Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Advertising Communications Facebook The Almighty Buck The Courts The Internet

Facebook Sued Over Fake Ads (theguardian.com) 63

shilly writes: British finance expert Martin Lewis is suing Facebook for defamation, after a year of trying to persuade the company to stop accepting scam ads featuring his name and image. Facebook insists that he report to them every time he spots a scam; he wants them to check with him before they take money for an ad featuring his name or picture, so he can tell them if it's legit or not. "Lewis said he would not profit from any damages won, which he would donate to charities combating fraud, but that he hoped the action would prompt the site to stamp out scam adverts," reports The Guardian.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Facebook Sued Over Fake Ads

Comments Filter:
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Half baked (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Facebook is profiting from no scrutiny on the ads becsude it lowers their costs. This has turned out to be a huge problem. They have facial recognition, they have analytics... They should fix this problem.

    • It is an interesting suit, because at this point in time I think it is provable that FB has sufficient technology to comply with this request to not aid fraud at miniscule direct costs. Of course, the indirect costs are what FB worries about: the cost of losing a source of sleazy revenue, the precedent being set that they could significantly reduce some kinds of fraud easily but have avoided doing so.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      FB can make money by charging for "monitoring services" that scan or track such. It would be nice if they did such automatically after a single abuse is encountered, but I'm not sure that's realistic.

  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Monday April 23, 2018 @06:57PM (#56491667) Journal

    Facebook said: “We do not allow adverts which are misleading or false on Facebook and have explained to Martin Lewis that he should report any adverts that infringe his rights and they will be removed. “We are in direct contact with his team, offering to help and promptly investigating their requests, and only last week confirmed that several adverts and accounts that violated our advertising policies had been taken down.”

    So Facebook serious expect everyone to maintain a "team"? And spend time and energy scouring the net?

    He should just run fake ads in the name of politicians, and attach really inflammatory and outrageous statements to them. That will get their attention.

    • And then you'd find out that FB can actually find out whose behind fake ads if you're 'important', and those politicians can do things directly to you...
    • by duke_cheetah2003 ( 862933 ) on Monday April 23, 2018 @07:45PM (#56491843) Homepage

      Sounds like Facebook is expecting everyone else to do their job of filtering bad actors from the advertisement stream.

      That's pretty screwed up. Shouldn't that be Facebook's job, to vet the people buying advertisement on their platform?

      Then I realized, if they vet their advertisers, they'd probably have to reject a majority of advertisement dollars cuz they actually bothered to look and can't claim ignorance like they've come to enjoy doing. Broken. Very broken.

      While I'm usually of the camp that says leave people alone, if their site is retarded and broken, people will eventually learn that and stop using the site, this is such a scourge on the world, making it so insanely easy for anyone with a few bucks to spread mountains of misinformation.. yeah, something has to be done, this cannot be allowed. Social responsibility > Site freedom.

      The really sad part of this all, is that social responsibility seems to be requiring laws and regulations to get these types of companies to be responsible. I mean, shouldn't that be like.. second nature? Don't be 100% a dick?

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        They have advanced face recognition software, they have OCR software that can detect words embedded in images, and they have databases of blocked images that can recognize transformations like scaling or trivial editing. They use all those things for their own benefit, scanning user uploaded content.

        All they have to do is turn that on for ads as well, but instead they expect every individual to police the use of their likeness and reputation on Facebook... Which is impossible unless you have a Facebook acco

      • Sounds like Facebook is expecting everyone else to do their job of filtering bad actors from the advertisement stream.

        Which wouldn't be quite so bad if they actually let you.

        I'm constantly bombarded with adverts for Raspberry Pi based retro controls which have no issue with clearly advertising the fact that they come fully loaded with thousands of games from various platforms (Nintendo, Sony and Sega included). Yet when I click on the "report" option the best I can do is tell them that I don't want to see i

        • - there is no "this is blatantly illegal" option. Similarly, after all the furor over fake news, you would have thought there was a way to report fake news for review and taking down.

          If they allowed either one, then it would quickly be abused by people who think "I don't agree" means the news is fake, or "I don't think you can do that" means "that is blatantly illegal".

          We see that on /. somewhat, where a lot of "troll" or "flamebait" moderation happens because someone doesn't like what was said, not because it was an actual troll or flamebait. It's kept in check here because of metamoderation, and mod points aren't handed out like candy, but if everyone could "moderate" on /. at any t

          • I want the ability to say "I do not want (some facebook friend's peculiar hobby-horse that they constantly flog) postings, at all, ever" without blocking the friend's other postings. I want to block "lost puppy" postings from 3000 miles away. I want to absolutely block certain political screed sites no matter how deeply nested a share of a share of a share it is.

