Thailand’s Consumers Council (TCC) has become the latest organisation to pile the pressure on Meta over scam ads appearing on its platform.
It marks a continued global trend of bodies putting pressure on the social media giant to ensure that its house is clean and it doesn’t allow illicit or harmful content, whether that be black market gambling or fraudulent activity.
As reported by The Nation, the TCC has filed a lawsuit against Meta, accusing the company of allowing scam advertisements and online fraud to spread unchecked.
The TCC said that Facebook continues to carry large numbers of scam adverts, including gambling adverts, and that Facebook’s algorithm is helping scammers to target specific groups, leading to significant financial losses.
According to the body, the lawsuit seeks to hold Meta accountable for the adverts, as well as push for greater consumer protections, including proactive advertising screening and the creation of a victim compensation mechanism.
Meta has continued to be dogged by accusations that it is failing to adequately take action against fraudulent advertisements across its platforms.
An investigation by Reuters released in November revealed that the company’s own estimates suggest that it generated 10% of its overall annual revenue in 2024, around $16bn, from running ads for scams and banned goods.
Banking sector pressure in the UK
Earlier this week, Lloyds Bank’s Head of Fraud also took aim at the social impact of the platform, warning that two-thirds of fraud reports to the banking giant were targeted towards users of Meta.
As a result, the legal momentum against Meta has continued to accelerate, with Richardson Hartley Law and Humphries Kerstetter announcing that they are forming a group legal claim in the UK for scam victims who lost money after seeing a fraudulent advert on Facebook or Instagram.
Looking more specifically at gambling, regulators have also namechecked Meta as a major source of illegal advertising as concerns continue to rise over the increasing visibility of the black market.
At the beginning of the year, the Gambling Commission’s Executive Director, Tim Miller, accused the tech giant of being happy to turn a blind eye to illegal advertising to ‘continue taking money from criminals and scammers’.
Kansspelautoriteit’s Director of Licensing and Supervision, Ella Seijsener, also slammed the likes of Meta and TikTok for doing ‘not nearly enough’ to counter the surge of illegal advertising, as she revealed that the Dutch regulator was forced to send 26,00 reports to Meta over illegal advertising in May.
Speaking to the Sunday Times following the reports from Lloyds Bank, a Meta spokesperson warned that scammers are determined criminals tapping into ‘increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection on our platforms’.
The company added: “We fight scams on and off our platforms because they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that rely on our services.”
iGaming Expert Analysis: Pressure is mounting on Meta, with it even being thrust at the centre of a political tussle in the UK as Prime Minister Keir Starmer looks to prohibit social media for those under 16, prompting a response from Donald Trump, essentially fighting the corner of social platforms.
The scale of the PR battle facing social media platforms right now is quite significant, and the latest intervention from the TCC will only serve to complicate this uphill battle, particularly in Thailand, where it has been reported that around 90% of social media users are on Facebook.
