"Facebook lambasted over ransom video of traffickers abusing migrants", 25 Aug 2017

People smugglers are using Facebook to broadcast the abuse and torture of migrants in order to extort ransom money from their families, the U.N. migration agency said on Friday. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) lambasted the tech giant for failing to police the platform and help crack down on traffickers. One video hosted on the site since June shows Libyan gangmasters threatening emaciated and abused migrants... Facebook, which has also been criticised for failing to stop traffickers using the platform to advertise their services, said posts by smuggling groups would be removed if reported. "We encourage people to keep using our reporting tools to flag this kind of behaviour so it can be reviewed and swiftly removed by our global team of experts, who work with law enforcement agencies around the world," a spokesperson said. But Facebook said it had not removed the June video as it had been posted by a Somali journalist and was important for raising awareness of the problem... [T]he IOM had tried to find the people in the video, but they had disappeared.