Playing ‘whack-a-mole’ with Meta over my fraudulent avatars
Stay informed with free updates
Just sign up to Technological sector MYFT DIGEST – Shipped directly to your inbox.
I have Alter ego Or, because it is now known online, avatar. My avatar seems to me and sounds at least a little like me. He constantly appears on Facebook and Instagram. Partners who understand social media are much better than I’ve tried to kill this avatar. But so far they have failed.
Why are we so determined to stop myself this reliable-seeming version? Because he is a fraud – “deep”. Worse, he is literally fraud. He tries to force people to join the investment group I supposed to lead. Someone designed him to deceive people, exploiting new technology, my name and reputation and that part of FT. He must die. But can we kill him?
I first got acquainted with my avatar on March 11.
It turned out that he had advertised in Instagram that supposed to run by me. It means that the meta, which has two platforms, indirectly made money from fraud. This was a shock. Someone was driving a financial fraud in my name. It was just as bad that the meta was a profit from it.
My expert college contacted Meta, and after a little “out of the sister” managed to acquire offensive ads. Alas, it was far from the end of the job. During the next weeks, a number of other people, some who I personally knew, and others knew who I was, I brought my attention. After being informed on each occasion, the meta told us that it was down. Moreover, I recently enrolled in a new one Meta system It uses face recognition technology to detect and remove such scams.
In general, we felt that we were on top of this evil. Yes, it was a little like a “mole mole”, but the number we saw seemed to be low and fall. It turned out that it was wrong since this moment. After studying the relevant data, another expert partner said that at least three different degsfake videos and many photo series, which work with more than 1,700 ads, slightly variations of Facebook and Instagram. The data from the Metal Advertising Library show that ads have only reached more than 970,000 users in the EU, where regulations require technological platforms to report such numbers.
“Because the ads are all English, it probably represents only a part of them,” said my colleague. Presumably, many more British accounts also saw.
These ads were purchased with ten fake accounts, and the new ones were determined by some ban. This is like fighting a hydro.
That’s not all. There is a painful difference, I think that social media platforms are used to deceive people and make myself a part of such deceit. This has been quite shock. I wonder how I am surprised, it is possible that the meta may not be automatically recognized by its huge resources, including artificial intelligence. Really it’s hard or not trying, because Sarah Win-Williams offers her wonderful book Careless people?
We have been in touch with the officials of the Chair of Culture, Media and Sports who have directed us meta advertising policy. Which state is that “Advertisements should not stimulate goods, services, schemes or suggestions that are used in deceptive or misleading practice, including people who want to distort people’s money or personal information.” Similarly, online security law requires platforms to protect users from fraud.
Metal spokesman himself said.
The metan was automatically said that “the cheaters are ruthless and continually develop their tactics to try to avoid other means.” However, I find it difficult to believe that the meta, with its huge resources, could not do better. It should just not be spread to such fraud.
At the same time, beware. I never offer investment advice. If you see such an advertisement, it’s a deception. If you were the victim of this deception, please share your experience with FT visual.investigations@ft.comA number we have to take over all the ads taken down and so they know if the meta is on top of this problem.
First of all, such a fraud should stop. If the meta cannot do that, who is?
English