CAMPAIGNERS accused social media giant Meta of turning the “migrant crisis into a marketplace” today.

A damning new report by Open Rights Group (ORG) reveals how Meta has profited from people seeking safety, enabling the government to target them with threatening campaigns and criminals with scams. 

It noted that between 2021 and 2022, the Home Office under the previous Tory government ran a series of “fear-based” adverts, aiming to deter refugees from crossing the Channel in small boats.

Delivered in collaboration with Seefar, which implements “migrant behaviour change campaigns,” the ads showed sinking boats, search dogs, and military-style drones, warning migrants could be arrested or drowned.

An investigation funded by the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR) found that they were written in Arabic, Pashto, and Vietnamese, and designed to target refugees in northern France and Belgium to deter them from crossing.

The targeting was highly invasive and split into 600 segments.

Some parameters were incredibly specific, targeting just a few hundred people, such as Kurdish speakers in Brussels or Vietnamese travellers in Calais.

Others had a reach of up to 100,000 people such as all Arabic speakers over 18 in Brussels.

Patchwork profiles were used to stitch together interests, behavioural and language categories to “reconstruct” a refugee they wished to target. 

Alarmingly, in the Home Office campaigns, people were targeted with parameters such as “travelling through”, distinguishing them from permanent residents.

It appears that these parameters may have been created initially to target products to people on holiday.

According to the SIPR investigation, the campaign at times “misfired” reaching business travellers and holidaymakers in Mexico, India and Jordan. 

One of the study’s authors, Ben Collier of the University of Edinburgh, said: “Thousands of Arabic speakers around the world, including many visiting Brussels on holiday or for business, have been targeted by this campaign.”

Criminals have also used Meta platforms to sell scam migrants and sell fake passports.

Searching Meta’s ad library, ORG found numerous live adverts selling fake British driving licences which were apparently “registered with DVLA” and could be obtained “without exams.”

ORG found numerous ads for passports, and noted that unlike the dark web, Facebook allows for the use of marketing parameters to target vulnerable people.

It found that a Facebook page disguised as a gaming page advertised EU documents and British passports to men aged 18 and over in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Spain.  

Buyers have no guarantee that the documents will ever be delivered, risking financial harm. 

ORG’s Platform Power Programme Manager James Baker said:“Meta are turning the migrant crisis into a marketplace, profiting while first criminal gangs then the UK government target them with adverts. 

“This isn’t just a failure of Meta to moderate content, it’s a feature of their intrusive surveillance capitalism model.”  

Independent researcher James Riley, who carried out the investigation, added: “We need far stronger external oversight, far greater transparency, and serious action from Meta to prevent the harms exposed in this report from continuing.”

Steve Smith, CEO of Care4Calais, said: “It’s abhorrent that social media giants like Meta are profiting off people’s suffering, but what’s more abhorrent is the way that the last UK government racially profiled people with messages aimed at causing fear and worry.

“People fleeing war, torture and persecution seek only safety. 

“With our government offering no safe routes for them to claim asylum in the UK, it leaves them exposed to exploitation.

“Rather than running fear-mongering social media adverts as so-called deterrents, the UK government should simply get on with creating safe routes.”

The government and Meta have been contacted for comment.