Pangolins look almost like they sprung from the imagination of a
small child; they’re covered in scales and roll up in a little ball
when they’re scared.
But they’re real — and they’re the most trafficked animal
on the planet! Up to 2.7 million of these little guys are
murdered every year by poachers hoping to profit off butchering them
and selling their parts to traditional medicine shops.
Now a new report says Facebook is making it
worse, letting traffickers sell pangolin parts right on
their platform!
This madness has to stop. Facebook is already
signed on to an international coalition to stop this kind of
trafficking, so all they have to do is enforce their own
rules. Let’s up the stakes with a massive international
campaign:
Click
to tell Facebook to shut down its disturbing pangolin trade
It’s bad enough that this extinction-threatened animal is
slaughtered in the millions for its meat and parts. Even
worse, pangolins are considered to have a possible connections to
the Covid-19 outbreak and may host other coronaviruses that
could pose a threat to humans!
So this isn’t *just* a trafficking threat, it’s a global health
threat too.
Facebook’s community standards ban the sale of endangered
species, but report investigators didn’t have to look very
hard. They just searched translations of the word
“pangolin” in different languages and found listing after
listing!
The ongoing sale of pangolins on Facebook even with this
heightened attention on the animal is just another example
of Facebook’s inability — or unwillingness — to police its platform
and block illegal activity. Let’s tell them we’ve had
enough:
Click
to tell Facebook to stop helping wildlife traffickers
Facebook made almost $20 billion last year — they can afford to
ensure that their own health and safety policies are strictly
followed. Yet over and over again we see them trying to get away
with lax enforcement. Good thing our community is so good at holding
corporate giants to account.
