The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is suing Meta for allowing alleged scam advertisements for cryptocurrency investments.
Australia’s competition watchdog said the adverts used local celebrities and fake media articles to promote and endorse their schemes.
Entrepreneur Dick Smith and television presenter David Koch were amongst the Aussie celebrities used to trick users into trusting the promotions, despite having never personally approved them.
An ACCC statement said that Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, “engaged in false, misleading, or deceptive conduct” that “aided and abetted or was knowingly concerned in false or misleading conduct and representations by the advertisers”.
Through Meta’s advanced marketing technology, vulnerable users were disproportionately targeted, the watchdog claimed. One individual lost A$650,000 (£365,000).
ACCC Chair Rod Sims said: “The essence of our case is that Meta is responsible for these ads published on its platform. It is alleged that Meta was aware that the celebrity endorsement cryptocurrency scam ads were being displayed on Facebook, but did not take sufficient steps to address the issue.”
In response to the allegations, Meta has 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 will review the recent filing by the ACCC and intend to defend the proceedings.”
Meta went on to say that it uses technology to detect and block any ads that have scammed people out of money or misled users. It also said that the company has “cooperated with the ACCC’s investigation into this matter to date”.
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