BIZ BUZZ: Why is Facebook allowing scam promos?

Cyberscammers using deepfake videos of Elon Musk, the richest person on the planet, have defrauded Americans of billions of dollars, according to US media reports.

Here in the Philippines, among the cyberscammers’ favorite big-time “endorsers,” especially those targeting stock market newbies, is business tycoon Teresita Sy-Coson of the SM group.

Her name and image are unscrupulously being used over and over again for fraudulent stock picking and market seminars. Once one fraudulent social media account is taken down, another appears.

Scammers likewise exploit the respective logos of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) and Ateneo de Manila University Graduate School of Business and impersonate personalities like PSE president Ramon Monzon and popular stock market strategist April Lee-Tan in an attempt to fool wannabe investors.

But why is Facebook indiscriminately accepting ads (They appear as sponsored posts) that promote scams in the first place? Without any strict vetting process for paid promotions, isn’t the platform unwittingly abetting the scammers … and earning from it?

We hear that top officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are now looking into the matter and may soon summon not just the local representatives of social media giants but also key local telcos.

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“After requiring SIM registration, there are still a lot of scams because Facebook has access to the network of telecom operators,” a high-ranking SEC official told Biz Buzz.

Gone are the days when telcos think that they are only regulated by the National Telecommunications Commission; at the end of the day, they are still corporations that are registered at the SEC, the official pointed out.

But social media platforms also have to do their share in preventing the proliferation of fraudsters.