"Meta’s lax approach has helped fuel the professionalization of social-media fraud by international criminal networks in Southeast Asia".
"The report estimated organized scamming operations—often called “pig butchering” groups—comprise hundreds of thousands of people, many trafficked after falling for fraudulent social-media employment ads. Kept in prisonlike compounds, the workers are forced to work under threat of extreme forms of torture and abuse.”
The FT have an article on the Irish government proposal today here (paywall) for a legal obligation for platforms to check if a financial advert is from a regulated firm.
"Brussels frets that the amendment would conflict with a provision in the EU’s Digital Services Act that online platforms are not required to conduct broad-based monitoring of content. Yet having to verify whether financial advertisers are authorised does not constitute large-scale monitoring, and would only be required of very large online platforms."
The FT are right. The proposal by the Irish government is not a broad-based monitoring of user generated content, but rather it is to ensure that platforms check advertisers, to ensure they are regulated, to stop scams. Hopefully the Irish government proposal gains traction.
Just had a Google ad on my phone's carousel promote a scam bond investment site. Claiming to be protected by DGS, and with an impressive Trustpilot link that actually relates to an entirely different company.
Google's own AI Overview search results classify it as "a known scam site" . Have reported it to Google using the mobile report option. Advertiser is unverified, we'll see.
Update: took a screenshot of the mobile ad and the advertiser details (under Google's mobile report option) and then looked up the advertiser profile on my desktop using Google's Ad Transparency tool.
Well done. Google seems to have far less scam deposit and investment adverts these days but the problem is still not fully solved despite Google committing to checking if all financial advertisers are regulated entities.
Meanwhile, X and Meta are flooded in scam financial adverts.