BoL – The Online Marketplace (Expanded and Updated August 2026)

The Digital Hunting Ground: Meta’s Algorithm of Extinction

Introduction

The illegal wildlife trade has found its most powerful habitat yet: the digital world. For years, traffickers operated in the shadows of physical markets and secretive supply chains. Today, they advertise rhino horn, tiger claws, and leopard skins with the same ease as used cars or electronics. Social media platforms, encrypted messaging apps, and e-commerce sites have become the world’s largest, most accessible, and least regulated wildlife bazaars.

This is no longer a marginal phenomenon. It is a crisis of industrial scale.

A sweeping new investigation by an international coalition of conservation organisations—Freeland, Education for Nature Vietnam, International Wildlife Trust, Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue & Protection, and PEGAS (Project to End Great Ape Slavery)—has delivered a damning verdict: Meta’s platforms have become the world’s largest single known illegal wildlife marketplace . The report, titled Clicks That Kill: Meta’s Algorithm of Extinction, documents how the company’s own recommendation algorithms, engagement-driven business model, and monetisation programmes have helped transform isolated wildlife traffickers into participants in a sprawling global criminal network .

This section of Blood of the Leopard examines the online marketplace as a critical node in the global leopard trafficking network. But the story has changed. We are no longer simply documenting platform failure. We are exposing a system that actively amplifies and rewards the destruction of endangered species.

The Scale of the Digital Bazaar

The numbers are staggering. Between April 2024 and March 2026, the ECO-SOLVE project of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) detected 21,904 wildlife trafficking advertisements on Facebook alone, offering 266,535 wildlife products for sale . These posts advertised an estimated $66 million worth of wildlife and wildlife products .

Nearly three-quarters of all online wildlife advertisements were concentrated on Facebook . The platform hosted more than three-fourths of the 22,000 wild animals and their parts known to be sold online during that period . The GI-TOC report warned that Facebook is now “the central public infrastructure through which online wildlife trafficking is being concentrated, discovered and scaled” .

The large majority of the species offered online—about 84%—are banned from any kind of international commercial trade under CITES, the global wildlife trade treaty. More than half of all Facebook ads offered endangered or critically endangered animals, including pangolins, gibbons, hornbills, sea turtles, cobras, and clouded leopards .

For the Indochinese leopard (Panthera pardus delacouri), classified as Critically Endangered with fewer than 800 mature individuals believed to remain, this digital marketplace is a direct pipeline to extinction.

The Algorithm of Extinction: How Meta’s Systems Fuel the Trade

The central allegation of the Clicks That Kill report is not that Meta passively hosts wildlife trafficking. It is that Meta’s own systems actively amplify it .

Recommendation Systems as Trafficking Networks

Researchers documented instances in which someone browsing an elephant ivory trafficker’s Facebook page was automatically introduced to additional accounts selling elephant tusks. Wildlife traders were recommended through Facebook’s “People You May Know” feature, while algorithms suggested similar wildlife-related profiles to users already engaging with such content .

In effect, Meta’s recommendation systems perform the work of connecting buyers with sellers. Once someone finds a group, the algorithm does the job of showing them several more, helping them build networks. As Simone Haysom of GI-TOC explained, “We’re not just looking at markets, we’re also looking at the formation of networks… poachers being connected to middlemen. You actually only need a few people to compose a transnational wildlife trafficking train—and to do quite a lot of damage” .

Monetisation: Paying People to Traffic Wildlife

Perhaps the most troubling finding is that Meta may be paying wildlife traffickers. Through its Content Monetisation programs—including In-Stream Ads, Facebook Stars, and Creator Subscriptions—Meta financially incentivises content creators to maximise post volume .

The report presents circumstantial evidence that wildlife traffickers are enrolled in these programs. Some poachers are “double-dipping,” making money through Meta’s monetisation for content creators while selling rare, protected animals . An account apparently based in Laos purporting to show poaching of wildlife, including pangolins, appears to be publicly identifiable as enrolled in Meta’s subscription programme .

As independent wildlife trafficking investigator Daniel Stiles put it: “This content monetisation that Facebook and Instagram push is actually incentivising people to commit illegal acts. The more interaction and engagement they get on their account, the more money they can make” . He called the situation “mindboggling” .

Steven Galster, founder of Freeland, stated: “Meta’s platforms have become a one-stop shop for wildlife criminals. The algorithms don’t just allow this trade—they fuel it. Meta can and must halt this illegal business now and be held accountable” .

The Platforms: A Haven for Traffickers

The Bellingcat Case Study: Mei Ba (MB)

The 2026 investigation by Bellingcat into the trader known as Mei Ba (MB) remains a damning case study of systemic platform failure. Operating across ten Facebook accounts, two TikTok accounts, one WeChat account, and a YouTube channel, MB built an audience of approximately 12,000 followers. He was the sole administrator of a Facebook group with nearly 1,000 members, dedicated to the sale of protected wildlife.

