Facebook groups were being used for weapons trade by terrorists from the Middle East.
(Mirror Daily, United States) – Even though Zuckerberg explicitly declared that his company will not tolerate any activity linked to terrorism, weaponry is being sold on Facebook groups. It seems that extremists have managed to find a loophole in the social platform’s terms and conditions, and they are still using it as a place where they can buy or sell heavy weaponry.
When Zuckerberg’s team thought about the groups feature, they had old classmates and fandoms in mind, not terrorists that want to unite and post pictures will all of the available weaponry for sale.
But instead of “The Cat Lovers Group” and “Yale 2015 Graduation Ceremony”, which are standard groups meant to bring together people interested in a particular activity, there are groups on the social network that deal with gun exchanges and extremist religious views.
The company announced that six such groups were already deleted from the platform, but there are several additional ones that they were not able to track so far.
The Facebook bazaars were hidden in groups meant for weapons enthusiasts. The sellers would post pictures of rare weapons, guns, and bombs usually used by terrorists and talk about them as a beauty forum discusses the latest trend in dyeing your hair.
This allowed the members to exchange rare, expensive weaponry that was later used in terrorist activities. The people who joined these groups were originally from Syria or Iraq. Because Facebook offers its users the possibility of making direct transactions, they managed to conduct significant business operations and bring dangerous weapons, bombs, and technology to the Middle East.
The company managed to locate one other group, but they weren’t able to shut it down because there was no visible evidence that the members were using it for the purpose of buying or selling weapons. The group is still active, but the social platform is monitoring it carefully so that it will be able to close at the first sign of illegal trade.
The global policy director at Facebook, Monika Bickert, declared in an interview with Times Magazine that
“Since we were offering features like that, we thought we wanted to make clear that this is not a site that wants to facilitate the private sales of firearms.”
Facebook’s creator, Mark Zuckerberg has received threats from terrorist groups in the past. The extremist organization was angry with the businessman that his platform was deleting the accounts of its members. In the public threat, the terrorist organization mentioned the existence of Facebook groups belonging to terrorists.
Image source: Pixabay
Joe Hennessey
