Mummy Dearest? Including Human Remains in Facebook’s Community Standards is Meaningless without Enforcement
On June 23rd, Facebook announced a policy change to finally include “historic artifacts” as banned on its platforms, after exposés by numerous media outlets and tireless work by ACCO experts Katie Paul and Amr Al-Azm at The ATHAR Project.
While this is a welcome development, it is only as good as its enforcement, and there are questions about its breadth, depth, scope and how “historical artifacts” will be defined. For example, enforcing a ban on Facebook MarketPlace would not be as effective as preventing the illegal sales arranged through private groups and direct messaging apps, which is where the majority of such transactions occurs. End-to-end encryption, which Facebook has proposed implementing on its Messenger app, would mean that law enforcement would not be able to examine its contents. Facebook’s method of deleting entire groups and posts instead of archiving them, also hinders investigations. Furthermore, Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency platform would only make it easier than ever for criminals to trade illegally without any oversight.
An article published yesterday in Ancient Origins raises a point that needs much more elaboration; specifically that mummified human remains should now included under this new “historic artifacts” category. Not only does the lumping together of human remains with artifacts diminish it to the collection of body parts of deceased people, the categorization is entirely unnecessary if only Facebook and other tech platforms were intent on consistently enforcing pre-existing policies.
As ACCO experts, Shawn Graham and myself currently monitor several public and private pages and groups on Facebook and dozens of established Instagram accounts with thousands of followers all devoted to collecting a wide variety of human remains (see here, here, and here). We have been tracking this trade for more than five years and have seen substantial growth, diversification and shifts, even if it remains ‘niche’ compared to the size and scope of antiquities trafficking in general.
Importantly, point five under Facebook’s Community Standards specifically deals with “Body Parts and Fluids”. The alleged banning of the sale of “body parts” (which should include bone), organs, human tissue and teeth between them covers the vast majority of what is trafficked in human remains trading groups — whether its authentic former medical specimens, alleged medical specimens of unknown provenience, alleged ethnographic or “tribal” modified crania and bones, remains clearly advertised as historic or prehistoric in date, remains clearly once buried, and yes, mummies and parts of mummies. All are frequently up for grabs.
Only days ago, the ATHAR Project reported to Facebook the impending sale of allegedly old examples of a relatively unique category of human remains by an independent retailer who sells through their personal web page, a Facebook retailer who sells through their personal web page and a Facebook page shop. Facebook shops allow retailers to create a sales mechanism for buyers without leaving the platform. The merchant agreement section of Facebook’s commerce policy states that the company gets a fee from any transactions that take place in Facebook shops. This means that Facebook is literally profiting from not enforcing its own policies. Within the hour, Facebook responded by saying it didn’t violate their policies — but it does.
In conclusion, we stress here that Facebook commerce already had a ban on body parts inclusive enough to leave no doubt that authentic prehistoric or historic period human remains would count, whether freshly exhumed or circulating between private collectors or in and out of now-defunct museums for decades. The fact that they would include mummified remains in their new antiquities ban, as if that wasn’t already covered, clearly shows that Facebook has not been enforcing its existing policies and is just using these new policy developments as a PR band aid to cover bases they don’t intend to enforce.