            I want to absolutely block any mention of Trump or Hillary whatsoever. No one -- NO ONE -- who talks about them on Facebook, left right or cente

            • Facebook is grimly determined to keep flinging this crap in my face.

              You want a social media site where you can send whatever you want to your friends but they can't share their thoughts with you unless you approve of them.

              Why are you on Facebook AT ALL? It's not Facebook's fault, you're the one staring into the end of the firehose and wanting it to never emit any water. It's like someone who complains about the danger of being run over by a train. Just step off the tracks and the problem is solved.

              • Facebook is grimly determined to keep flinging this crap in my face.

                You want a social media site where you can send whatever you want to your friends but they can't share their thoughts with you unless you approve of them.

                More the opposite, actually. I want to see what they post, other than specific things that I've seen way way too much of that I'm sick of seeing. And I want them to have the freedom to not see anything I repeatedly post that annoys them, too.

                Why are you on Facebook AT ALL? It's not Facebook's fault, you're the one staring into the end of the firehose and wanting it to never emit any water. It's like someone who complains about the danger of being run over by a train. Just step off the tracks and the problem is solved.

                I am so very very tempted.

                There are just a bunch of people -- family and old friends scattered around the country -- that it's very convenient to keep up with using Facebook.

    • Facebook said: “We do not allow adverts which are misleading or false on Facebook and have explained to Martin Lewis that he should report any adverts that infringe his rights and they will be removed.

      I don't think Facebook quite understand what "allow" means. Clearly, they are allowing these ads to be distributed - if they were not there would not be a problem. Simply having a policay which says that you do not allow it and then going ahead and ignoring it until someone points it out seems very unlikely to cut it because it would make it far too easy for all major media organizations to avoid all libel.

      Even if they do win the case, the law will be rapidly changed to make it impossible to win a simil

      • Even if they do win the case, the law will be rapidly changed to make it impossible to win a similar case again. Politicians simply cannot afford to have media getting away with libellous content like this. It might be a financial expert getting libelled today but come the next general election it will be politicians and they know it.

        That's just adorable. You think politicians aren't salivating at the opportunity to do this to their opponents.

  • ... where owners don't want to chase down every fine-grain violation -- they want service providers to do that work for them.

    How's that working so far?

  • Eddie Maguire is also starting legal action for someone on FB for using his image to sell boner pills...

    Eddie Maguire is a tv celebrity and the president of a AFL football club so he has a public presence that he needs to protect..
    While he was having a laugh about it on tv he will be pursuing this in our courts...

  • Where the 'celebrity' was used for erectile disfunction ads.

    Facebook don't give a shit about upholding standards, as long as people are clicking on stuff. Maybe a few lawsuits will get them to start caring.

    Every day I see posts that violote the groups policy on not having completitions where people are asked to 'tag and share' which is not allowed, but there's no way to actually report it. And clearly, they don't bother inforcing it. People have the images stolen and used on clickpage pages, which no conseq

  • The point of the suit is, I think, that FB is going beyond simply not stopping these adverts, they are saying that they will allow them for money (just like any advert). The process is not the same as their general content where people just upload stuff and they react, FB are actively approving this content. The problem is that they want to approve that content without incurring any costs, so there's no real process.

    I expect FB to try to defend this by conflating their role as a "platform" with their role a

    • Indeed. The "we are an innocent platform" defense will not work once you are accepting money. I would bet good money, the courts will be persuaded that FB is responsible for making a "reasonable" effort.

      The second line of defense was that it would be too hard so doing nothing until a takedown request is received is "reasonable", which made adequate sense in 2010. With modern technology, including technology we know FB has expertise with, it would actually not be difficult at all.

      "Reasonable" in 2018 is n

    • Facebook wants to have it both ways: they want no regulation and they want the protection of a common carrier. The result is a monopolistic monster that will sell any bit of info that it can lay it's hands on that has no internal or external control. As often happens, unbounded capitalism leads to negative outcomes.
  • Don't be so harsh on Facebook, it's not like they have some ready-made solution for recognizing ads using his image and name. /sarcasm

  • In related news, Dean Jerry is seeking work as an advertising spokesman ... and for some unknown reason is highly popular in France.

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms. -- George Wald

Working...