Stolen Amazon land is now for sale on Facebook
Huge chunks of the Amazon rainforest are being illegally sold on Facebook, according to a new BBC investigation. The land for sale includes national forests, land which is part of a protected area, or land reserved for Indigenous Peoples.
The Amazon is the most biodiverse place on Earth. It has faced years of deforestation – for logging, mining and particularly for industrial farming for meat and dairy. Huge areas of the Amazon and other large areas of land are cleared by fire to start cattle ranches and other farms, a practice actively encouraged by the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Now, enormous lots of Amazon rainforest are being invaded, cleared, and put up for sale on Facebook. Some of the plots listed via Facebook’s Marketplace service are as large as 1,000 football pitches. Sellers admit they don’t have a land title, making the sale illegal.
Facebook told the BBC that it would work with local authorities, but wouldn’t take independent action on its own to halt the trade.
The trouble is, the Brazilian government is unlikely to intervene. By passing the responsibility onto Brazilian authorities, Facebook is allowing the sale of stolen land to go on.
Facebook is making it easier to sell Amazon land stolen from Indigenous Peoples – putting their lives at risk
The Amazon rainforest helps regulate the climate and is home to millions of people – many of whom are Indigenous or traditional communities.
The BBC’s investigation found that Facebook Marketplace sellers were trying to sell off land within the Indigenous Uru Eu Wau Wau People’s reserve. At least five other Indigenous groups that live in voluntary isolation from our civilization live in the area, which is in Rondônia State – one of the most deforested part of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Many of the ads found for illegal plots are in the region.
‘We feel unsafe when we go to sleep. We fear someone will come and attack the village and attack us too,’ Bitate, an Indigenous community leader of the Uru Eu Wau Wau people, told the BBC.
Bitate says Facebook should take responsibility for what it’s doing. Their lives are under threat and Facebook has a duty to take responsibility and put a stop to this immediately.
Facebook is connecting illegal land grabbers to millions of potential buyers – and Brazil’s government isn’t cracking down on the crime
The Brazilian federal environment agency has the authority to monitor the Amazon, and fine and arrest loggers and farmers for breaking the law. But under Bolsonaro’s government, they’ve had their inspection budgets cut.
Thanks to these cuts, the former head of the agency has gone on record to say that through ‘Bolsonaro’s speeches since 2018, what [illegal invaders] understand on the ground is that environmental crime is now free of charge’.
In fact, environmental crime is not only free of charge, but extremely lucrative for land grabbers. One land grabber, Fabricio Guimarães, filmed secretly in the BBC’s investigation, was able to triple his initial asking price to $35,000 (£25,000), for forested land he had grabbed from Indigenous communities and burned to the ground.
Fabricio is not a farmer. He has a steady middle-class job in a city, and views the rainforest as an ‘investment opportunity’.
Fuelled by the cattle ranching industry, land grabbing is being made legal by the Brazilian government
Since President Bolsonaro came to power two years ago, Amazon destruction has been speeding up.
Land invaders have been lobbying politicians to scrap rainforest areas’ protected status once they have been illegally razed. They do this so they can buy it from the state, and gain legal ownership.
It’s worked: now, the Brazilian Congress aims to approve new legislation that will reward land grabbers and encourage more deforestation and invasions in protected lands.
For Indigenous Peoples like the Uru Eu Wau Wau, this is a death sentence. And Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, is complicit.
Facebook needs to do better. Together we can make that happen
It doesn’t have to be this way. Facebook have the power to immediately ban and disable all sales of protected Amazon land on their platform. They also have the power to block and remove users involved in this criminal and harmful activity.
Many of us are users of Facebook. We have the power to challenge the platform to do better. If thousands of us voice our anger, we could get the bosses of Facebook to listen and take action. That starts with this petition. Will you join in, and make your voice heard?
Indigenous Peoples often have a close connection with their environment – and essential knowledge of how to prevent biodiversity loss and the worst effects of climate change. Despite this, Indigenous Peoples face violence and discrimination worldwide.
Want to take part in Greenpeace’s peaceful direct actions and creative protests? It’s a big decision to volunteer, but anyone can stand up for change.
Through high-tech forest monitoring and persistent legal action against invasions, the Karipuna Indigenous People are beginning to win the fight against deforestation in their Amazon lands. Here’s their remarkable story.
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Today, we are releasing Facebook Graph API v18.0 and Marketing API v18.0. As part of this release, we are highlighting changes below that we believe are relevant to parts of our developer community. These changes include announcements, product updates, and notifications on deprecations that we believe are relevant to your application(s)’ integration with our platform.
For a complete list of all changes and their details, please visit our changelog.
General Updates
Consolidation of Audience Location Status Options for Location Targeting
As previously announced in May 2023, we have consolidated Audience Location Status to our current default option of “People living in or recently in this location” when choosing the type of audience to reach within their Location Targeting selections. This update reflects a consolidation of other previously available options and removal of our “People traveling in this location” option.
We are making this change as part of our ongoing efforts to deliver more value to businesses, simplify our ads system, and streamline our targeting options in order to increase performance efficiency and remove options that have low usage.
This update will apply to new or duplicated campaigns. Existing campaigns created prior to launch will not be entered in this new experience unless they are in draft mode or duplicated.
Add “add_security_recommendation” and “code_expiration_minutes” to WA Message Templates API
Earlier this year, we released WhatsApp’s authentication solution which enabled creating and sending authentication templates with native buttons and preset authentication messages. With the release of Graph API v18, we’re making improvements to the retrieval of authentication templates, making the end-to-end authentication template process easier for BSPs and businesses.
