Atlantic Article – How Drug Cartels Took Over Social Media | Cannabis Law Report | How to buy Skittles Moonrock online

The corpses started appearing in the early 2000s, hanging from overpasses with threats scrawled on their shirts. Everyone in Mexico knew that drug cartels were murdering people, but they rarely made such a show of it. Then, in 2005, a kingpin named Edgar Valdez Villarreal (a.k.a. “La Barbie”) ramped up the exhibitionism, posting a video online of his gang torturing and murdering its rivals. My stepbrother, a telenovela actor, agreed to play Valdez in a biopic; the film turned out to be written and financed by La Barbie himself, who often wandered the set.

Two decades later, I realize that these grim spectacles were the beginning of a trend: Cartels are influencers now. They have converted their criminality into a commodity, broadcasting with impunity while law enforcement and social-media platforms struggle to rein them in. On TikTok, drug traffickers filmed themselves fleeing from customs agents in a high-speed boat chase, garnering millions of likes. Some content is less Miami Vice and more cottagecore: farmers harvesting poppy seeds, for instance. Keep scrolling and you might find henchmen bagging bales of $100 bills, tiger cubs lounging in trucks, and dogs trotting with decapitated heads in their mouths.

Like everyone else, cartels post to get attention and shape their public image. Higher-ups in the Sinaloa Cartel show off their mansions and narrate their personal journeys from rags to riches. Members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel have used social media to showcase their supposed humanitarianism but also their savagery. Sometimes they feud with other gangs: In 2021, the group engaged in a performative back-and-forth with United Cartels, which earned both parties ample spotlight. More important, though, cartels wield their digital influence to spread to other markets, diversify their rackets, converge with international supply chains, and recruit Americans to smuggle drugs and people. Gangs in the U.S. have embraced social media for many of the same reasons.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/04/drug-cartel-influencers-social-media/682588/