Category: Tech

Attorney Aliza Shatzman knows exactly how it feels, and she’s made it her mission to help prevent anyone else from having the same experience. That’s why, after sharing her story in congressional testimony to lobby for more protections for clerks and other judiciary employees, she started the Legal Accountability Project.

This month, LAP launched a new database for law clerks to leave reviews of their experiences working for their powerful bosses: state and federal judges.

Judges gone wild

From local jurisdictions to the Supreme Court, judges nationwide conduct their business with little regulatory oversight. They are supervisors of both their courtrooms and the clerks they manage. Still, despite their tremendous authority and a long history of abuses of power in the judiciary, judges are all but immune from disciplinary action due to misconduct.

“I wanted to formalize some of the informal resources and networks out there that exist,” Shatzman told Business Insider, who said clerks — who are usually law students and recent graduates at the beginning of their careers — often rely on word-of-mouth referrals and warnings about their prospective bosses to decide where to work. “There’s a lot of fear surrounding the judiciary, there’s a real culture of silence, and so our resources and our work are aimed at combating that.”

The database collects both positive and negative evaluations from clerks, and it is protected from liability issues stemming from the reviews by a law known as Section 230, which prevents sites like Yelp and Glassdoor from being held liable for the user-generated content hosted on their platforms.

“There could be two sides to any of these stories,” Judge Douglas Nazarian, a state appellate judge in Maryland who sits on LAP’s board, told The Washington Post about the database. “The purpose is to democratize and improve the clerkship experience, not to find ways to get judges in trouble.”

Accountability born from congressional testimony

Shatzman said LAP’s review database is the resource she wished existed when she was a student at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law applying for a clerkship and later, as a law clerk experiencing mistreatment and unsure where to turn for help.

In her 2022 congressional testimony about the need for statutory change to protect federal judiciary employees, Shatzman said the judge she clerked for from August 2019 until May 2020 would call her names, describing her as “aggressive,” “nasty,” and a “disappointment,” and berate her for what he described as her “personality issues” when no one was around. Shatzman said the judge gave her unfavorable work assignments, regularly made her stay late in the office after her colleagues had left to yell at her, and ultimately terminated her clerkship early, saying she “lacked respect” for him.

The judge Shatzman clerked for has not made any public statement regarding her clerkship or complaint or his subsequent retirement. Emails from Business Insider seeking comment sent to accounts associated with the judge bounced back, and phone calls went unreturned.

But it didn’t stop there. She testified to Congress that the judge she worked for later gave a prospective employer a negative reference despite assuring Shatzman he’d be neutral if contacted about her in the future.

The job offer was revoked.

“I could not believe that one person could have such enormous power and influence over my career and reputation,” Shatzman testified, adding that the US Attorney’s Office, where she’d been hired, would not disclose what the judge had said about her, even after she told them that she had been the victim of gender discrimination and harassment. The office refused to reconsider its position, and, she said, “the damage had been done.”

Human resources for the courts told her nothing could be done because “HR doesn’t regulate judges,” Shatzman testified. The federal judiciary is exempt from protections offered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act — which means employees like clerks can’t sue if they experience employment discrimination based on race or sex.

While Shatzman submitted a complaint with the District of Columbia Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure about the judge’s conduct toward her, the complaint was ultimately dismissed. According to disciplinary records reviewed by BI, the judge was later removed from the bench for unrelated conduct violations and health reasons in an “uncontested order of involuntary retirement.”

A whisper network legitimized

Since beginning to collect reviews in 2022, LAP has gathered over 800 surveys from former law clerks about their experiences working for state and federal judges nationwide.

Shatzman personally vets each review. While reviews can be published to the database anonymously, she confirms the identity of each reviewer via their verified law school email addresses and work history before adding the reviews to the index.

The database collects information about the overall clerkship experience, as well as how each judge performs as a manager, gathering information about their overall conduct as well as what Shatzman calls the “mundane stuff” like hours and assigned tasks, which helps potential clerks identify the right work environment for them.

