This should be interesting...

Andrew Forrest launches criminal case against Facebook over crypto scams

SMH By Nick Bonyhady
February 3, 2022

Mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest has launched a criminal case against the social media giant Facebook, alleging it breached anti-money laundering laws by failing to stop criminals using fake advertisements featuring celebrities, including himself, to scam Australians.

Dr Forrest, the billionaire chairman of iron ore giant Fortescue Metals, publicly appealed to Facebook founder and boss Mark Zuckerberg in 2019 to stop the ads that promoted cryptocurrency scams. Facebook recently adopted the name Meta for its corporate parent.

While scam ads that promise users a chance to get rich quick with crypto-assets such as Bitcoin are already banned on Facebook, they have long proliferated on the platform.

A spokesman for Meta declined to comment on Dr Forrest’s legal action but emphasised that scam ads were banned on Facebook. “We take a multifaceted approach to stop these ads, we work not just to detect and reject the ads themselves but also block advertisers from our services and, in some cases, take court action to enforce our policies,” the spokesman said. “We’re committed to keeping these people off our platform.”

Dr Forrest’s lawsuit, which was seen in summary form by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, claims that Facebook failed to have proper systems or a culture to prevent its site being used to perpetrate the scams that defrauded web users.

It is the first time Facebook has faced a criminal charge anywhere in the world, Dr Forrest’s camp believe, and his case uses a rarely-deployed provision in federal law that permits private citizens to bring criminal actions with the assent of the Attorney-General.

“This action is being taken on behalf of those everyday Australians – mums and dads, grans and grandads – who work all their lives to gather their savings and to ensure those savings aren’t swindled away by scammers,” Dr Forrest said in a statement. “I’m acting here for Australians, but this is happening all over the world.”

In addition to three charges against Facebook in Australia, which will have an initial hearing in the WA Magistrates Court on March 28, Dr Forrest has filed a separate civil lawsuit in California.

“I want social media companies to use much more of their vast resources and billions of dollars in annual revenue to protect vulnerable people – the people who are targeted and fall victim to these horrible scams with their hard-earned savings,” he said.

Facebook is under increasing pressure from governments and activists of all political persuasions in Australia and abroad, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently branding social media a “coward’s palace” where people feel free to troll and harass with impunity. Earlier this week the company abandoned plans to launch its own cryptocurrency, which would have been run by an organisation called the Diem Association backed also by other partners.
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/andre ... 59tcg.html

Hard for a Kiwi to say... but Australia is leading the charge against FB et al, as well as against China.
They are in the process to staring them down on a number of fronts, not just this private action. No sign of backing down yet.

This is a private action, but rest assured, Twiggy has the brains, the brawn, the backing and the billions to pick any fight he wants.

He’s still a pauper in comparison

violet wrote: ↑Thu Feb 03, 2022 8:27 am He’s still a pauper in comparison

Did they ban you from the other forum?

Haha. Teammate!

“What’s 2 + 2?”
“4 o’clock”
“Get downstairs!”

As much as I hate FB, even more so the fact that having a FB account can make your life in Cambodia so much easier, (finding hard to find products, keeping in touch with those dumb enough back home to be unwilling to change to an alternative platform etc) it is a double edged sword and people should be careful what they wish for when it comes to any significant changes to the way it operates.

The main issue is that it is defined as a platform and not a publisher. If it were legally defined as a publisher, it would be solely responsible for what gets posted on there, and as such, would be forced to vet, verify and approve every comment, picture, opinion and post. This would soon lead to accusations of restrictions of free speech, especially when one comment that appears to be supportive of one political leaning gets through while another that supports a different opinion does not.

The EU tried to do something similar with YouTube not so long ago. They wanted to make YouTube much more accountable for what got posted on its site, threatening huge fines for Alphabet, the parent company, for any violations. This enraged content creators who, if anyone cares to remember, mentioned it at every opportunity in their videos and encouraged especially those living in the EU to lobby those responsible for trying to push these laws through.

I'm not sure what happened in the end to be honest. I think the laws were passed but they were incredibly watered down one they realised how unfeasible they'd be.

Everyone would agree that FB has become far too powerful and has shown itself time and time again to be above the national laws that of the countries that it operates in - remember the news blackout it imposed on Australia the last time it wanted to spit it's dummy out of its pram?

However, the answer is not quite as straight forward as would seem, superficially. Do we want a free and open internet where people have the liberty and freedom to post whatever they want, warts and all, or do we want to make these companies more responsible for what gets published, where they are constantly at risk of criminal charges? Who is ultimately responsible for what get's published online? The author of the post or the publisher? And who decides what's acceptable and what's not?

I'm not in any way supporting Facebook whatsoever. I'm just saying it's a very deep rabbit hole once you start to climb down it.

Good onya Twiggy! This could open the flood gates.
Fb needs to lift its game, it has gone all gung ho putting accounts in Fb gaol for posts amongst friends, yet lets these scam ads run free. I kept getting Bunnings ads on my feed, selling Tv's for $3, so I hid them, they just kept coming back under a different heading. Gave up!