UK consumer help bloke Martin Lewis is suing Facebook over fake ads Consumer champion Martin Lewis, Britain’s Money Saving Expert, has declared he is suing Facebook for defamation over fake adverts featuring his face that repeatedly appear on the under-fire social network. In a statement issued last night on the MoneySavingExpert website, of which he is editor-in-chief, Lewis said he was sick …
See, I read the part
"[We] have explained to Martin Lewis that he should report any adverts that infringe his rights and they will be removed"
as
"[We] expect everyone else to do any and all error and fact checking for us for free, while we gleefully take money from the dregs of society. While we accept and publish these adverts, and pocket the associated revenue, it is not the responsibility of FaceBook to actually take responsibility for anything at all, ever."
Bastards. Absolute utter bastards, the lot of them.
Also, can you report an ad from a screenshot sent by someone else?
If he goes to the place where the ad was spotted, he would see something different.
These ads will be targeted at low-income, low intelligence, finances in a complete mess type people, and facebook's ad targetting algorithm might not identify Martin Lewis as such a person.
Of course, their ad targetting is completely useless. Despite the fact that I use facebook pretty much only for lesbian related stuff, they still think I might be interested in getting a boyfriend, buying clothes for the aforementioned boyfriend (are men not capable of buying their own clothes), pregnancy tests, nursery schools and so on.
Motor Trend magazine is probably the highest circulation new car mag, and the ads feature hunks chewing tobacco, more hunks driving trucks bigger than a space shuttle, watches with more complications than aforementioned space vehicle, hideously ugly jewelry with broad-bean sized non-precious stones for the The Wife... and smiling hetero-couple ED treatment ads at the back.
The guns magazine ads are even more steotyped. Slinky ladies featuring small handguns in a thigh holster (!), chunky men in camo carrying the latest black rifle.
But apart from the patriarchal sexist crap, the annoyance of ads is being flooded with toaster ads after buying one online. Do people collect toasters... ooh, that's a nice toaster, let's get than one too!
"[We] have explained to Martin Lewis that he should report any adverts that infringe his rights and they will be removed"
This is on a par with a toddler deliberately swinging a stick around and saying it's your fault you got hit because you didn't get out the way quick enough.
Effectively they are saying:
It's your fault this is causing you problems because you didn't report it to us quick enough. It's not like we did anything wrong – we were just minding our own business – our business being taking money to push out adverts while paying as little attention as possible to who pays for them or what they contain.
taking money to push out adverts while paying as little attention as possible to who pays for them or what they contain
Even if they contain malware or links to malware. The US rules on content publishers make a certain sense but they shouldn't absolve the carrier of responsibility for infecting your machine..
buying clothes for the aforementioned boyfriend (are men not capable of buying their own clothes),
I might just be able to shed light on that one.
I buy my own clothes just fine. But some women have a different dress sense to mine, and feel much more strongly about it than I do. I suspect many are channeling behaviour learned from mothers, grannies, and aunts who buy clothes for junior family members.
I once had such a woman as girlfriend: she'd be prime target for such ads. Indeed, clothes were only a small part of the control she asserted over my life. The word we'd customarily use is "henpecked", but when the Chattering Classes started banging on about "Coercive Control" it described that relationship with uncanny accuracy.
are men not capable of buying their own clothes
Yup. And no, my wife doesn't buy me clothes[1] and I don't buy her clothes. We both realise that the other is adult[2] enough to manage it themselves.
We do, obviously, consult with each other when buying clothes - and trust each other to be honest.
[1] She doesn, however, knit/crotchet me stuff - jumpers and socks and the like. Which is nice and, in general, they are very good.
[2] I stopped my mother buying me clothes without me being present when I was about 10. The quality of clothing went up as a result.. Or at least, the bought ones did. I couldn't do a lot about the ones that I inherited from my brothers or the ones that various schools insisted I had..
Pointless to report anything to Facebook. You can report the worst things on the planet, and you always get the standard response;
"We reviewed the page you reported for containing ***** and found it doesn't violate our Community Standards."
Thanks Facebook.
If you serve ads on your platform, you're responsible for knowing whether they are fake services or not... and he's right in saying that since they are facial recognition experts, it'd be useful to flag ads for review when they show up... but that'd be too much to ask from the biggest data slurper on the planet. May he win and force them to take resp... oh. Nevermind.
Alongside a picture of one of them with a black eye.
Or how about a photo of a battered Richard Branson alongside some equally dramatic "rushed to hospital" story.
The list goes on.
To Reg readers, these are as credible as an economic forecast from Diane Abbott, but I long suspected they are being run via some offshore loophole too difficult to close, but still making money for ZuckerData, hence the bind eye being turned.
I long suspected they are being run via some offshore loophole too difficult to close, but still making money for ZuckerData, hence the bind eye being turned.