“We’re getting the full range of clerkship experiences because there is a full range of clerkship experiences,” Shatzman told BI, adding that the database is not intended to be a list of judicial misconduct incidents but encourages positive reviews as well.

“Anybody who wants to say that clerkships are universally positive is untruthful or deluded at this point,” she continued, adding, “I think many clerkships are actually pretty neutral and nuanced. And that’s why our survey elucidates a lot of that great nuance.”

Current law school students and recent alumni can access the database for $20 — with no judges, circuit executives, or reporters allowed in. Shatzman plans to partner with law schools to bolster participation and said she has already seen a higher rate of involvement in the project than students can typically expect from their alumni networks.

“I hope that judges will take this to heart. I know I have spoken with judges who’ve heard about the project and gone back to their clerks and said, ‘So, how do you feel about the chamber’s culture? How am I as a manager? How can I do better?’” Shatzman said. “And that’s important because absolutely everybody can improve. And this is a really important relationship, so it’s important to get it right.”

• Target offers one-year returns on own-brand items, including Cat & Jack children’s clothing.
• Some parents use the policy to get cash back or new outfits when their kids outgrow their clothes.
• While some retailers are introducing limits on returns, Target is trying to make the process easier.

Kids can grow fast, and the cost of keeping them well-dressed can add up quickly.

Some parents have taken advantage of Target’s apparent version of the infinite-money glitch to save money.

“Attention all moms,” Jazmine Valdivia, a Target shopper and TikTok user, said in a video posted on TikTok in 2022. “If you guys buy Cat & Jack for your kids, there is a one-year warranty that Cat & Jack offers if your kid outgrows the clothes, whether it’s stained, ripped, whatever it is, they’ll refund you.”

In the video — which has racked up 1.2 million views, almost 85,000 likes, and 26,000 shares — Valdivia shows receipts from returning a large bag of clothing used by her three children for a total of $537.80.

“Didn’t spend a single dollar for back-to-school clothes,” she added in an overlay.

Valdivia declined a request for an interview.

Other TikTok users have uploaded similar — albeit smaller — refund journeys in which they test out the company’s policy for themselves.

“Reason number 16293836286 why we love Target!” the user JMS_Steph captioned on a video showing return receipts worth $164.21.

While some videos and comments suggest the company is cracking down on the practice, Target’s return policy for Cat & Jack products remains the same as for its more than 45 private-label brands. Workers told Business Insider they continue to process returns on large batches of used children’s clothing.

The employees requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

A hugely popular brand with an unusually generous policy

Target says its Cat & Jack label is the biggest kids’ clothing brand in the US.

“We sell well over 300 million units of Cat & Jack a year, which comes out to about eight Cat & Jack items for every child in America under the age of 12,” said Jill Sando, Target’s head of apparel merchandising, during the company’s annual meeting in March.

Like all of Target’s private label offerings, the brand is backed by an unusually generous one-year return policy.

“If you’re not satisfied with any Target Owned Brand item, return it within one year with a receipt for an exchange or a refund,” the policy states.

A Target spokesperson said the return policy reflects the company’s confidence in the value of its private-label offerings.

Chief Growth Officer Christina Hennington highlighted the brand on an earnings call last year, emphasizing the policy of “one full year with free returns should anything not meet our guests’ expectations.”

Some returns are unwashed or in ‘terrible condition.’

A worker in Illinois said the largest receipt she processed was about $300. “Absolutely used and in terrible condition.”

A lot of the clothing is returned without being washed, she added, and those products get tossed straight into the trash.

A worker in California said she had seen the trend increasing this year as parents returned for another year, and their friends decided to try it for the first time.

The largest receipt she processed was about $417 — higher than normal because it included a lot of shoes. She said the thing that bothered her wasn’t the monetary value; it was the slow process of manually typing in item codes on the computer. Even working quickly, the return took nearly 20 minutes to complete.

Returns without proof of purchase are capped at $100 a year per customer, but items with a receipt or purchased with a Target Circle membership are basically unrestricted.

