A look at growing online meth communities on Zoom, Reddit, and others as they attract little attention from content moderators, worsening the addiction problem
In December, Paul went home for the holidays. Like many people, he hadn't seen his family for almost a year. Tweets: @denisechow , @nicolechilders , @kattenbarge , @nbcnewspr , @benjamingoggin , @kevin_raposo , @benjamingoggin , @benjamingoggin , @benjamingoggin , and @benjamingoggin Tweets: Denise Chow / @denisechow : “There is no meth without Zoom, and there is no Zoom without meth.” wowww this story by @BenjaminGoggin on the internet's meth underground, hidden in plain sight: https://www.nbcnews.com/... Nicole Childers / @nicolechilders : NEW: imagine people getting high on meth together on Zoom... it's happening...👇🏾 👇🏾 https://twitter.com/... Kat Tenbarge / @kattenbarge : So proud of @BenjaminGoggin for reporting this challenging story. A must-read about social media platforms becoming conduits for meth addiction https://twitter.com/... @nbcnewspr : NEW from @BenjaminGoggin: The internet's meth underground, hidden in plain sight. Regular meth users say online platforms have fundamentally changed the experience of using, worsening parts of an already blazing global meth addiction problem. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Benjamin Goggin / @benjamingoggin : On Reddit, massive subs with tens of thousands of subscribers host drug deals and videos depicting meth injection and smoking. The sub r/meth has over 80,000 members. Posts appear every several minutes. Reddit says only selling drugs violates their terms. https://www.nbcnews.com/... https://twitter.com/... Kevin Raposo / @kevin_raposo : imagine being on a never-ending Zoom call. Well, that's what meth users are doing, and they seem to be liking it https://www.nbcnews.com/... Benjamin Goggin / @benjamingoggin : On Zoom, parties with over 100 people go day and night, where users inject and smoke meth on cam, have sex, masterbate, and encourage others to use more drugs. Zoom says the parties break their rules, but they've gone largely unchecked since at least 2018. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Benjamin Goggin / @benjamingoggin : Meth users I spoke to described the trouble of trying to kick meth in the digital age. Sources say they are just as addicted to camming on Zoom as they are to meth itself. One man told me when he relapses, he buys a webcam before purchasing drugs. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Benjamin Goggin / @benjamingoggin : On Twitter, accounts devoted to porn centered around meth injection are easy to locate, and videos depicting meth injection can bring in millions of views. Twitter's account recommendation tool will automatically recommend meth-oriented accounts. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Benjamin Goggin / @benjamingoggin : NEW: A meth underground is hidden in plain sight on major tech platforms like Zoom, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and Youtube. In an 8-week investigation, I talked to meth users and experts about how tech has changed meth addiction, and can lead to relapse. https://www.nbcnews.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This investigation extends a documentation thread that goes back years: BuzzFeed reported in 2018 that social networks were already being used to illegally sell prescription medications despite Terms of Service forbidding it (social networks used to illegally sell prescription medications). What changed during the pandemic is the medium — the same period when recovery groups like Alcoholics Anonymous found virtual meetings genuinely helpful (rehab meetings moving online), the drug use itself migrated onto live video.
The NBC reporting matters because it names a specific moderation blind spot: Zoom hosts persistent on-camera meth parties, Reddit's r/meth facilitates deals while banning only explicit sales, and Twitter's recommendation tools amplify meth-oriented accounts. Two months later, the New York Times found Snap, Instagram, and Discord serving as quick conduits for drug deals amid soaring US overdoses (platforms as drug-deal conduits) — confirming this is a cross-platform pattern, not one company's lapse.
First-order effects
- Zoom, Reddit, and Twitter are directly exposed: their stated rules already prohibit this activity, so the story documents enforcement failure rather than policy absence — Reddit's sales-only ban leaves use and graphic content permitted by design.
Second-order effects
- Rival platforms cited in the follow-up coverage — Snap, Instagram, Discord — face pressure to show their own enforcement works, since each new exposé treats the category as a shared liability rather than an isolated incident.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, moderation built for text posts and uploaded videos proves structurally unfit for persistent live-video rooms, pushing platforms toward real-time monitoring tools and reviving debates over distribution-layer liability for user behavior on consumer infrastructure.
The trend: Illicit drug activity is migrating into mainstream collaboration and social platforms faster than their moderation systems — designed for static content — can detect it.