With Graph API v18, BSPs and businesses can have better visibility into preset authentication message template content after creation. Specifically, payloads will return preset content configuration options, in addition to the text used by WhatsApp. This improvement can enable BSPs and businesses to build “edit” UIs for authentication templates that can be constructed on top of the API.
Note that errors may occur when upgrading to Graph API v18 if BSPs or businesses are taking the entire response from the GET request and providing it back to the POST request to update templates. To resolve, the body/header/footer text fields should be dropped before passing back into the API.
Re-launching dev docs and changelogs for creating Call Ads
- Facebook Reels Placement for Call Ads
Meta is releasing the ability to deliver Call Ads through the Facebook Reels platform. Call ads allow users to call businesses in the moment of consideration when they view an ad, and help businesses drive more complex discussions with interested users. This is an opportunity for businesses to advertise with call ads based on peoples’ real-time behavior on Facebook. Under the Ad set Level within Ads Manager, businesses can choose to add “Facebook Reels” Under the Placements section. - Re-Launching Call Ads via API
On September 12, 2023, we’re providing updated guidance on how to create Call Ads via the API. We are introducing documentation solely for Call Ads, so that 3P developers can more easily create Call Ads’ campaigns and know how to view insights about their ongoing call ad campaigns, including call-related metrics. In the future, we also plan to support Call Add-ons via our API platform. Developers should have access to the general permissions necessary to create general ads in order to create Call Ads via the API platform.Please refer to developer documentation for additional information.
Deprecations & Breaking Changes
Graph API changes for user granular permission feature
We are updating two graph API endpoints for WhatsAppBusinessAccount. These endpoints are as follows:
- Retrieve message templates associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
- Retrieve phone numbers associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
With v18, we are rolling out a new feature “user granular permission”. All existing users who are already added to WhatsAppBusinessAccount will be backfilled and will continue to have access (no impact).
The admin has the flexibility to change these permissions. If the admin changes the permission and removes access to view message templates or phone numbers for one of their users, that specific user will start getting an error message saying you do not have permission to view message templates or phone numbers on all versions v18 and older.
Deprecate legacy metrics naming for IG Media and User Insights
Starting on September 12, Instagram will remove duplicative and legacy, insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API in order to share a single source of metrics to our developers.
This new upgrade reduces any confusion as well as increases the reliability and quality of our reporting.
After 90 days of this launch (i.e. December 11, 2023), we will remove all these duplicative and legacy insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API on all versions in order to be more consistent with the Instagram app.
We appreciate all the feedback that we’ve received from our developer community, and look forward to continuing to work together.
Please review the media insights and user insights developer documentation to learn more.
Deprecate all Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 endpoints
Facebook Wi-Fi was designed to improve the experience of connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots at businesses. It allowed a merchant’s customers to get free Wi-Fi simply by checking in on Facebook. It also allowed merchants to control who could use their Wi-Fi and for how long, and integrated with ads to enable targeting to customers who had used the merchant’s Wi-Fi. This product was deprecated on June 12, 2023. As the partner notice period has ended, all endpoints used by Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 have been deprecated and removed.
API Version Deprecations:
As part of Facebook’s versioning schedule for Graph API and Marketing API, please note the upcoming deprecations:
Graph API
- September 14, 2023: Graph API v11.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 8, 2024: Graph API v12.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- May 28, 2024: Graph API v13.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
Marketing API
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v14.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v15.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 06, 2024: Marketing API v16.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
To avoid disruption to your business, we recommend migrating all calls to the latest API version that launched today.
Facebook Platform SDK
As part of our 2-year deprecation schedule for Platform SDKs, please note the upcoming deprecations and sunsets:
- October 2023: Facebook Platform SDK v11.0 or below will be sunset
- February 2024: Facebook Platform SDK v12.0 or below will be sunset
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Before today (August 28, 2023), advertisers could not promote images and/or videos used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API. This process created unwanted friction for our partners and their customers.
After consistently hearing about this pain point from our developer community, we have removed this unwanted friction for advertisers and now allow users to seamlessly promote their image and/or video media used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API as of August 28, 2023.
We appreciate all the feedback received from our developer community, and hope to continue improving your experience.
Please review the developer documentation to learn more.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Launching second release of Facebook Reels API: An enterprise solution for desktop and web publishers
We’re excited to announce that the second release of FB Reels API is now publicly available for third-party developers. FB Reels API enables users of third-party platforms to share Reels directly to public Facebook Pages and the New Pages Experience.
FB Reels API has grown significantly since the first release in September 2022. The new version of the APIs now support custom thumbnails, automatic music tagging, tagging collaborators, longer format of reels and better error handling.
FB Reels API will also support scheduling and draft capability to allow creators to take advantage of tools provided either by Meta or by our partners. Based on the feedback we received from our partners, we’ll now provide additional audio insights via the Audio Recommendations API and reels performance metrics via the Insights API.
Our goal in the next couple of releases is to continue to make it easier for creators to develop quality content by adding features like early copyright detection and A/B testing. We’re also excited to start working on enhanced creation features like Video clipping- so stay tuned to hear more about those features in the future.
Call-to-Action
If you are a developer interested in integrating with the Facebook Reels API, please refer to the Developer Documents for more info.
Not sure if this product is for you? Check out our entire suite of sharing offerings.
Tune in to Product @scale event to learn more about FB Video APIs and hear from some of our customers.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
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