Facebook Owner Meta Sued by Australian Consumer Watchdog for Scam Crypto Ads

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has sued Meta Platforms and Meta Platforms Ireland alleging that they engaged successful false, misleading oregon deceptive behaviour by publishing scam advertisements featuring salient Australian nationalist figures, according to a statement published Friday.

• The ACCC alleges that the ads, which promoted concern successful cryptocurrency oregon money-making schemes, were apt to mislead Facebook users into believing the advertised schemes were associated with well-known radical featured successful the ads, specified arsenic businessman Dick Smith, TV presenter David Koch and erstwhile NSW Premier Mike Baird. The schemes were successful information scams, and the radical featured successful the ads had ne'er approved oregon endorsed them.

• The ads contained links that took Facebook users to a fake media nonfiction that included quotes attributed to the nationalist fig featured successful the advertisement endorsing a cryptocurrency oregon money-making scheme. Users were past invited to motion up and were subsequently contacted by scammers who utilized precocious unit tactics, specified arsenic repeated telephone calls, to person users to deposit funds into the fake schemes.

• “The essence of our lawsuit is that Meta is liable for these ads that it publishes connected its platform,” ACCC Chair Rod Sims said. “It is simply a cardinal portion of Meta’s concern to alteration advertisers to people users who are astir apt to click connected the nexus successful an advertisement to sojourn the ad’s landing page, utilizing Facebook algorithms. Those visits to landing pages from ads make important gross for Facebook.”

• The ACCC ailment accuses Meta of failing to forestall "publication of fake ads adjacent aft the celebrities reported akin false, misleading oregon deceptive ads to Meta."

• The ACCC is seeking unspecified declarations, injunctions, penalties, costs and different orders.