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| Meta faces Australian lawsuit over misleading ads |
The Australian competition regulator has sued Meta for allowing it to advertise misleading cryptocurrency via Facebook, a test case of the parent company's liability for harm to consumers on the platform.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said the company had violated consumer and investment laws. American society also supports and encourages false or misleading behavior and representations.
The regulator's lawsuit comes on the heels of another brought by Andrew Forrest, who sued Meta earlier this year after his photos were used to promote cryptocurrency software without his consent.
The alleged scam, which began in 2019, used Facebook photos of prominent Australians to link to fake news articles urging consumers to sign up for cryptocurrency schemes. Facebook users are under tremendous pressure through selling tactics.
Targets incur heavy losses. One person was duped into spending A$650,000 (US$477,000).
The ACCC said that Meta generated significant revenue by associating Facebook with false media reports, and that its technology allowed fraudsters to target consumers most likely to interact with ads.
Australian regulator sue Facebook owners to death
The Anti-Corruption and Accountability Commission also said that promotions continued to appear even after some celebrities publicly complained about the use of their similar images.
"The bottom line in our case is that the company is responsible for the ads they place on their platform," she added. Meta said she has been cooperating with the anti-corruption commission so far and is reviewing the lawsuit in federal court.
The company has made it clear that it does not want ads intended to deceive people in order to get paid or mislead them about Facebook because it violates its policies and harms its community.
"We use technology to detect and block misleading ads," she said. We work hard to prevent fraudsters from bypassing our detection systems.
According to the company, 5% of Facebook's monthly active users are fake accounts. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the company deleted 1.7 billion from those accounts.
The ACCC case is the latest attempt to crack down on digital platforms. This follows the introduction of the press trading system last year. The law requires Meta and Google to pay media companies for information.