The Australian government is investigating whether Meta has unlawfully promoted scams on its platforms, following reports that the social media giant continued to display ads for fraudulent investment schemes.
The Albanese government will investigate whether Meta has unlawfully promoted scams on its platforms. Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones said he had asked his department and office to examine whether Meta was breaching existing laws, including its criminal and civil obligations. Jones' comments came after reports showed Meta was serving up ads promoting notorious sham investment platforms subject to numerous official warnings and easily identified with a simple search.
Despite the tech company’s insistence that it had since removed many offending ads and accounts, new ads appeared in recent days using the same techniques and keywords as before. Among the ads published this week were examples misusing the images of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, singer Guy Sebastian, and those linked to a bogus Salvation Army loan offer. There were also numerous ads promoting Quantum AI, which the consumer watchdog has labelled the “most prolific online investment trading platform scam” affecting Australians. Earlier, the company shared news it had recently taken down 2 million accounts linked to scam centres in South-East Asia and the Middle East. It also confirmed that it had been sharing warnings with Australian Facebook users since October, telling them to “beware of scams using celebrity images to deceive you”. Sergeant Alexander Kazagrandi, with the Australian Federal Police’s Joint Policing Cybercrime Co-ordination Centre, said scam advertising was prolific in Australia and was being used “more and more extensively by organised criminal groups”
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