Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has instigated proceedings against Facebook owner Meta for allowing the spread of scam ads on its platforms and — it alleges — not taking sufficient steps to tackle the issue.
The watchdog said today that it’s seeking “declarations, injunctions, penalties, costs and other orders” against the social media giant, accusing it of engaging in “false, misleading or deceptive conduct” by publishing scam advertisements featuring prominent Australian public figures — activity the ACCC asserts breaches local consumer laws.
Specifically, it alleges Meta’s conduct is in breach of the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) or the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act (ASIC Act).
The regulator’s accusation extends to alleging that Meta “aided and abetted or was knowingly concerned in false or misleading conduct and representations by the advertisers” (i.e. who used its platform to net victims for their scams).
Meta refutes the accusations, saying it already uses technology to try to detect and block scams.
In a statement on the ACCC’s action attributed to a company spokesperson, the tech giant said:
“We don’t want ads seeking to scam people out of money or mislead people on Facebook — they violate our policies and are not good for our community. We use technology to detect and block scam ads and work to get ahead of scammers’ attempts to evade our detection systems. We’ve cooperated…