Some shoppers say on social media their locations have begun taking a somewhat stricter stance in response to the TikTok trend, including requiring more specific documentation of purchases. Others focus more on the “satisfaction” angle of the guarantee, with heavy use indicating that a customer was satisfied with the product.

Still, the California worker said many people were disappointed by the value of their returns, which tended to be smaller than they expected due to various discounts at the time of purchase.

Either way, the total value of Cat & Jack returns is almost certainly a small percentage of the total revenue generated by the brand, which now pulls in more than $3 billion a year for Target.

Besides, what do many shoppers do right after returning a batch of Cat & Jack? Buy more Cat & Jack.

If you are a Target worker who wants to share your perspective, please contact Dominick via email or call/text/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.

Bankman-Fried appeared more subdued than he did during his trial in October. He spoke cautiously, pausing occasionally as he addressed US District Judge Lewis Kaplan.

“My useful life is probably over. It’s probably been over for a while now, from before my arrest,” Bankman-Fried said.

Prior to making his statements, Bankman-Fried listened to impact statements from two people – former FTX customer Sunil Kavuri and Adam M. Moskowitz, an attorney involved in a class action case against Bankman-Fried and other former executives.

“I lived the FTX nightmare every day for two years,” Kavuri said.

Moskowitz, meanwhile, asked the judge to consider Bankman-Fried’s cooperation in the recovery case.

The 32-year-old cofounder of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX was found guilty on seven counts of wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy charges in November after a six-week criminal trial.

“I failed everyone I care about and everything I cared about,” Bankman-Fried told the court before Kaplan sentenced him for what prosecutors described as one of the biggest financial frauds in US history.

Bankman-Fried said his colleagues “watched me throw away everything they had built.”

“They were very let down. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage,” he said.

He added that his pain is less important than that of customers and creditors, noting that it has been “excruciating to watch all of this unfold in slow motion.”

Even so, he said he did not think the story of why customers suffered “has been told or told correctly.”

He again tried to shift the blame for how and why the crypto exchange collapsed, insisting that there are “enough assets” to make customers whole. His attorneys argued that customers suffered “zero” losses.

Customers “could have been paid back” at 2022 prices or current prices, including inflation, Bankman-Fried claimed.

“I’m hopeful and optimistic that that’s finally going to happen,” Bankman-Fried said. “They deserve that… There are enough assets for that. There always have been.”

Kaplan didn’t buy the argument, calling it “speculative” and “misleading.”

He went on to enumerate three instances where Bankman-Fried perjured himself on the stand: when Bankman-Fried said he didn’t know his company was spending FTX customer funds; when he said he didn’t know about the $8 billion liability in the company’s balance sheets; and when he claimed not to have known that repaying customers would require borrowing additional funds.

That list was not exhaustive, Kaplan said, adding that it would not be a “good use of time to articulate” all of Bankman-Fried’s lies on the stand. Bankman-Fried admitted to making mistakes but didn’t show remorse, Kaplan said.

Before handing down Bankman-Fried sentence, Kaplan said he wanted to prevent him from committing more harm, noting that he has previously marketed himself to the media to rebrand his image and version of events at FTX.

“There is a risk that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future, and it’s not a trivial risk, not a trivial risk at all,” the judge said, noting that the judgment had to “reflect the seriousness of the crime.”

Kaplan said that the sentence would be “for the purpose of disabling” Bankman-Fried “to the extent that can appropriately be done for a significant period of time.”

Bankman-Fried faced a maximum of 110 years in prison following the collapse of FTX. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence between 40 and 50 years behind bars, comparing him to the notorious late Wall Street Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff.

Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement after the sentencing that Bankman-Fried “orchestrated one of the largest financial frauds in history, stealing over $8 billion of his customers’ money.”

“His deliberate and ongoing lies demonstrated a brazen disregard for his customers’ expectations and disrespect for the rule of law, all so that he could secretly use his customers’ money to expand his own power and influence,” Williams said.

The sentence given to Bankman-Fried will prevent him from “ever again committing fraud” and also sends an “important message to others who might be tempted to engage in financial crimes that justice will be swift, and the consequences will be severe,” said Williams.

