Australian Watchdog Sues Facebook-owner Meta Over Scam Advertisements

Australia's competition watchdog filed a lawsuit against Facebook owner Meta Platforms on Friday, alleging the social media giant failed to prevent scammers using its platform to promote fake ads featuring well-known people. From a report: The advertisements, which endorsed investment in cryptocurrency or money-making schemes, could have misled Facebook users into believing they were promoted by famous Australians, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) said. The lawsuit filed in the Federal Court also alleges Facebook "aided and abetted or was knowingly concerned in false or misleading conduct and representations by the advertisers," the ACCC said in a statement.

This makes my day

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

And my weekend too. Nothing like good news to cheer you up for a change!

AUS is not the only place.

[splutty]

There are several countries in Europe that are taking them to court for exactly the same thing.

Re:

[jwhyche]

About freaking time too. When I was using facebook I would flag and report at least one scam a day. Why the hell would Ellen DeGeneres be telling me how great my comment was and offering me a contest to get free Amazon cards. From an account that is 2 months old and has less than 200 followers?

A few days later. "we have reviewed the account in question and find that it does not go against our community guidelines. blah blah blah" What a bunch of fucking idiots.

Re:

[david.emery]

A few days later. "we have reviewed the account in question and find that it does not go against our community guidelines. blah blah blah"

Translation:

We're making money from this ad, so fuck you.

How many years has FB failed to detect that fraud where someone clones the 2 public photos from an account and then sends "friend" requests to everyone on the original account's Friends List? Detecting that particular scam is -trivial-, because (a) the name of the fraudulent account matches exactly the name of an existing account; and then (b) the 2 photos match (easy to determine through checksum, you don't need fancy AI Image Recognition!.)

Can we stop Russian psy-ops fake election ads too?

[Somervillain]

Advertising platforms of their size and scale should take more liability for the ads they serve. No more impersonating celebrity endorsements. While we're at it, can we force them to stop taking money from Russian psy-ops in Rubles for election ads pushing clearly false information?

Re: Can we stop Russian psy-ops fake election ads

[rantrantrant]

But, but, but, they get such good 'engagement' stats from their users to show to their customers/advertisers. Fake news & scams are pure gold for the advertising industry.

Re:

[deek]

...then stuff like this might bother me, but I block all access to FB where I am.

I'm happy for you. But why post this? Comes across as gloating.

And it's about crypto-currency...which I think is a modern day investment scam.

Yeah, I agree. Crypto currency, while it does have some inherent value as a method to bypass government regulation for many around the world, has been propped up by greed. Greed stoked by many of these scam ads.

And it is taking place in Australia...a place where government-enforced COVID oppression was alive & well for all to see...makes Kalyfornya and New Jerk State look positively civilized.

And yet, Australia is still a better place to live than most places. Certainly for people that are at high risk of being affected by COVID. Because the government there knows that in a pandemic, citizens need to act together with

hope they get reamed

[bloodhawk]

I really hope there are some class actions by people scammed in this way on top of any fines and that facebook is held liable. This wasn't a case of facebook not knowing about the ads, they were obvious and reported by thousands of people over many months and facebooks response was always that the ads don't violate their policies. hopefully the courts can show them what being violated feels like.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, facebook shills will reach for any idea to claim they are being unfairly targetted no matter how idiotic. You realise facebook approved the ads, facebook refused to take down the ads after being reported as scams by thousands of people, facebook is the only party that could have prevented the issue and even when they knew of it they chose to let it continue as "not their problem". NBN is a network, it gets no say in what it carries.

Re:

[gravewax]

Seriously how fucked up mentally do you have to be to try and defend facebook in this?