, but they sure as heck shouldn't display ads or collect metrics. That should be a far more zealous check.
  - MostlyStable 3y ago
    Yeah I really think basically all the moderation problems go away (from my very particular perspective of what the problems are and why they are problems) if you at least give users the option of fully controlling what they see (i.e only posts from users they have specifically followed etc.). But that option results in lower "engagement" and time-on-site, so social media companies will probably never go back to providing it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kerkeslager 3y ago
Why? I assume your intentions are positive, but you aren't helping anyone--you're harming people. Prisons in the U.S. are not rehabilitative: prisons are actively more harmful than unregulated drug use. They do absolutely nothing prevent drug use. However, they DO cause increases in violence including both violent crime and violence perpetrated by law enforcement. They also result in more single-parent children. If you want to reduce the problems of drug addiction, the BEST thing you can do is donate to lobbying for legalization. We certainly need more research and funding for rehabilitation, but these things won't help if we don't put into action what we already know: prohibition doesn't work.
- lm28469 3y ago
  Many countries with stricter laws don't have anywhere near the problem the US is facing
  - catlifeonmars 3y ago
    Same with countries that have more relaxed laws. I think the problem lies deeper than legality and enforcement.
  - kerkeslager 3y ago
    All countries with complete legalization don't have anywhere near the problem the U.S. is facing. Glib responses about nuanced situations actively detract from the conversation. Stop doing that.
- whamlastxmas 3y ago
  People with Karen-like behavior are rarely doing it for altruistic reasons and rather out of some sense of anger and spite
- epiccoleman 3y ago
  The legalization lobby is going to have to really get their shit together if we're going to arrive at a sensible and humane drug policy in this country. I'm generally in favor of legalization, but the latest approaches we've seen in the states where full decriminalization has happened have had some seriously awful effects - videos of open air drug markets in Philly and San Francisco showcase a level of human misery that almost makes prison look humane. To me, it seems obvious that there's a middle ground between the stupidity of the "drug war" and the suffering factories we're allowing to grow in some of our cities. There's got to be a way to thread the needle and not have legalization imply mass lawlessness in certain parts of our cities. But none of the places that have tried legalization on a big scale have successfully threaded that needle as far as I can tell, and I think the effect of that is going to entail a lot more skepticism from the general population when further legalization initiatives come to a vote.
miohtama 3y ago
I have never seen any of these. What kind of things you need to trigger into your profile or shadow profile to get drug dealers on your feed?
- op00to 3y ago
  Search for weed stuff.
catlifeonmars 3y ago
That’s kind of an asshole move to be honest. If you had your way and your reporting actually reached the ears of law enforcement, I guarantee you would have blood on your hands eventually. American drug enforcement is an extremely blunt instrument and is very good at generated collateral damage.
- thfuran 3y ago
  So are the cartels that produce much of the drug supply.
theogravity 3y ago
The facebook community reporting creature is trash. I've never had a successful report go through. Someone selling "account recovery services"? That's totally allowed by FB!

xyzzy_plugh 3y ago

The problem is that short of actual drugs appearing there is no way to verify anything illegitimate has transpired. This is just like Twitter's "this is a parody account" debacle. And for the most part the people making the videos know this. The platforms don't work if they have to police everything. Proper moderation results in an increase in false positives which paints an overzealous image and will draw the ire of users while driving them elsewhere. What do you reasonably expect?

