Recent news reports have revealed that Meta (which owns Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram) has knowingly made large profits from scam ads. See, for example, this article.
In this blog post I will describe how I tested a scam ad, and what happened when I reported it to Facebook.
A couple of years ago Facebook started showing me ads that looked "too good to be true". They claimed to be from well-known chain stores, like Makro or TakeALot, and advertised excess, damaged, or outdated stock at very low prices -- laptop computers or cell phones were often advertised for R35.00, or somewhere between R35.00 and R39.00.
One day I decided to check one that advertised Apple iPhones for R35.00. They were so cheap because the packaging had been damaged, or some such story. I hovered my cursor over the link, and the URL was totally different from the name of the chain store selling them. I nevertheless went on to the site. And they said that this Apple iPhone for R35.00 would be delivered to my home within 2 days. I just needed to answer some questions. I answered some questions, gave my card details, and got an acknowledgement of payment. It then went on to a different site, dealing with something totally different, and at the end a message flashed across the screen saying "Thank you for subscribing to..." and was gone before I could see what it was thanking me for subscribing to.
I immediately called the bank and cancelled my card.
Later the same day the bank phoned me, and said they had received by request for cancellation, but two requests for payment had come in since then -- one for R35.00, and the other for R650.00. Did I want the bank to pay them?
I said they should pay the R35.00, but not the other one. I had reckoned on losing R35.00 if the ad was a scam, but if I cancelled the payment I would never know, so I let it stand. And no iPhone ever was delivered to me, so I now know for certain it was a scam. And if I had not cancelled my card when I did, they would probably have taken the R650.00 every month as well.
But since I had responded to one such ad, Facebook began showing me a lot more. I would hover my cursor over them, note that the URL never corresponded with the ostensible advertiser, and would then report it as a scam. Sometimes Facebook would acknowledge by email that I had reported it, but would never say what action they had taken, except in a few cases where they responded by saying that they had investigated my complaint and found that the ad I had complained of "does not contravene our community standards".
I also once tried advertising on Facebook. I write children's books, and wanted to make them known to more potential readers. Setting up the ads was not easy, because the instructions were vague. I tried to specify the kind of people who would be interested in such books, but Facebook apparently showed them to a bunch of random people. They told me who had "liked" them, but none had shown any interest in reading them, and the demographic data showed that the people who had "liked" them would not be very likely to want to read them.
So the lesson I draw from this is twofold:
1. Don't buy stuff advertised on Facebook & other Meta platforms
2. Don't advertise stuff on Facebook and other Meta platforms
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