There is a deluge of financial scams across all Meta platforms but also Twitter. A centralized platform have all the right to moderate content, but they must also be liable for obvious scams.
Either you are an open messenger like the postal service or an ISP. Or you own the platform. You cannot have it both ways.
I never understood why they all get away with doing nothing. Meta's own investigation showed 10%+ of all revenue is from outright scams, and all they do is charge the scammers a premium.
I have reported scams myself and have been completely stonewalled just like everyone else. They obviously earn a lot of money by looking the other way. That can't possibly be legal in any jurisdiction. Let's hope the Swedish justice system takes this seriously and sets an example for others.
>Either you are an open messenger like the postal service [...]
In what way is the postal service "open"? Sure, anyone can send a letter, but anyone can also create a facebook messenger account. If you want to do business with it (eg. sending bulk mail or delivering international mail), you still need to enter into a commercial agreement.
It's open in the sense that anyone can use it. Without restriction. And there's no way to be banned from it. Since anyone can just drop off an anonymous letter in the post. You don't have to enter a service agreement. Just dump you satchel of letters with stamps on them, in the nearest mail box.
It's not just practically open. It's legally open; at least here in Canada, the federal postal service has a legal obligation, arising from the constitutional right to free speech, to carry any mail that has legal content, regardless of how Canada Post or its employees might feel about it. They're obligated to take those commercial service agreements regardless of content. (This has been a point of contention sometimes with graphic anti-abortion flyers delivered as ad-mail.)
The main means to deal with someone abusing the postal system is the criminal law and court orders.
>It's open in the sense that anyone can use it. Without restriction. And there's no way to be banned from it. Since anyone can just drop off an anonymous letter in the post. You don't have to enter a service agreement. Just dump you satchel of letters with stamps on them, in the nearest mail box.
1. So this sounds like the section 230 debate all over again? eg. "Facebook can ban people from facebook messenger, so if they're not banning scammers they should be on the hook for it"?
2. What about ISPs? The internet might be open, but ISPs certainly aren't. People get banned for AUP violations or alleged copyright infringement all the time. If ISPs reserve the right to ban users for various ToS violations, should they be on the hook of scammers turned out to be using their connection?
My (swedish) grandfather keeps falling for these Meta scams. Scrolling through his feed is insane and disgusting. So many ads that mimick OS alerts saying storage is low, insane amounts of AI crap and fake products. I 100% agree with this. Try scrolling through your grandparents’ Instagram or Facebook and see for yourself. It’s obviously _very_ easy for Meta to filter out these scams, but they choose not to.
Honestly? Just delete his account and say he must have clicked some scam link. Sure its manipulative, but at this point what can you actually do to protect them?
Fraud is a crime. When a crime is committed citizens inform the police to investigate.
If someone punches you in the street or steals your wallet will you file a lawsuit or call the police? Maybe in America is different, but the normal thing to do is to go to the police. Fraud is not different, the police will investigate.
> If someone punches you in the street or steals your wallet will you file a lawsuit or call the police?
In the USA, probably both. You (or your insurance company) might sue them to recover your financial losses, the police would investigate the crime of assault and/or robbery and pass any evidence along to the prosecutor.
Of course if they have no money or other assets, suing them is a bit pointless.
In the US, you might wait for criminal action if it was progressing to initiate civil action because (1) a criminal conviction can be used as evidence (and it is asymmetrical, because an actual doesn't have the same weight), and (2) criminal process can result in a restitution order which makes civil action unnecessary (and in some jurisdictions may allow recovery from a dedicated fund for victims of crime even if no recovery is possible from the perpetrator, and in that sense may be better than winning a civil action), and (3) criminal prosecution doesn't cost the victim money, civil prosecution generally does.
It means the legal system is investigating the matter and the public prosecutor may or may not decide to file charges. The publishers might have filed a lawsuit themselves, but that is very expensive so they hope the legal system will do it for them. My guess is that the investigation will be closed because I don't think Swedish authorities think they have jurisdiction over Facebook. Unless Meta happens to have offices in Sweden, which I don't think they have. In general they can only prosecute crimes committed in Sweden or committed by Swedes.
