Three Chinese internet companies have joined the fight to combat against the illegal wildlife trade. The pledge is part of a mission to raise awareness for online wildlife crimes by developing new technology to counter the sale of wildlife via the internet.

Mobile game developer 37 Interactive Entertainment, online antique trading platforms 997788.com and Zhangyan became the three latest members to join a global network of e-commerce technology and social media companies - ‘Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online’ (“the Coalition”). Currently there are a total of 39 members participating in the network around the world, committed to make changes in the online wildlife trade.

Ivonne Higuero, Secretary-General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (“CITES”), said:-

“The alliance of over 30 of the world's biggest internet firms and committed champions of conservation is a critical partnership, one that can help forge a strong practical response to the threat to global biodiversity. The work of Chinese firms has also been reinforced at the national level with various legislative efforts and the initiative of government agencies to address wildlife trafficking both on and offline in recent years.”

With the formation of the Coalition in 2018, leading members such as Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, Microsoft, Google, eBay, Instagram and many others have removed or blocked over 3 million listings for the sale of endangered, threatened species and associated animal products from their online platforms.

Chinese internet search giant Baidu stated that:-

“In the face of mounting difficulties in combating wildlife cybercrime, it has given full play to new technologies including image recognition, big data and machine learning and has launched an artificial intelligence-powered product to reduce and eliminate illegal online information.”

With this new technology, Baidu said that last year alone it had removed approximately 263,000 pieces of information and automatically blocked over 1.4 million advertisements for illegal wildlife products.

Apart from blocking and removing illegal information related to the wildlife trade, Chinese companies have also launched engagement initiatives for millions of internet users to learn more about wildlife conservation.

In particular, Alibaba's Taobao platform launched an automatic pop-up that educates users of the detrimental effects of the illegal wildlife trade by showing virtual scenarios that depict the issues surrounding endangered species. In 2019, Taobao received reports from 43,000 users regarding illegal wildlife trade activities on the platform. 3 million clicks were also garnered on an initiative to educate users about the illegal wildlife trade.

According to the Coalition, their goal is to reduce online trafficking on the member’s platforms by 80% at the end of this year. To reach this goal, new technologies will be developed to counter loopholes used by users to fly under the radar.

Courtesy of Arial Ng.