This story has been updated.

• Elon Musk’s brain chip company Neuralink has begun implanting its devices in humans.
• Neuralink’s initial goals are to treat neurological conditions like paralysis and blindness.
• But Musk has expressed a deeper ambition to use the implants to merge humans with AI.

Elon Musk’s secretive and futuristic brain-chip company, Neuralink, has begun implanting its devices in human skulls — and like many of Musk’s ventures, the new technology has been met with both fanfare and skepticism.

The US Food and Drug Administration granted Neuralink approval in 2023 to begin testing the implant in humans. The company inserted a chip into its first human patient in January of 2024, and Musk said the early results showed “promising neuron spike detection.”

Musk, who also runs companies like Tesla and SpaceX, named the first product Telepathy, and announced that the product will enable humans to control a phone or computer “just by thinking.”

What does Neuralink’s brain chip do?

Musk and Neuralink have publicly flaunted a variety of goals for the implanted devices, some of which are intended for the near future, while others are long-term ambitions.

Neuralink’s current priority is to treat patients with neurological conditions, such as paralysis and blindness. Initially, in the first human trial, Neuralink’s goal is to help patients with paralyzed limbs control devices like a computer mouse or keyboard with only their thoughts. 

Musk has reported some success on this front, saying in February 2024 that Neuralink’s first human patient was able to move a mouse cursor around the screen. Musk said the next near-term goal is for patients to hold a button down with their minds.

In the future, Neuralink aims to restore full mobility to paralyzed patients and sight to blind or visually impaired patients.

“Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer. That is the goal,” Musk said in January of 2024. 

But Musk’s ambitions don’t stop with simply treating medical conditions — much like his space-exploration company SpaceX, Musk’s ambitions for Neuralink are to break technological frontiers.

Musk has said he wants Neuralink to ultimately help humans achieve “symbiosis” with artificial intelligence so that they don’t get “left behind” as AI evolves over time.

“In the long term, Neuralink hopes to play a role in AI risk civilizational risk reduction by improving human to AI (and human to human) bandwidth by several orders of magnitude,” Musk said on X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2023.

Musk has also referred to the device as a “Fitbit in your skull,” and floated ideas like using the devices to allow people to save and replay memories.

“The future is going to be weird,” Musk told a crowd in 2020.

Who can get the Neuralink?

Neuralink began recruiting prospective patients in late 2023, shortly after receiving FDA clearance for a human trial. Immediately, thousands of people expressed interest in Neuralink’s brain implant surgery.

But Neuralink’s application comes with an eligibility screener — not just anyone can sign up. Patients must be legal adults, they must hold US citizenship or permanent resident status, and they must have one of the following conditions: “Quadriplegia, paraplegia, visual impairment or blindness, aphasia or the inability to speak, hearing impairment or deafness, and/or major limb amputation (affecting above or below the elbow and/or above or below the knee).”

Neuralink has said it’s specifically searching for individuals with quadriplegia, at least 22 years old, and who have a “consistent and reliable caregiver.” The company has also ruled out anyone with active implanted devices like pacemakers, anyone with ongoing conditions that require MRIs, and people with a history of seizures.

Applicants selected to participate in Neuralink trials will have to participate in a roughly 18-month-long primary study, involving nine at-home and in-person visits, and two weekly hour-long research sessions. The trials also involve long-term follow-up visits over a period of five years.

How ethical is Neuralink?

Like several of Musk’s companies, Neuralink has come under ethical scrutiny — both for its existing research practices and potential moral quandaries that could unfold in the future as the technology advances.

Critics have frequently assailed Neuralink’s missed projections for human trials. Musk had initially promised in 2019 that human trials would begin the following year, but it wasn’t until 2024 that the first patient received the brain chip.

Neuralink’s animal testing practices have also made headlines in recent years. In 2022, an animal-rights group obtained more than 700 pages of public records indicating that monkeys used in Neuralink research underwent “extreme suffering as a result of inadequate animal care and highly invasive experimental head implants during the experiments.”

