Yahoo News Pictures of drugs farms in UK cities including Newcastle posted on social media by Albanian influencers
UK-based Albanian influencers are brazenly posting pictures of drugs farms said to be in cities, including Newcastle, on social media.
An investigation by The Express uncovered posts on Instagram and TikTok showing industrial-scale cannabis production allegedly taking place across the country. One Instagram post claiming to be in Manchester shows a tabby cat and packet of Swan cigarette filters beside a huge pile of cannabis buds, while a TikTok video labelled as being in London features a massive pile of cocaine.
The Express also found multiple Instagram accounts which glorified the production of cannabis in Britain with titles or descriptions that identified the user as being based in Birmingham.
While another clip circulating on TikTok appears to show a drug house robbery by a Turkish gang and claims farms were also operating in Newcastle, Southampton, Kent and Leeds.
The six-month Express investigation found that among the influencers posting such images is one of Albania’s biggest online celebrities, Aleks Visha, who rose to fame through live online tours of UK cannabis farms and boasts about his criminal exploits. And, according to Albanian social media expert Tomi Kallanxhi, TikTok’s system enabling fans to tip their favourite online stars with real cash meant he was a good source of revenue.
A video, obtained by the Express, shows Aleks on an Instagram live stream boasting about the number of cannabis farms he has in Britain to other online celebrities from the Balkan nation.
In other clips Aleks calls his brother Dor to celebrate a ‘harvest’ of cannabis plants which has allegedly taken place in the UK. The pair laugh about putting beers in the fridge and going to Morrisons between sharing concerns about the drugs “losing their smell”.
As well as boasting about drugs, the Express uncovered videos where Aleks has a virtual tour of a UK cannabis farm - a form of stunt we also found evidence his brother’s Dor’s Instagram account had participated in.
University of Essex academic Dr Alexandros Antoniou explained that Instagram generates revenue from dangerous content by showing adverts to those who stay on their platforms watching it.
“We know that the business model operates [by] drawing users in and pushing content towards them that engages them more and more and more,” he said. “The content is monetised by engaging users [by] essentially making it difficult for them to stop [watching videos].
The social media giants did not address these issues directly when asked by the Express but in a statement TIkTok said it “works closely with UK law enforcement”.
“We continue to strictly maintain a zero tolerance approach to human exploitation and proactively find over 95% of content we remove for breaking these rules," a spokesperson added.
Instagram’s owners Meta’s spokesperson said “buying, selling or soliciting drugs is not allowed on our platforms; our teams use a mix of technology and human review to remove this content as quickly as possible, and we work with the police and youth organisations to get better at detection.“