I don't think there's any offshore loophole, these are just plain, straight forward fraud crimes that could (in theory) be successfully prosecuted under UK law. But the police are not set up to cope with most forms of mass-market fraud conducted by phone or internet, and faced with a large amount of effort for a possible prosecution that the Clown Prosecution Service may not take forward, or may lack the skills to successfully conclude, or results in trivial and non-deterrent penalties, it represents a low value policing target. When the public are asking the police to act, "cyber crime" often gets a mention, but always remains some way down the list compared to ASB, drugs, extremism, organised crime, burglary and motor crime.
In terms of the intermediaries, yes, they know its fraud, and you're correct that as long as they make money they don't care - but this is nothing new - no different to telcos enabling spam telephone marketing, or payments processors acting for spammers and illegal sellers.
but I long suspected they are being run via some offshore loophole too difficult to close
The problem is (in part) about the various ad brokers and agencies. They get paid for providing adverts to sites and, in general, are not too fussy about the content. After all, it makes them money. And, in general, their sytems are almost all automated with very little, if any, human interaction or control. After all, processor time is cheap and people are expensive. And need things like sleep.
The ad brokers should also be included in the lawsuit.
Indeed. They may not be responsible for what people post as individuals, but when they are selling advertising space, they sure as hell should be responsible for what goes into it.
They seem to be able to come up with all sorts of new and interesting ways to get those adverts through ad-blockers, so it doesn't really wash that they aren't responsible for them. If a significant portion of those adverts are fraudulent or malicious, there is even a moral case for the use of ad-blockers beyond the argument that an owner of a pair of eyeballs should have some control of what they get to see.
I think he will lose because if he wins Facebook will be responsible for content
I disagree; I think the courts are perfectly capable of drawing a distinction between user-generated content, posted to a user's wall, and advertising, which is not user-generated, and targeted in a wholly different way.
I agree with Loyal Commentator. I'll go a step further, and say that Lewis's only hope of winning is to draw that line himself.
It's very comfortably settled law that Facebook, Twitter and so forth down to webforums and BBSes alike all have the same protections: their users are the publishers, and liable for their own content. The platform is not a publisher.
Adverts are, at lest in theory, pre-approved, and in Facebook's case specifically *delivered*, by the Platform. That's how it works: you make an ad, tell FB you want it sent to people tagged with these keywords, and FB does so. There's a valid argument that FB is publishing adverts even if it's not publishing user content, which is nice because breaking Common Carrier protections would cause utter chaos. Things like this here comments section would be a serious liability to El Reg - any random chump can come here, post terrible things and get the site's owners in legal trouble.
Personally, I'd love companies to be held responsible for the adverts they accept. If that hurts them, then they can pass the hurt onto the middle-men linking advertisers to platforms, and hopefully force the industry to clean it's act up.
Entirely agree. FB takes money to show adverts to specific targetted groups of people. It therefore has a responsibility to check those adverts. Would it let someone target an advert at 15-year-old girls that offered a lucrative career in glamour-modelling in Eastern Europe? I suspect not, so they have mechanisms in place to check adverts prior to publication. They take the money, they do due diligence. If that costs them money, then just put up the advert prices. Trump can afford it.
Would it let someone target an advert at 15-year-old girls that offered a lucrative career in glamour-modelling in Eastern Europe?
Of course it bloody would! This is Facebook we're talking about. Their only morals are, "can you pay?" And, "can we plausibly deny all responsibility if we get caught taking the cash?"
Under 18s can purchase food, clothes and property, both of which are a form of contract. The under 18 may at some point repudiate some contracts, but not those entered into for basics such as food and clothes. However, having repudiated the contract they cannot then retain the benefits of the contract.
>>"We're not a publisher we're a platform so we're not responsible for anything we do la la la"
>It's wearing a little thin.
A recent 9th circuit court judgement held that YouTube's and Google's assertions of neutrality were "pure puffery" so maybe we'll see a little traction where editorial control is effected - which includes friendface.
http://tushnet.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/youtubes-claims-about-allowing-free.html
If they can't take down these pics, so much for their "send us your nudie pics" gambit.
It's just a large corporate doing what large corporates do: externalise all possible costs.
If a dodgy advert appears on ITV, or dodgy junk mail arrives in the post who is to blame? Is it the advertiser or is it ITV / Royal Mail?
It's the advertisers here that really disserve the vitriol and not FB. There should be clear and obvious methods of chasing down the advertiser. Perhaps making it a condition of placing online ads is that you need a Person / Phone number / Company registration / Physical address all available to anyone who views the ad.
If a dodgy advert appears on ITV, or dodgy junk mail arrives in the post who is to blame? Is it the advertiser or is it ITV / Royal Mail?
That's an interesting couple of examples you have chosen. ITV is definitely responsible for the adverts it shows. As a 'common carrier', RM is definitely NOT responsible for the contents of the mail it delivers, unless they are circulars that they are delivering on the behalf of others.
I feel that if it is a personal post, then the carrier shouldn't be liable for it. So if someone is bullying Little Timmy, then Facebook shouldn't be the one on the hook for that (Sorry Mr. Hunt, I don't agree with your soundbite from the other day). I wouldn't blame Royal Mail for a nasty card I got from somebody.
