Since around 2020, when the first pig slaughter scams began to emerge, more than 200,000 people have been trafficked and held in compounds—mostly in Myanmar, Cambodia, or Laos—where they are lured by online scammers. is forced to play the role of If they refuse, criminals who own scam compounds, often linked to Chinese organized crime, often beat or torture them. People have been trafficked from more than 60 countries around the world — often after seeing online ads that promise them jobs that aren’t true.
Compulsive scammers are forced to send thousands of online messages to potential victims around the world on a daily basis. They are often tasked with developing relationships under the guise of friendship or romance, and eventually convince their victims to send money as part of a lucrative “investment opportunity”. Individually, victims have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the criminal enterprises that slaughter the pigs have collectively lost about $75 billion in recent years.
“These scams can start on dating apps, text message, email, social media or messaging apps, then eventually spread to crypto apps masquerading as scammer-controlled accounts or investment platforms,” Metta writes in his report. Websites can be accessed.” “In addition to disrupting scam centers, teams across Meta are constantly developing new product features on our apps to help protect people from known scam tactics at scale.”
Pig-killing scams tend to lead to financial theft, but they begin either through one-on-one cold communication between fraudsters and potential victims or through social media groups or other communal forums. For example, Gary Warner, director of intelligence at cybersecurity firm Dark Tower, says he tracks thousands of Facebook groups dedicated to luring people into cryptocurrency investment scams, as well as Groups that claim to be community dating resources are where scammers lurk.
Online moderation of scammers is a difficult and long-standing problem for big tech. As is the case with many types of inauthentic content, some pig-killing activities may violate a tech company’s standards—even when they’re removing large numbers of accounts—because of the criteria for content removal. Not clear enough to accomplish.
“What’s on the platform is clearly a precursor to pig murder, but Meta says it ‘doesn’t violate community standards,'” Warner says.