Neuralink rejected allegations that monkeys were mistreated and said in a statement that the company is “committed to working with animals in the most humane and ethical way possible.” Musk later said the test monkeys live in “monkey paradise.”

The FDA rejected Neuralink’s bid initially to launch human trials, citing concerns that the implant would overheat, move around in the brain, or even damage brain tissue. Neuralink apparently resolved those concerns. However, because, in the spring of 2023, the FDA approved Neuralink’s first human trials.

What are the risks of Neuralink?

In addition to typical risks of neurological surgery, scientists have also questioned the unintended consequences that could arise from merging the human brain with computers.

In recent years, even the very concept of a brain chip has come under ethical scrutiny. Neuralink is far from the only company building and testing what’s known as a brain-computer interface — meaning, a device that allows a brain to communicate with a computer — and researchers have found both benefits and downsides for patients who have received BCIs for medical purposes.

Researchers have reported that while many patients undoubtedly benefit from the technology, others have experienced feelings of being unable to recognize themselves or losing their sense of self — a phenomenon known as “estrangement.” 

Bridging the gap between a computer and a human brain also poses ethical quandaries about privacy and security. Experts have speculated that computers could access, decipher, and store brain activity, leaving that data vulnerable to hackers.

Musk has appeared largely unconcerned, however, and has pledged several times to implant a Neuralink device in his own brain.

How successful have Neuralink implantations been?

Though Neuralink’s brain chip has only been implanted in one human, the company has tested it in a number of pigs and monkeys.

In 2020, Neuralink revealed it had implanted a chip in the skull of a pig named Gertrude. The company released footage showing that the chip could record neural activity, and could accurately predict the pig’s limb positions as she walked on a treadmill.

Neuralink released further footage in 2021 showing a monkey playing video games with its mind. Neuroscientists were unimpressed, telling Business Insider that Neuralink is far from the first to do so — scientists have used neural interfaces to allow monkeys to control computer cursors since 2002.

So what does that have to do with your sacred stash of points?

Even though the networks set interchange fees, the card issuers (banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America) get the lion’s share of the revenue. Last year the biggest US banks took home $31 billion of interchange and merchant processing income, according to Bloomberg.

Again, you ask, what does that have to do with my points?

Well, a good chunk of that revenue is spent by banks encouraging you to use their fancy cards. And the best way to do that is via points and rewards. Cards with better rewards and cash-back economics typically charge higher interchange fees.

Which gets us back to Tuesday’s settlement. Merchants have to accept all types of credit cards from Visa and Mastercard under an “honor all cards” rule. But now, they’d be able to charge consumers more depending on the type of card they’re using.

Suddenly, the cash-back you get from your Chase Sapphire Reserve doesn’t seem as enticing when paying a premium on the bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich at your local bodega.

It’s not likely that banks will completely punt on rewards. David Morris, principal analyst, payments at eMarketer, said the card programs are too important to banks to stop engaging those customers.

“They can make allowances of their own in terms of the kinds of rewards, adjusting the rewards accordingly. These are highly profitable programs, so there is some flexibility here for the card companies to be able to make some adjustments along those lines,” he said.

Morris acknowledged that some changes in consumer behavior might occur as a result, “but that would discount the levers that these credit card issuers do have to be able to ensure that they are providing the card value that premium cardholders expect.”

Merchants, especially retailers, don’t seem pleased with the settlement. The National Retail Federation, which represents chains from big box stores to supermarkets, said it “amounts to pennies on the dollar” toward their costs. And the Retail Industry Leaders Association called it “a mere drop in the bucket.”

Both trade groups expressed support on Tuesday for the Credit Card Competition Act before Congress, which would require large banks to offer multiple payment networks for processing transactions through their credit cards.

While many small businesses already charge an extra fee for those paying with a credit card, David Silverman, a senior director at Fitch Ratings, said most major retailers won’t pass the interchange costs directly to consumers.

“These retailers have been absorbing costs across any number of cost functions,” such as labor, he said.

It’s not yet clear what impact the settlement will have. The agreement hasn’t yet been approved, and time will tell how merchants and banks handle the changes.

