My first thought was “What? No! Why should they?” but then I thought well… If Meta is doing nothing to moderate their platform and crack down on scammers and fraud, then maybe it should pay some of the costs. Then again, does BT pay for the costs of people being scammed through the phonelines? Probably not, but then again BT doesn’t moderate who uses the lines in the first place, whereas Meta does.
That then raises the question: Should Meta be held responsible for illegal activity that happens on their platform, given that they moderate said platform and thus decide what does and doesn’t go on it? The EU is increasingly pushing towards ‘yes’.
Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft etc. all get money from advertising revenue, I’ve seen enough scam tech or whatever else ads on their websites. In those cases I see the Tech companies as being more responsible for the bank customer getting scammed than the bank that is forced to reimburse them (via a chargeback or whatever).
For other scams it’s a bit less clear, but I’m sure the likes of Facebook or X could do more than they currently do.
Make them pay. You only need to go and watch some scambaiting channels to know that there are driven, passionate people out there who know how to target and disrupt these scams. If the tech companies were made to pay victims they’d soon decide putting their own anti scam teams.togrther is a good idea.
Agreed! Unless we have more details about who we are paying money to. We should have direct access to the latest accounts for the company, trading history, who the owners are, contact details, bank account details, bank affidavits that this is a genuine company and full access to all reviews posted about the company by customers and finally, and prosecutions of the company and directors and potential cases.
Lets have some transparency.
If your core business revolves around you distributing adverts, and can only operate at its currently scale by *reactively* addressing scam ads, then I’m sorry but my take is you should be realising you have to reduce scale such that you can properly moderate. This isn’t like user content put in a forum where these are individual expressions – this is primarily businesses, so advertising is supposed to meet some guidelines.
If that means alternatives to Google/Meta/etc re-emerge to help manage the desired volume of advertising because one company alone can’t just blindly automate the entire thing with no consideration on the damage it does, maybe that’s a good thing.
The correct way would be to pop them under the scrutiny of a beefed up Ofcom.
Regulator collects reports of scams and tests for their removal.
If not removed, substantial X% fine of global income.
If fines ignored, block service availability in UK.
(a) Not gonna fucking happen.
(b) People need to take more responsibility for their own actions – banks **already** make it really fucking hard to transfer money to people you don’t regularly pay.
I think the better solution is get no one to pay up, and let people feel the consequences of their stupidity. If you protect them from those consequences, they’re going to keep on making the same mistakes.
GOD! I love to see these big ones start lawsuits against Google, Meta, etc for their platforms not being moderated to beat down on scams.
Are scam ads illegal? I dont know but suspect not. Until its illegal for scam ads to exist, big tech wont do anything because they benefit from the ad revenue
The public would like criminal bank execs to go to prison and repay the money they (the bank and them personally) have earned from their fraud twice over. At a minimum.
But prison they must go.
I don’t really agree with the current status quo.
Ultimately the responsibility lies with the account holder.
However banks should be doing everything they can to prevent scams, whether that’s awareness or authentication of identity or flagging suspicious behaviour and trying to reclaw funds.
Just as advertisers should be doing all they can to ensure they aren’t facilitating fraud.
Personally I would be limiting liabilities to the bank to 20%, and if they were facilitated via adverts then the advertisement company (meta, Google (ads) etc) are liable to 20%.
But that means the majority of the cost 80/60% lies with the victim.
I think as a country we need to take personal responsibility for our own actions.
Edit: I accept not all fraud is detectable and it’s possible for anyone to fall victim.
I had a think about this and I recently got a quote for my car insurance and not long afterwards my email was full of spam phishing emails, every brand you can think of tescos, asda, sainsbury, Currys, boots you name it all one after the other with xyz@gmail domains and only thing I can think of is the price comparison site I used.
Big Tech needs regulation to keep us safe and its been needing it for years.
How about the banks fund a police task force to actually catch these scammers and shut them down, wherever they are in the world.
Banks to sue Oxygen for facilitating the sound waves for in person scams.
Ever try selling something on facebook and it gets shut down yet scam ads run all day long
I do not like Banks and I do not like Big Tech Companies. I think that the Banks are right to want to make Big Tech pay up when people are scammed online but I also think that the Banks have a similar obligation. It might actually be a better solution: to make the Banks and Big Tech Jointly and Severally Liable for Online Fraud. Online Fraud requires two things to happen: fraud facilitating content and fraud facilitating transactions. One is provided by Big Tech and the other by Big Money.
How about just educating people not to fall for indian voices on the phone telling them in order to get a refund they need to give them remote access to their online banking and then buy gift cards.
Given the amount of scam companies advertising forex trading and real estate courses on Facebook and YouTube. I don’t fully disagree.
