Australia’s consumer watchdog is taking Meta to court, alleging the company “aided and abetted” celebrity scam ads on Facebook that have cost some Australians hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The ads, which include the promotion of investment in cryptocurrency, have plagued the platform since 2020. Each ad depicts an image of a prominent Australian such as David Koch, Dick Smith or Andrew Forrest, claiming to have made it big with the investments in a fake news article that directs people to the scam investment website.
A previous Guardian Australia investigation found the sites were registered to addresses in Russia, with others in Ukraine.
Meta has struggled to keep the ads off its site, with the scammers frequently changing the URLs for the scam sites and the text of the ads to escape Facebook’s ad filtering.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said Meta has not done enough to stop these ads. It has taken the company to the federal court for engaging in allegedly false, misleading or deceptive conduct in publishing the ads, and aiding and abetting the false conduct by the advertisers.
“The essence of our case is that Meta is responsible for these ads that it publishes on its platform,” the ACCC chair, Rod Sims, said.
“It is a key part of Meta’s business to enable advertisers to target users who are most likely to click on the link in an ad to visit the ad’s landing page, using Facebook algorithms. Those visits to landing pages from ads…
