Consumer group asks for Meta to act on fake ads

Meta is not acting on fake online ads, which breaches the Digital Services Act (DSA), claims Dutch consumer group Consumentenbond.

The European Commission should intervene in Meta’s handling of fake online shop advertisements, Dutch consumer group Consumentenbond told the executive today (24 September), claiming it’s in breach of the Digital Services Act.
Consumentenbond investigated more than 100 fake shops and found that 71% of them reach their customers through ads on Facebook and Instagram. It claims that Meta hardly checks the identity of the advertisers, which could facilitate abuse, and lead consumers to lose money. 
Facebook and Instagram are also lax in responding to police reports. While they remove a challenged ad upon request, they do not remove all ads that link to the same fake shop, Consumentenbond said.
“Meta’s fraud department makes it unnecessarily difficult. It demands a complete report with substantiation for each ad. That is an impossible burden on the police and, in our opinion, unnecessary. If there are enough reports, Meta should simply remove all ads that refer to the criminal web address,” said Sandra Molenaar, director at Consumentenbond.
Under the DSA, large online platforms are obliged to actively block malicious content, and to limit risks for consumers. Consumentenbond said it is therefore asking the Commission, which oversees very large online platforms, to intervene.
The DSA – under which companies need to comply with transparency and election integrity requirements – has applied to all online platforms as of last February. The largest platforms, those that have more than 45 million monthly users in the EU, needed to be ready as of August 2023.
Euronews reported earlier this month that the Commission tasked an agency with looking into areas of improvement for online platforms’ compliance with the DSA in relation to advertising transparency.
This will include monitoring of advertisements on platforms, and an analysis of the contents, functionality and usability of ad repositories.
Online platforms are required under the DSA to make their ad repositories public, with the aim to give users information into how commercial communications are used.
Companies will see more probes for non-compliance with the DSA coming up soon, Roberto Viola, Director General of DG CONNECT, the Commission’s technology policy department, told lawmakers earlier this month.
The Commission already has probe investigations pending into TikTok, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, X and AliExpress.