#Drugsforsale: An exploration of the use of social media and encrypted messaging apps to supply and access drugs

Abstract

An exploration of the use of social media and encrypted messaging apps to supply and access drugs', International Journal of Drug Policy, #Drugsforsale: An exploration of the use of social media and encrypted messaging apps to supply and access drugs.

Interpol review of controlled substances 2016–2019

“…Social Media: 2016 assessment of utilizing social media as a resource for automatic monitoring of prescription medication abuse [ 1701 ] ; 2017 Exploring trends of nonmedical use of prescription drugs and polydrug abuse using unsupervised machine learning surveillance of Twitter by collecting 11 million tweets filtered for three commonly abused prescription opioid analgesic drugs Percocet (acetaminophen/oxycodone), OxyContin (oxycodone), and Oxycodone [ 1702 ]; methodology accurately identifying tweets marketing the illegal online sale of controlled substances [ 1703 ]; content analysis of tweets about marijuana [ 1704 ]; national substance use patterns on Twitter [ 1705 ]; data mining of 300,000 marijuana related tweets [ 1706 ]; patterns of twitter behavior among cannabis dispensaries and followers in California [ 1707 ]; Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for real-time topical filtering of tweets [ 1708 ]; 2018 trends in online information about cannabis and kratom on Facebook [ 1709 ]; content analysis of edible marijuana tweets [ 1710 ]; anomaly detection using Global Vectors on a Polish Internet discussion forum devoted to psychoactive substances [ 1711 ]; twitter survey on marijuana concentrate use [ 1712 ]; overview and analysis of social media that contribute to the popularity of NPS especially among young people [ 1713 ]; use of Machine Learning and Web Forensics tools to detect, classify and report illicit online marketing and sales of opioids [ 1714 ]; review of sales and marketing of NPS through social media [ 1713 ]; analyses on the use of encrypted messaging apps (e.g. Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp) to buy and sell illicit drugs [ 1715 ].…”

Do Online Illicit Drug Market Exchanges Afford Rationality?

“…Lastly, and somewhere between surface web and deep web cryptomarkets, the utilization of social media and encrypted messaging applications has recently been acknowledged as another mechanism of drug supply through online technologies. Apps are used in diverse ways to organize drug exchanges between buyers and sellers (Demant et al, 2019; Moyle et al, 2019), including as large-scale commercial marketplaces, but also as a preferred communication tool between sellers and their customers (Bakken & Demant, 2019; Demant et al, 2019; Moyle et al, 2019). App-based drug exchanges, unlike other forms of online drug supply, still involve a physical meeting for the exchange of drugs, but the structural features and reliance on technology clearly differentiates this supply from the remit of pure offline drug exchanges.…”

“…Even in app-based drug markets, which feature less information available to buyers to guide them in their exchange, buyers still utilize signals (i.e. reviews from other buyers, photos/videos of products) to assess the reliability of sellers and the perceived quality of the products they are offering (Demant et al, 2019; Moyle et al, 2019). Online illicit drug markets are arenas of exchange that are comparatively rich in information.…”

Producing Trust Among Illicit Actors: A Techno-Social Approach to an Online Illicit Market

“…The cryptomarkets mediate the 'last mile' of the drug trade, the part of the supply chain going from wholesalers to dealers (Aldridge and Décary-Hétu, 2016) and to a lesser extent from dealers to consumers (Demant et al, 2018;Dittus et al, 2017). Further distribution then takes place in person or through social media (Moyle et al, 2019). They allow dealers and buyers to solve coordination problems common to illicit markets (Bakken et al, 2018;Beckert and Dewey, 2017).…”