How Drug Cartels Took Over Social Media
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.