Mexican Drug Cartels Are Thriving On Elon Musk’s Twitter
Eminent members of Mexican drug cartels use Twitter to recruit new members, send warnings to rival gangs, publish bloody images and videos and glorify the Narco lifestyle. Some of these accounts were prohibited by the Twitter security team between 2012 and 2015, but they were reinstated since Elon Musk bought the company last year.
These are the conclusions of a new report Released Thursday by the Alliance to counter online crime, a coalition of organizations looking for online crimes, including drug trafficking, sexual abuse on children and Romanesque scams. Now, asks it on Twitter to block and delete the Narco content and to suspend once again the accounts that dismiss it.
The group report arrives a few days after the Cartel of the Gulf of Mexico killed Two of the four American citizens they had kidnapped after the Americans crossed the border. Thursday, the cartel would have Excused for his actions.
“Social media is a tool that offers advantages and strengthens drug cartels by improving organizational and operational capacities,” Dr. Nilda Garcia, Deputy Professor of Texas A & M International University, told Buzzfeed News. “These media offer major opportunities to drug cartels not only to engage in public relations strategies, acquire legitimacy, encourage fear and recruit, but also facilitate the diversification of criminal activities that involve extortion, drug sale and online human smuggling.”
Some images of the cartels seem to violate Twitter policies around violent content. A video published by a member of the cartel of Jalisco New Generation, led by Nemesio Oseguera, one of the most sought -after drug lords in the world, presents decapitated leaders of rival members of the rival cartel in a joy fire. Another tweet published by a member of the Chapisa, a faction of the Sinaloa cartel, presents a scalpé victim.
Under the direction of Musk, according to the report, Twitter’s efforts to delete this content and block these accounts decreased. According to the report, some of Musk’s actions – such as drawing more than 70% of Twitter employees, including the content moderators responsible for platform security – have aggravated the problem, according to the report.
“Twitter should not provide a platform to members of the Mexican cartel to disseminate their hatred and encourage violence,” Gretchen Peters, executive director of the SAFA, told Buzzfeed News in an interview. “We ask them to study the problem and really examine this question more closely.”
Twitter, who would no longer have a press service, no longer responded to a request for comments from Buzzfeed News.
Extremists and other bad players prospered under the direction of Musk because thousands of previously prohibited accounts have been reinstated, including those of far -right figures such as the CEO of Mypillow, Mike Lindell, and former Donald Trump Ally Steve Bannon. Earlier this year, Twitter triggered indignation after allowed Taliban members to buy blue verification control tickets for their accounts. (Twitter deleted Tickets control of these accounts shortly after.)
Unlike the Taliban, the members of the drug cartels have not yet bought blue checks, according to the conclusions of the report. Garcia said that she suspects that it is because gang members did not want to attract more attention and potentially move again. “The use of social media can be a double-edged sword for them,” she said. “They learned not to be so vulnerable and not attract more attention from the authorities.”
Since the accounts of the cartels are not officially verified, the determination of their authenticity was a challenge. To determine if the accounts were legitimate, said Garcia, she looked for signs of association with other cartel accounts. She also examined the geographic location of the accounts in question.
The author of a book called The drug war and the criminal networks of Mexico: the dark side of social mediaGarcia is an expert in the Sinaloa cartel, who, she said, has a strong presence on Twitter. She estimated that on the platform, the cartel reached more than 140 million people from nearly a dozen countries, including the United States, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico. “They have a large base of fans,” she said.
