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- Apr 30, 2024
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A recent court case in Australia has highlighted Meta's continued revenue from fraudulent celebrity-endorsed advertisements. More than half of the analyzed cryptocurrency ads on Facebook are scams, violating Meta's own advertising policies.
In 2022, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) filed a lawsuit against Meta for publishing fraudulent celebrity-endorsed ads. On August 9, 2024, the court issued a ruling revealing ACCC’s claim that since January 2018, "Meta was aware that a significant portion of cryptocurrency ads on Facebook used misleading or deceptive promotional methods".
The ACCC indicated that over 58% of the reviewed ads and their landing pages on Facebook violated Meta's advertising policies and were associated with scams.
Initially, the ACCC included over 600 scam ads in the lawsuit, but the current focus is on 234 ads featuring celebrities such as Andrew Forrest (who previously filed his own lawsuit against Meta), Chris Hemsworth, David Koch, Nicole Kidman, and Russell Crowe, among others.
According to data from the government website, the most common types of scams in Australia involve investments, with losses exceeding $78 million. Other prevalent scams include "romance fraud" and phishing.
The ACCC claims that while Meta does
