Meta Platforms Inc. has taken significant action to combat online sexual extortion by deleting about 63,000 Nigerian accounts associated with such activities in May 2024. These accounts were reportedly engaged in manipulating users into sharing intimate images and subsequently threatening to make those images public as a form of blackmail.
The company also removed 1,300 Facebook accounts, 200 Facebook pages, and 5,700 Facebook Groups, all in Nigeria, for providing tips and guides for conducting scams.
These images are then used to extort money from the victims, often with threats of sharing the content with the victims’s friends and family.
“Since this disruption, our systems have been identifying and automatically blocking attempts from these groups to come back, and we continue to strengthen those systems to make them as effective as possible,” Meta reported. “We’ve also used the new tactics we observed to improve further our ability to detect accounts, Groups and Pages engaging in this activity.”
The impact of such schemes has been devastating. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) highlights sextortion as one of the fastest-growing comes targeting children in the U.S.
Since late 2021, over two dozen minors, predominantly teenage boys, have tragically ended their lives after falling victim to these scams. Following their deaths, an investigation led authorities to Lagos, Nigeria, where two men were extradited to the US and later pleaded guilty to wrongful death charges in connection with the case.
The surge in sextortion cases has been linked to a group known as the Yahoo Boys, a loosely organised network of con artists notorious for orchestrating digital scams.
Meta’s investigation revealed that many of the accounts, pages, and groups that had been removed were associated with these individuals. The scammers were found to be actively sharing blackmail scripts, scam guides, and links to photos to enhance the credibility of fake accounts.
One particularly prolific network comprised 20 individuals managing 2,500 fake accounts, primarily targeting men in the U.S., reports Bloomberg.
Meta’s investigation stated that most scammers’ attempts were unsuccessful. In instances involving minors, Meta reported the offenders to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The social media giant implemented several new measures to counter scams. These include stricter message settings for teen accounts, the dissemination of safety notices specifically addressing sextortion, and the automatic blurring of nude photos sent or received by minors.
Last week, reports emerged that Meta has collaborated with researchers from the Center for Open Sciences (COS) to analyse the impact of social media on teenage health.
In May, Meta, Match, Coinbase and other companies formed a coalition to combat online fraud. In the same month, the EU launched a formal probe into Meta’s impact on minors’ addictions.
In April, Meta once again found itself in trouble for hosting AI-generated NSFW app ads, including tools promoting ‘AI girlfriends.’
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