19 comments
My first thought was “What? No! Why should they?” but then I thought well… If Meta is doing nothing to moderate their platform and crack down on scammers and fraud, then maybe it should pay some of the costs. Then again, does BT pay for the costs of people being scammed through the phonelines? Probably not, but then again BT doesn’t moderate who uses the lines in the first place, whereas Meta does.
That then raises the question: Should Meta be held responsible for illegal activity that happens on their platform, given that they moderate said platform and thus decide what does and doesn’t go on it? The EU is increasingly pushing towards ‘yes’.
Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft etc. all get money from advertising revenue, I’ve seen enough scam tech or whatever else ads on their websites. In those cases I see the Tech companies as being more responsible for the bank customer getting scammed than the bank that is forced to reimburse them (via a chargeback or whatever).
For other scams it’s a bit less clear, but I’m sure the likes of Facebook or X could do more than they currently do.
Make them pay. You only need to go and watch some scambaiting channels to know that there are driven, passionate people out there who know how to target and disrupt these scams. If the tech companies were made to pay victims they’d soon decide putting their own anti scam teams.togrther is a good idea.
Agreed! Unless we have more details about who we are paying money to. We should have direct access to the latest accounts for the company, trading history, who the owners are, contact details, bank account details, bank affidavits that this is a genuine company and full access to all reviews posted about the company by customers and finally, and prosecutions of the company and directors and potential cases.
Lets have some transparency.
If your core business revolves around you distributing adverts, and can only operate at its currently scale by *reactively* addressing scam ads, then I’m sorry but my take is you should be realising you have to reduce scale such that you can properly moderate. This isn’t like user content put in a forum where these are individual expressions – this is primarily businesses, so advertising is supposed to meet some guidelines.
If that means alternatives to Google/Meta/etc re-emerge to help manage the desired volume of advertising because one company alone can’t just blindly automate the entire thing with no consideration on the damage it does, maybe that’s a good thing.
The correct way would be to pop them under the scrutiny of a beefed up Ofcom.
Regulator collects reports of scams and tests for their removal.
If not removed, substantial X% fine of global income.
If fines ignored, block service availability in UK.
(a) Not gonna fucking happen.
(b) People need to take more responsibility for their own actions – banks **already** make it really fucking hard to transfer money to people you don’t regularly pay.
I think the better solution is get no one to pay up, and let people feel the consequences of their stupidity. If you protect them from those consequences, they’re going to keep on making the same mistakes.
GOD! I love to see these big ones start lawsuits against Google, Meta, etc for their platforms not being moderated to beat down on scams.
Are scam ads illegal? I dont know but suspect not. Until its illegal for scam ads to exist, big tech wont do anything because they benefit from the ad revenue
The public would like criminal bank execs to go to prison and repay the money they (the bank and them personally) have earned from their fraud twice over. At a minimum.
But prison they must go.
I don’t really agree with the current status quo.
Ultimately the responsibility lies with the account holder.
However banks should be doing everything they can to prevent scams, whether that’s awareness or authentication of identity or flagging suspicious behaviour and trying to reclaw funds.
Just as advertisers should be doing all they can to ensure they aren’t facilitating fraud.
Personally I would be limiting liabilities to the bank to 20%, and if they were facilitated via adverts then the advertisement company (meta, Google (ads) etc) are liable to 20%.
But that means the majority of the cost 80/60% lies with the victim.
I think as a country we need to take personal responsibility for our own actions.
Edit: I accept not all fraud is detectable and it’s possible for anyone to fall victim.
I had a think about this and I recently got a quote for my car insurance and not long afterwards my email was full of spam phishing emails, every brand you can think of tescos, asda, sainsbury, Currys, boots you name it all one after the other with xyz@gmail domains and only thing I can think of is the price comparison site I used.
Big Tech needs regulation to keep us safe and its been needing it for years.
How about the banks fund a police task force to actually catch these scammers and shut them down, wherever they are in the world.
Banks to sue Oxygen for facilitating the sound waves for in person scams.
Ever try selling something on facebook and it gets shut down yet scam ads run all day long
I do not like Banks and I do not like Big Tech Companies. I think that the Banks are right to want to make Big Tech pay up when people are scammed online but I also think that the Banks have a similar obligation. It might actually be a better solution: to make the Banks and Big Tech Jointly and Severally Liable for Online Fraud. Online Fraud requires two things to happen: fraud facilitating content and fraud facilitating transactions. One is provided by Big Tech and the other by Big Money.
How about just educating people not to fall for indian voices on the phone telling them in order to get a refund they need to give them remote access to their online banking and then buy gift cards.
Given the amount of scam companies advertising forex trading and real estate courses on Facebook and YouTube. I don’t fully disagree.