toofy 3y ago
> What do you reasonably expect? the argument i hear quite a lot is: No real world business would be allowed to continue operation if it repeatedly did little or nothing to address—or worse allowed the patrons to flaunt—illegal activities on premises. If any business had solid and precise evidence that a specific person was committing crimes and they did nothing, it would likely lose its business license. there are obviously good arguments to be made for and against this, but its not something that many want to interrogate.
actionfromafar 3y ago
Why do we have to give up? Why is OK with "Company is too large to police, nothing to see, move on"? Maybe the platforms shouldn't work, in that case. And where is elsewhere, exactly? They are welcome to register their own domain and web site if they want to. Why is it OK for Meta to make money on not policing their platform? We as a society are expected to pick up the tab.
- Nasrudith 3y ago
  Because we would rather not live in a permission society dystopia where one can be called to answer "Who gave you the right to change society?".
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    Can you expand on that argument, because I dont' get it. If I open a large mall in the physical world where drug vendors roam free and I give them cover to hide, because I like the money they pay on ads, that's OK too? When someone complains, I just say "I have the right to change society, who are you to tell me I can't".
kerkeslager 3y ago
> The platforms don't work if they have to police everything. Proper moderation results in an increase in false positives which paints an overzealous image and will draw the ire of users while driving them elsewhere. I'm unequivocally against any sort of drug prohibition, but this argument is pretty silly. You know what other business model doesn't work if we enforce laws mandating anti-drug morality? Drug dealing. If your business model doesn't work without doing unethical things, your business model should not work.
- jobs_throwaway 3y ago
  Is selling pens and paper unethical? Because drug dealers can use those too. Same for food. I guess we should make grocery stores screen every person to make sure they're not using the food for anything illegal.
  - arjunaanand 3y ago
    Sure pen and papers won’t be unethical as much as keyboards they are using to type today. However if they use a shop as a platform to start selling drugs, that shop owner will be held liable by law, just like facebook.
    - mewpmewp2 3y ago
      What about phones? I'm sure they use phones in general, should we also ban phones or listen in on everybody by default to avoid it? The phones allow them to make trades much more effectively. In addition, they probably use their hands, feet, voice, maybe these should be disabled for people since birth.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - moefh 3y ago
        You're comparing apples to oranges. We don't expect phone manufacturers or phone companies to prevent people from using phones to send death threats, but Facebook regularly removes death threats sent via Facebook. The argument being argued here is that it's not viable in practice for Facebook to police every single post, not that it shouldn't do it in principle. Your argument seems to be that Facebook shouldn't police messages at all, like phone companies don't monitor conversations. That's a completely different position that even Facebook wouldn't agree on.
brucethemoose2 3y ago
> Proper moderation I would point to oldschool forums (and HN!), where the communities were just large enough to moderate themselves and stop nasty off topic junk like that from appearing. One problem is modern social media has (mostly) yanked this self-moderation power from users. And, as you said, they are too big and too cheap to hire enough mods on payroll to replace them. Another, that I have, is that they make money from the drug dealer posts! If Facebook has to leave it up, OK, but they sure as heck shouldn't display ads or collect metrics. That should be a far more zealous check.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  Yeah I really think basically all the moderation problems go away (from my very particular perspective of what the problems are and why they are problems) if you at least give users the option of fully controlling what they see (i.e only posts from users they have specifically followed etc.). But that option results in lower "engagement" and time-on-site, so social media companies will probably never go back to providing it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

kerkeslager 3y ago

Why? I assume your intentions are positive, but you aren't helping anyone--you're harming people. Prisons in the U.S. are not rehabilitative: prisons are actively more harmful than unregulated drug use. They do absolutely nothing prevent drug use. However, they DO cause increases in violence including both violent crime and violence perpetrated by law enforcement. They also result in more single-parent children. If you want to reduce the problems of drug addiction, the BEST thing you can do is donate to lobbying for legalization. We certainly need more research and funding for rehabilitation, but these things won't help if we don't put into action what we already know: prohibition doesn't work.

lm28469 3y ago
Many countries with stricter laws don't have anywhere near the problem the US is facing
- catlifeonmars 3y ago
  Same with countries that have more relaxed laws. I think the problem lies deeper than legality and enforcement.
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  All countries with complete legalization don't have anywhere near the problem the U.S. is facing. Glib responses about nuanced situations actively detract from the conversation. Stop doing that.
whamlastxmas 3y ago
People with Karen-like behavior are rarely doing it for altruistic reasons and rather out of some sense of anger and spite
epiccoleman 3y ago
The legalization lobby is going to have to really get their shit together if we're going to arrive at a sensible and humane drug policy in this country. I'm generally in favor of legalization, but the latest approaches we've seen in the states where full decriminalization has happened have had some seriously awful effects - videos of open air drug markets in Philly and San Francisco showcase a level of human misery that almost makes prison look humane. To me, it seems obvious that there's a middle ground between the stupidity of the "drug war" and the suffering factories we're allowing to grow in some of our cities. There's got to be a way to thread the needle and not have legalization imply mass lawlessness in certain parts of our cities. But none of the places that have tried legalization on a big scale have successfully threaded that needle as far as I can tell, and I think the effect of that is going to entail a lot more skepticism from the general population when further legalization initiatives come to a vote.

miohtama 3y ago

I have never seen any of these. What kind of things you need to trigger into your profile or shadow profile to get drug dealers on your feed?

op00to 3y ago
Search for weed stuff.

catlifeonmars 3y ago

That’s kind of an asshole move to be honest. If you had your way and your reporting actually reached the ears of law enforcement, I guarantee you would have blood on your hands eventually. American drug enforcement is an extremely blunt instrument and is very good at generated collateral damage.

thfuran 3y ago
So are the cartels that produce much of the drug supply.

theogravity 3y ago

The facebook community reporting creature is trash. I've never had a successful report go through. Someone selling "account recovery services"? That's totally allowed by FB!