Australian watchdog filed a lawsuit against Facebook owner Meta Platforms on Friday, due to promoting fake ads featuring well-known people.
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) stated that the fake advertisements have misled Facebook users into believing they were promoted by famous Australians.
The lawsuit filed in the Federal Court also alleges Facebook “aided and abetted or was knowingly concerned in false or misleading conduct and representations by the advertisers,” the ACCC revealed in a statement.
“The essence of our case is that Meta is responsible for these ads that it publishes on its platform,” ACCC Chair Rod Sims said. “It is alleged that Meta was aware ... scam ads were being displayed on Facebook but did not take sufficient steps to address the issue.”
Meta said any ads that scammed people out of money or misled users violated its policies and the company uses technology to detect and block such posts, adding it had “cooperated with the ACCC’s investigation into this matter to date.”
“We will review the recent filing by the ACCC and intend to defend the proceedings,” a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement, declining to comment further as the case was before the court.
The ads used images of several Australian business leaders, TV hosts and politicians and contained links to fake media articles that included quotes attributed to the personalities, according to the ACCC.
“We are aware of a consumer who lost more than A$650,000 ($480,000) due to one of these scams ... this is disgraceful,” Sims said.
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