Meta slammed over scam ads on Facebook featuring Australian TV personalities

theguardian.com:

Australia’s broadcast industry group has condemned Facebook’s parent company Meta over its handling of scam ads featuring TV stars including David Koch and Karl Stefanovic, saying the company’s response time is inadequate and damages broadcaster reputations.

Free TV Australia – which represents broadcasters including Seven, Nine and Ten – said in a submission published this month to a Senate inquiry into digital platforms that scam ads featuring their networks’ stars without the network or star’s knowledge or authorisation, and fake news stories had been causing harm to consumers over the past few years.

The group highlighted scam ads on Facebook featuring fake endorsements from the Nine news reporter Georgie Gardner for an app, a fake account purporting to be the former Today Show host Allison Langdon encouraging people to enter a scam competition seeking bank details, and scam cryptocurrency ads featuring the Today host Karl Stefanovic and Sunrise host David Koch.

“His image was used as one of many fake celebrity endorsements that baited and lured users into scam bitcoin investments,” Free TV said regarding the fake Koch ads.

The group said scammers had also created fake Seven-branded Facebook pages and replied to users in the comment sections on Seven’s Facebook posts, telling them they’d won a prize.

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The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched a case in the federal court in March last year alleging Meta had “aided and abetted” celebrity scam ads that had cost some Australians hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In its own submission to the inquiry, the ACCC said the losses from scam ads on social