But the points game can be one of fine margins, and a change to interchange fees could have ripple effects for rewards programs.

Don’t be surprised if it starts taking a lot longer to rack up the points required for your next getaway.

The new system would charge visitors more during peak times, such as sunny summer weekends that draw higher attendance, than it would for rainy weekdays in the offseason, Merlin CEO Scott O’Neil told CNBC in an interview Monday.

“At least for our business, surge pricing is not the name, it’s dynamic pricing,” O’Neil said. “And that actually, ironically, does two things: It actually protects the guest experience.

O’Neil said in the interview that dynamic pricing will help the parks, which have a limited capacity, deal with fluctuating demand in a way that cuts down on overcrowding and long wait times.

“You don’t want to go to Legoland Florida or Legoland New York or Legoland California or Madame Tussauds right down the street here and wait hours in line,” he said.

“You take the prices up, it keeps the numbers down to a reasonable number,” he said. On days without as much foot traffic, the park could then lower the price of admission and attract those looking for a bargain.

O’Neil declined to provide specifics on the pricing swings under the model, but suggested that guests attending on off-peak days could potentially see a 10% discount, or even “a bit more.”

A company spokesperson told BI that they didn’t have specifics to share yet on whether there would be a price limit for any price hikes under the new model.

“For those of us who are a little more budget-conscious, a little more value-based, what an opportunity to have more people be able to experience it on the shoulder times,” he said, referring to discounted prices.

Price fluctuations are not new for Merlin properties, which already reduce entry fees during off-peak periods. But the dynamic pricing model is a step further, incorporating more data to better drive demand and adjust things more quickly, the company told BI.

“This change brings us in line with competitors and the broader holiday industry that have similar pricing structures, which benefit guests who choose to book off-peak,” a Merlin spokesperson told BI.

When pressed by CNBC on how families who are only able to visit during peak times, such as spring break or summer vacation, would deal with potentially higher prices, O’Neil said that the flexible entry fees were “more important than anything.”

Surge pricing has gotten more popular in recent years, thanks in part to the popularity of ride-share apps like Uber. While industries like hotels and airlines have used it for decades, other businesses like restaurants and movie theaters are increasingly following suit.

Earlier this year, Wendy’s faced swift backlash after announcing that it would experiment with dynamic pricing with its menus, though the fast food company later walked this back and clarified that it did not plan to raise prices in response to high demand (the company said it would, however, lower prices to drum up interest during slower periods).

Given its strong Democratic tilt, Biden is basically assured of winning Cook County — which includes Chicago and many of its suburbs — by an overwhelming margin this November. In the 2020 election, Biden won more than 1.7 million votes in Cook County compared to roughly 558,000 votes for Trump.

Last week, Biden was on the ballot for a noncompetitive race where his nomination as the party’s standard-bearer wasn’t in question. (So far, Biden has won roughly 427,000 votes in Cook County.)

Still, in swing-state cities like Atlanta, Detroit, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Phoenix, the vote margins that come out of these Democratic strongholds will be critical for Biden.

And the low primary turnout in Chicago could be an indicator of looming issues that the Biden campaign will have to address in other cities to emerge victorious in November, according to top Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.

“Illinois is a state that has apparatus and really has deep roots in the community. I think they just weren’t turned on for this election, but it’s a warning sign to other places,” she told The Chicago Sun-Times’ Tina Sfondeles.

“It’s a warning sign for Detroit, where it will matter,” she continued. “It’s a warning sign for Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.”

Lake also stressed the role that cities have played in generating the sort of turnout that Democrats generally need to overcome the GOP’s rural edge in states like Georgia and Pennsylvania.

“These cities need to be engines of turnout,” she said.

But despite efforts to moderate the content away, the sellers remain remarkably easy to spot.

Undark Magazine, an award-winning independent science and culture publication, this week reported on a surging market on Facebook for distinctive bowmouth guitarfish horns, sold as jewelry and other accessories, contributing to the demise of the critically endangered fish.

In 2022, Vice News reported it took less than 24 hours to arrange the sale of an endangered tiger.

