“These types of listings have no home on Eventbrite,” Chris Adams, the company's head of platform product, told WIRED in a statement. “This is a spam attack coordinated by a few bad actors trying to drive the public to third-party sites.” Adams says Eventbrite is taking the issue “very seriously” and that the “identified illegal and unlawful activities have been removed.”
from Eventbrite help center says it uses a “combination of tools and processes” to detect content that violates the rules. These include, the pages say, using machine learning to proactively detect content, a “rules-based” system, responding to user reports and human reviews.
“Our investigation determined that this is anomalous activity, a misuse of the Eventbrite platform. Based on our findings, Eventbrite did not benefit from these mentions and no final ticket purchases were identified,” Adams said.
Eventbrite appears to have removed most, if not all, of the illegal listings that WIRED identified after we alerted the company to the issue. However, because of the way WIRED collected the data, the thousands of listings on Eventbrite are likely just the tip of the iceberg. WIRED obtained the data used for the analysis by collecting listings that Eventbrite believed were “related” to hundreds of events found through simple keyword searches. These keyword searches and related events are unlikely to cover all illegal events published on the platform.
Even within this limited data set, our analysis found that an average of 169 illegal events are published every day.
The vast majority of ads found by WIRED used common tactics, whether they involved drugs, escort services or online account information. The spammy pages were often listed as online 'events'. The events do not actually take place, but rather act as a way for those who post them to publicize their activities online. Most were free; However, some tried to ask people to “visit” via Eventbrite. It is not clear if anyone paid for any of the events.
Searching for various controlled substances, such as branded opioids, returned results on Eventbrite. These “events” usually pushed people away from the platform and toward online pharmacy websites, which say people can buy medications without a prescription.
John Hertig, an associate professor at Butler University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, says there are thousands of online pharmacies operating at any given time and the vast majority of them are illegal – with websites often selling medications that are not approved by the FDA or who don't. require a license in the country where they sell.
“The other big problem we see in terms of illegality is that no prescription is required,” says Hertig. “You see this a lot: 'easy, hassle-free, simple process, no doctor needed.' That is illegal.” Typically, accounts that claim to sell drugs through unofficial platforms, like those on Eventbrite, won't be doing so legitimately, Hertig says, and that poses risks as to whether what they're selling is safe.
In addition to websites, those claiming to sell illegal services on Eventbrite have pushed people to chat privately on WhatsApp or Telegram. Our analysis identified as many as 60 unique Telegram accounts and 65 WhatsApp numbers in the dataset. WhatsApp spokesperson Joshua Breckman says the platform encourages users to report suspicious activity and will respond to valid law enforcement requests. Telegram did not respond to a request for comment.