However, advertisers are paying for the carrier to target people, so carriers should certainly be liable for what they are choosing to allow to be sent. In the Royal Mail example, if they send me some marketing bumf which is particularly awful and if a massive scam (and have gotten paid to deliver it) I think they should be on the hook for that. The same goes for Facebook. Honestly their excuse seems to be more "we don't vet stuff, we just let them pay to target people".
>That's an interesting couple of examples...
I think it depends what's wrong with the ad. If it contains defamatory remarks, offensive words etc, then I would expect ITV to be responsible for the ad's content. They should review the ad before it goes out to check it's not breaking general broadcast rules. But if it's an ad that, for example, is for an ISP claiming to be the cheapest/fastest/whatever when really they're not, I don't see that as ITV's responsibility.
When the ASA makes a ruling using the familiar "must not be shown again in its current form" phrase the ruling is against the advertiser not the broadcaster.
The Royal Mail aren't to blame for letters as they can't see the content of the communication. The junk leaflets they shove through the letterbox with the post might be a different matter.
I think it depends what's wrong with the ad. If it contains defamatory remarks, offensive words etc, then I would expect ITV to be responsible for the ad's content. They should review the ad before it goes out to check it's not breaking general broadcast rules. But if it's an ad that, for example, is for an ISP claiming to be the cheapest/fastest/whatever when really they're not, I don't see that as ITV's responsibility.
The analogy for this particular case would be ITV running an advert on behalf of ScamCo who are blatantly pretending that they are representing ReputableCo, in order to defraud customers, whilst the accounts manager at ITV who sold the airtime to them knew full well what the contents of the ad were going to be and that they were not who they were pretending to be. I believe the charges that would be levelled would be conspiracy to defraud or similar.
Er, speaking as an ex-ITV person, hell yes we were responsible for any ad we showed.
All TV ads have to go through clearance and compliance processes to ensure they're fair, truthful and balanced - in fact, to a standard that puts them well ahead of a lot of TV content.
And any time we didn't, the ASA shows up and all hell breaks loose...
"When the ASA feels a complaint is justified, it can take action with the broadcaster concerned. The ASA can require the broadcaster [note: not the advertiser, the broadcaster] to withdraw the advertisement immediately, amend it or suspend it while investigations are carried out."
...and if that wasn't enough...
"For serious or repeated breaches of the Code, Ofcom may impose sanctions, ranging from a formal warning to a request for broadcast correction or a statement of findings, a fine or the shortening, suspending or taking away of a licence to broadcast."
Even in the cosseted world of ad salesmen where breaches of personal conduct were common and the odd bit of dodginess tolerated, if your screwup causes the ASA to do so much as send a pointed email, it's a career-ending move. As in "never eat lunch in this town again".
The Royal Mail accepts items and delivers them given the correct postage. It doesn't examine the contents. FB would like you to believe that it similarly accepts money for an advert and doesn't examine the content. Yet it examines all other content that goes through its site and further targets user based on the advert's content. A question to ask is how many adverts for semtex, or explicit porn are distributed on FB and if they can keep those things off grannies FB page they can keep all sorts of stuff off too.
If Facebook's revenue is from advertising, and the adverts I am shown are representative (endless Bitcoin and investment scams), then something is very broken and yes, they should be held responsible.
These adverts are sufficiently formulaic that there is no reason whatsoever for Facebook to be incapable of removing them automatically. Given the heavy handed way they police the 'non commercial' parts of their estate, it is a clear case of selling their morals to anyone with cash.
They are repeatedly allowing his name and face to be used for fraud. They should either clean up their act and stop this from happening OR they are complicit on the fraud.
Facebook are supposed to have all this wonderful facial recognition technology. It is not too much to ask for it to be used to stop his picture from being published?
It is that hard to scan the text or images for his name and oh something simple like 'Moneysaving Expert' and the like?
I'll put in my order for Popcorn now. This could get interesting.
Go on Martin take them to the cleaners.
There's an arguable case over whether they're complicit on the fraud.
But that's not what Lewis is saying. He's concerned about his own good name, and rightly so - having built up a sizeable business based on a reputation as trusted expert commenter.
The case he is making - that FB are complicit in the theft of his good name - seems to me a lot more clear-cut than saying they're complicit in the underlying fraud.
Indeed, whereas libel laws most usually seem to be abused by rich folk over relative trivia, this case seems strong and sensible. If there was ever a case against abolishing (or at least watering down) Blighty's draconian libel laws, this is surely it!
The guy has saved me plenty of money over the years and many many countless others. He's not smug at all and has done more for consumer rights than anyone else I know of in this country. Right now he's doing more than government are sensibly doing to solve the social media issues we are having. As he has said even if he doesn't win he is hoping the prominence of the case will raise enough awareness to put these scam artists out of business.
I wish him every luck in his case. Facebook can't be allowed to hide behind the just a platform crap when it's the money they make from these scams keeping their business in profit.
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