Though Meta, Facebook’s parent company, was a founding member of the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online in 2018, it might be even easier now to find these illegal offerings than years ago, Business Insider found.

20 minutes to monkeys

It took BI less than two minutes to identify Facebook accounts selling the bowmouth guitarfish horns. Within 20 minutes of browsing various groups on Facebook, BI identified endangered squirrel monkeys for sale, as well as various exotic birds, caracal cats, and several species of turtles, in addition to more traditional pets and livestock, including puppies, guinea pigs, and chickens.

Some of the groups had more than 10,000 members.

Representatives for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, pointed BI to the platform’s internal policy regarding Land, Animals, and Animal Products, which indicates that listings on the platform may not promote the buying or selling of animals, animal products, or land in ecological conservation areas.

Pages identified by BI as violating the policy were removed, a spokesperson for Meta confirmed after a review of the content.

Meta representatives did not respond to questions from BI regarding how posts that violate this policy are moderated or whether groups and posts in languages other than English have the same moderation practices.

How social media drives exotic species sales

Crawford Allan, the senior director of wildlife at World Wildlife Fund-US, told BI that since the pandemic, social media platforms have seen an explosion in exotic pet species sales online, with the illegal traders ranging from ill-informed sellers to organized crime groups. 

“It’s difficult for online companies to keep up with the enormous volume of pet listings and the cunning methods criminals are using to avoid automated filters on social media,” Allan said, adding that the biggest challenge is keeping ahead of the crime groups as they adapt.

World Wildlife Fund has for years provided companies in its anti-trafficking coalition, like Meta, data to help identify new keyword search terms that illegal sellers are using, as well as images of illicit products and suspicious listings they detect so they can be removed. The 47 major tech companies in the coalition pledged to use WWF’s insights to remove 80% of wildlife trafficking content from their platforms by 2020.

However, research published that year by the Alliance to Counter Crime Online found that despite conservationists’ assistance, Facebook had “failed to keep its promise.”

“In just two mouse clicks, our researchers could locate substantial wildlife trafficking content,” researchers behind the ACCO study wrote. “Mimicking the search process an average Facebook user might employ when looking to buy illegal wildlife products, such as ivory or exotic pets, we found that traffickers are easily and openly operating on the platform.”

The economic ripples of extinction

In addition to the climate crisis, wildlife trafficking is a substantial contributor to the rate at which we are losing species worldwide, according to the global nonprofit environmental organization Rare Conservation, which points to critically endangered creatures like the black rhino, African elephant, and Amur leopard as species that are near extinction due to their popularity in the wildlife trade.

An ACCO expert in ape trafficking reported more than half of the world’s trade of apes occurs on social media, with young primates fetching upwards of $20,000 for sellers. The group found that roughly 75% of the illegal online trade of cheetahs occurs on Meta’s platform Instagram.

“Illegal wildlife trade is the second most significant threat to endangered species after habitat loss,” Allan of WWF told BI, adding that social media platforms are now the dominant market for the illegal trade of endangered wildlife. “Thousands of species are exploited, with many populations being pushed to the brink of extinction to meet global demand.”

It isn’t just the animals that suffer when they’re trafficked to the brink of extinction — it hurts agriculture, destabilizes the markets around the industry, and risks global food security by demolishing ecosystems, according to reporting by the United Nations.

One study published in Global Environmental Change estimated the economic benefits we enjoy from our environment range from $125-145 trillion a year globally. Jill Atkins, chair in financial management at Sheffield University Management School at the University of Sheffield, told finance news outlet Investec that while the impact caused by extinction is hard to calculate, the loss of a single key species could cost a significant portion of that $125-145 trillion — or wipe it out entirely.

“Facilitated by transnational organized crime networks, with links to drug, human, and weapon trafficking, illegal wildlife trade threatens not only wildlife populations,” Allan told BI. “But our global security, human health, the livelihoods of local communities, and legitimate business operations.”

Correction: March 23, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the number of tech organizations that have signed WWF’s anti-animal trafficking pledge. There are 47, not 30.