Prominent members of Mexico's drug cartels use Twitter to recruit new members, send warnings to rival gangs, post gory images and videos and glorify the drug traffickers' lifestyle. Some of these accounts were suspended by Twitter security between 2012 and 2015, but have since been reinstated. Elon Musk bought the company last year.
These are the conclusions of A. new report released Thursday by the Internet Crime Alliance, a coalition of organizations that investigate online crimes including drug trafficking, child sexual abuse and romance scams. ACCO is now calling on Twitter to block and remove drug content, and to re-block accounts that spread it.
The group's report comes just days after the Mexican cartel in the Persian Gulf. killed two of the four American citizens they kidnapped after the Americans crossed the border. Thursday cartel as reported apologized for his actions.
“Social media is a tool that benefits and strengthens drug cartels by expanding their organizational and operational capabilities,” report author Dr. Nilda Garcia, an assistant professor of political science at Texas A&M International University, told BuzzFeed News. “These means of communication provide greater opportunities for drug cartels to not only engage in public relations strategies, gain legitimacy, fear mongering and recruitment, but also facilitate the diversification of criminal activities that include extortion, drug sales and online human smuggling.”
Some cartel images appear to violate Twitter's violent content policy. One video posted by a member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, led by Nemesio Oseguera, one of the world's most wanted drug lords, showed the decapitated heads of rival cartel members thrown into a fire. Another tweet posted by a member of La Chapisa, a faction of the Sinaloa cartel, described the scalping of a victim.
Under Musk's leadership, Twitter's efforts to remove this content and block these accounts have waned, the report said. According to the report, some of Musk's actions, such as firing more than 70% of Twitter's employees, including content moderators responsible for the platform's security, have worsened the problem.
“Twitter should not provide a platform for Mexican cartel members to spread their hatred and incite violence,” Gretchen Peters, executive director of ACCO, told BuzzFeed News. “We're asking them to look into the issue and really look into this issue more closely.”
Twitter, which reportedly no longer has a press department, did not respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment.
Extremists and other bad actors have flourished under Musk's leadership as thousands of previously suspended accounts have been restored, including those of far-right figures such as MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and former Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon. Earlier this year, Twitter sparked outrage after acceptable Taliban members will purchase blue verification ticks for their accounts. (Twitter remote these bills are ticked soon after.)
According to the report's findings, unlike the Taliban, drug cartel members have not yet purchased blue checks. Garcia said she suspects this is because gang members don't want to attract more attention and potentially lose their platform again. “Using social media can be a double-edged sword for them,” she said. “They learned not to be so vulnerable and not to attract more attention from the authorities.”
Because the cartel accounts are not officially verified, determining their authenticity has been difficult. To determine whether the accounts were legitimate, Garcia said she looked for signs of connections to other cartel accounts. She also examined the geographic location of the accounts in question.
Author book called Mexico's Drug War and Criminal Networks: The Dark Side of Social MediaGarcia is an expert on the Sinaloa cartel, which she says has a large presence on Twitter. She estimates that the cartel's platform reaches more than 140 million people from nearly a dozen countries, including the United States, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico. “They have a wide following,” she said.
