This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.
In the summer of 2020, Jennifer Pytka spent three and a half hours a day sleuthing the internet for evidence of wildlife trafficking. She’d type กระเบนท้องน้ำ, a Thai word that loosely translates to stingray, into Google, and her search would immediately yield images of rings, each studded with an ornate white thorn about the size of a thumbnail. Pytka, a doctoral candidate at the Università di Padova in Italy, is investigating the previously undocumented trade of bowmouth guitarfish—a critically endangered ray whose spine and brows are adorned with these thorns. In Thailand, the horns are made into amulets, such as rings and bracelets, believed to have protective properties. In a 2023 study, Pytka notes how she pinpointed 977 of these items on online vending platforms, such as Facebook Marketplace, eBay, and the Alibaba-owned e-commerce site Lazada, over 21 days.
Bowmouth guitarfish amulets are just one example of the boundless number of protected wildlife products sold online, where a global Grand Bazaar of seedy vendors hawk their wildlife wares, and anyone with internet access can find products from rhino horns to exotic orchids to tiger claws with just a few clicks. With lax regulations, even weaker enforcement, and a lack of legal culpability, not only is wildlife trafficking able to fester online, but algorithms actually amplify sales, boosting the platforms’ profits.
Products sourced from protected species can be found across all manner of vending platforms, but with three billion active monthly users, Facebook is the grand pooh-bah. Pytka found 30 percent of the bowmouth guitarfish products on Facebook and 65 percent spread across other e‑commerce sites, such as Shopee and Lazada. “I’ve come to believe that Facebook…
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