His methods were brazen yet effective. He used coded language—referring to “erasers” (xiàngpí) for elephant skin, a Mandarin homophone, and using animal emojis to represent products. He posted graphic videos of animals before and after they were killed to prove authenticity to skeptical buyers. One post showed a tiger cub lying unconscious beneath the caption “Time for winemaking,” followed days later by footage of an adult tiger being butchered.

MB’s documented sales exceeded US$21,000, with 27 deliveries to mainland China, nine to Thailand, and 119 within Myanmar. His inventory included tiger bones, rhino horn, elephant skin, and the body parts of the Indochinese leopard—a subspecies now reduced to fewer than 800 mature individuals in the wild.

Despite operating openly for years and violating platform policies, MB’s accounts were only removed after Bellingcat contacted Meta. This pattern—enforcement only after media exposure or external pressure—is a recurring theme.

Facebook and Instagram (Meta)

The evidence against Meta is overwhelming. Researchers have documented hundreds of accounts from dozens of countries openly trading live tigers, orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas, elephants, rhinos, pangolins, and scores of other CITES-listed endangered species—and their bones, skins, meat, and organs—on Facebook and Instagram .

The investigation found that:

Accounts receiving warnings for violating Meta’s rules often continued posting similar content with little consequence .
Temporary suspensions of around 30 days were treated as minor inconveniences, with users returning to resume business .
Even permanent account removals had limited impact, as users simply created new accounts and returned within a day .
Most moderation is in English, despite only 12% of posts being in English .

Meta has also dismantled its own enforcement capacity. In January 2025, it eliminated independent fact-checkers. In March 2026, it announced the phaseout of human content moderators in favour of Artificial Intelligence . Researchers argue that automated moderation alone has proven insufficient to detect and remove sophisticated wildlife trafficking networks operating across multiple countries .

Douglas Hendrie of Education for Nature Vietnam stated: “We’ve been reporting wildlife trafficking on Meta for years. The response has been token at best and non-existent at worst. This report is our case to the public, to lawmakers, and to Meta’s own shareholders: enough” .

TikTok and Other Platforms

While Facebook dominates the landscape, other platforms are also increasingly used by traffickers. World Animal Protection documented over 3,500 carcasses of protected species on TikTok . Snapchat, popular for its disappearing post settings, is also being exploited by traffickers . The GI-TOC monitoring system detected illegal wildlife advertisements on 54 online platforms across 29 different languages .

The Legal Shield: Section 230 and the Fight for Accountability

Meta has long relied on the U.S. Communications Decency Act Section 230 (CDA 230) to claim immunity from liability for third-party content. However, the Clicks That Kill report argues that Meta’s algorithmic promotion of traffickers, the high potential that it is monetising trafficking content, and its guidance to content creators on maximising engagement may constitute content creation—not mere hosting—eroding its CDA 230 protections .

Furthermore, CDA 230 provides no protection under the laws of most other countries where Meta operates .

The coalition is calling on the U.S. Congress to amend CDA 230 to include a carve-out for illegal wildlife trade, as it did for online sex trafficking under the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) of 2017 . As Bruce Ohr of International Wildlife Trust stated: “CDA 230 was written before the modern internet existed. It was never intended to give billion-dollar corporations a free pass to monetize criminal activity. Congress must act” .

The Public Health Stakes

The unrestricted trade of wild animals across borders without veterinary screening creates the conditions for zoonotic disease spillover. COVID-19, most likely originating from the unregulated wildlife trade, is cited as the clearest recent warning . The online trafficking networks documented by these investigations are not just a conservation problem—they are a global public health threat.

The Response: Lip Service vs. Action

Meta was among 11 tech firms that announced this month they would work to eliminate wildlife trafficking on their sites . But the company has been a member of the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online since 2018, and the problem has continued to grow .

Steve Galster warned the latest announcement risked being “more lip service” . “Until Meta is compelled to rid its platforms of illegal wildlife trade, and prove that it is not profiting from it, the online wildlife trade will only get worse” .

Call to Action: Stop Profiting from Extinction

The online marketplace is not an ungovernable space. It is a space where tech companies have chosen, for too long, to prioritise ease of use and growth over responsibility. The tools to detect and remove illegal wildlife content exist. The policies to ban it are already written. What is lacking is the will to enforce them consistently and proactively.

The coalition is calling on three actors to take immediate action :

Meta must adhere to its own policies and deploy its superior AI and algorithmic capabilities to detect and remove wildlife trafficking content across all languages, scripts, and account privacy settings—and must ensure it is not monetising trafficking accounts.
The U.S. Congress must amend CDA 230 to include a carve-out for illegal wildlife trade, as it did for online sex trafficking. At minimum, the Lacey Act and Endangered Species Act—both violated daily on Meta—warrant the same protection.
Governments and NGOs worldwide must invest in Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) capacity to monitor and report illegal wildlife trade on social media platforms.

For Blood of the Leopard, this section will serve as a dynamic repository of evidence, analysis, and advocacy. We will track the platforms, expose the traffickers, and demand accountability. The Indochinese leopard, the tiger, the rhino, and countless other species cannot afford for us to look away from the screens that are selling their futures.

This section is part of the Blood of the Leopard living document and will be updated as new investigations, enforcement actions, and platform policies emerge.