40Crypto Scare at Zucker berg's Facebook

from Crypto Weekly 28/03/2022

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CRYPTO SCARE AT ZUCKERBERG'S FACEBOOK

After facing severe allegations, Facebook is again at the center of a controversy concerning its crypto practices. Last October, the social media giant, which changed its name to Meta Platforms (FB) - Get Meta Platforms Inc. Class A Report, had difficulty managing its practices.

In a lawsuit filed by the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission), Meta is accused of participating in celebrity scams on Facebook, which have cost some Australians hundreds of thousands of dollars. Meta has advertised scams featuring prominent Australians. The ACCC alleges that this conduct violated the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) or the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act (ASIC Act).

Ads associated with false celebrities.

Meta is alleged to have assisted and abetted the advertisers' false, and misleading, conduct and representations. There may have been a perception among Facebook users that advertisers were advertising on behalf of celebrities such as Dick Smith and David Koch. There was no official endorsement of the schemes by the individuals featured in the ads, and they were actual scams. According to the regulators, the ads contained fake media articles that included quotes from public figures in the ads endorsing cryptocurrency or money-making schemes.

"After signing up, scammers contacted users and used high-pressure tactics, such as repeated phone calls, to entice them to deposit money into the scams." "We contend that Meta is responsible for these advertisements it publishes on its platform," ACCC Chair Rod Sims said. "Meta's business is to help advertisers target users most likely to click on the link in an ad and visit the landing page. Facebook generates substantial revenue from these visits to landing pages."

"We know of one horrifying instance in which a consumer lost more than $650,000 after one of these scams was falsely marketed as an investment opportunity on Facebook. This is disgraceful," Mr. Sims said.

Meta is alleged to have known that the celebrity endorsement cryptocurrency scam ads were being displayed on Facebook but failed to resolve the issue. Facebook displayed the celebrity endorsement cryptocurrency scam ads despite complaints from celebrities around the world that their images and names had been used in similar advertising without their consent. The regulator also seeks costs and other orders in addition to penalties. TheStreet contacted Meta but didn't hear back. However, Meta has indicated it will defend the proceedings, as reported by other news outlets.

A 'malicious technique' has been alleged against Facebook.

"We don't allow ads that seek to scam people out of money or mislead people on Facebook - they violate our policies and don't serve our community well. Technology

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helps us detect and block scam ads, and we stay ahead of scammers' attempts to evade detection," a Facebook spokesperson told me. "To date, Meta has cooperated with the ACCC investigation." Between October and December last year, Meta pulled 1.7 billion fake accounts and 1.2 billion spam pieces - more than 99.9% and 99.6% of each were eliminated before reporting to the ACCC.

Basant Gajjar was sued in 2020 by Mark Zuckerberg's company. "As LeadCloak, Gajjar provided cloaking software and services designed to circumvent automated ad review systems, and ultimately ran deceptive ads on Facebook and Instagram," Facebook said in April 2020.

According to the company, Cloaking is a malicious technique that impairs ad review systems by hiding the nature of a website linked to an ad. Ads are cloaked when a company's ad review system identifies an innocuous product such as a sweater. Still, the user sees an entirely different website promoting deceptive products and services, which are often forbidden.

"In this case, LeadCloak software was used to hide websites that contained scams related to COVID-19, cryptocurrency, pharmaceuticals, diet pills, and fake news pages," said Jessica Romero, Facebook's director of platform enforcement and litigation, in a blog post at the time. 