Meta seemed to be less inclined to increase enforcement in response to police requests. Documents indicated that law enforcement in Singapore identified “146 instances of scams targeting users in that country last autumn,” according to Reuters. Only 23 percent infringed upon Meta’s regulations, while the remainder merely “contravened the spirit of the policy, rather than the letter,” a presentation from Meta stated.
Scams that Meta overlooked included offers such as cryptocurrency frauds, counterfeit concert tickets, or promotions “too good to be true,” like 80 percent off a coveted item from a luxury brand. Meta also ignored fake job vacancies claiming to recruit for leading tech firms.
Rob Leathern once directed Meta’s business integrity division that aimed to thwart scam advertisements but departed in 2020. He informed Wired that it’s difficult to “ascertain how severe the situation has become or what the current condition is” since Meta and other social media outlets do not grant external researchers access to large random ad samples.
With such access, researchers like Leathern and Rob Goldman, the former vice president of ads at Meta, could create “scorecards” demonstrating how effectively various platforms are addressing scams. Together, Leathern and Goldman established a nonprofit named CollectiveMetrics.org in hopes of “enhancing transparency in digital advertising to combat deceptive ads,” Wired reported.
“I desire greater transparency. I want third parties, researchers, academics, nonprofits, and others to genuinely assess how effectively these platforms are managing scams and fraud,” Leathern mentioned to Wired. “We aim to transition to real measurements of the issue and contribute to a deeper understanding.”
One significant step that Leathern believes companies like Meta should undertake to safeguard users is to inform them when Meta identifies that they have interacted with a scam ad—rather than targeting them with additional scam ads, as Reuters suggested was Meta’s approach.
“Typically, these scammers don’t acquire people’s money immediately. So there exists a window for intervention,” he stated, advocating that platforms allocate ill-gotten profits from scam ads to “fund nonprofits to teach individuals how to identify these types of scams or issues.”
“There is much that could be accomplished with resources derived from these wrongdoers,” Leathern remarked.