The investigation maybe will be closed, but not for that reason. Fraudulent ads that are paid for and then shown on Swedish news sites makes money change hands in Sweden. Even though the fraudsters are abroad, Meta makes business with the media in Sweden that displays the ads. Jurisdiction will not be a problem
In Sweden, you can charge someone/something two ways.
Either you and a company has a disagreement and you sue one or the other and it goes to court.
But in this case, ”Utgivarna” which are basically a company/org that represents a lot of media outlets, basically went to the police instead and said ”hey, we think that meta is breaking the Swedish law”.
What the police does is that they then investigate and then finds out who is responsible for the company (Mr. Zuck) and then eventually will indict him. Since its Meta that is breaking the law and The Zuck is the one in charge of Meta.
That makes a lot more sense than the stupid approach like America (and I’m sure other countries too) where they consider the company a person and thus all that actually happens is a fine, that almost always amounts to several orders of magnitude less than the company made for their knowingly wrongdoing
I'm pretty sure the publishers are alleging that a crime has been committed. In that case, private parties can't open a suit (at least if Swedish criminal law is at all similar to Norwegian law), so this asks the police to open a criminal investigation into the matter. What happens next in the Norwegian system at least is that the police will conduct their investigation, and at some point when the police consider their investigations complete the prosecutor's office will decide what to do next. Next steps can be concluding that no crime has occured, to ask the police to investigate further, that a crime has been committed but the evidence are insufficient for a trial, or that someone should be tried.
Surely you can still sue separately through the civil process even if you choose to not pursue criminal charges?
If someone causes you damage through non-criminal negligence, surely you can sue them?
The idea that you couldn’t bring a civil suit over possibly criminal conduct seems unworkable. It’s possible that my neighbour was drunk when he crashed into my parked car late at night, but surely that can’t preclude me from seeking compensation through civilian courts.
It’s possible, but tremendously unlikely that Facebook is committing fraud here. In Sweden you have to prove intent to defraud, which is a tremendously high bar.
Which, again, makes the idea that you couldn’t bring a civil suit seem ever more bizarre. How could you possibly know if Facebook has committed fraud here? You presumably can’t read Zuckerbergs toughts.
In that particular example (drunk neighbour damaging your property with reckless driving) is really — in most of Europe, I would guess as Serbian laws are largely copied over from different EU country laws — handled by the insurance.
Basically, insurance against damage to others is obligatory for anyone to get the car registered and on the road.
If someone drives an unregistered, uninsured vehicle, a consortium of all insurance companies pay for the damage, and sue the perpetrator in a civil case.
In general, you can argue your level of damage with the insurance company, and can even take them to court.
In Serbia, drunk driving actually precludes the liability of the insurance company too, but they still need to pay out the damages first, and bring a civil case against the driver to get compensated. For that, they need a criminal conviction.
(I've had the unfortune to be hit by a drunk driver, luckily no other harm than to the property as both cars have been totalled, and his insurance argued a lower value for my almost new car)
I am guessing here the "intent" can also be "aware of it but did not invest enough to curb it while it is profiting off it".
Yeah, I know how car insurance works and just figured it’d be overly verbose to specify some scenario where the neighbour was driving some uninsured vehicle like a tractor and the incident happened outside of public roads.
I do think I still managed to make my point though, preventing civil lawsuits arising from possibly criminal behaviour is unrealistic. That would make it extremely difficult for individuals to seek compensation for almost any damage they might suffer, they’d have to first wait for months or years before the police gets back to them.
>I am guessing here the "intent" can also be "aware of it but did not invest enough to curb it while it is profiting off it".
Fraud by negligence is a fairly exotic concept and to my understanding usually specifically relies on laws regarding negligent misrepresentation. I’d be surprised if that would work in Sweden.
>For liability for fraud to come into question, the prosecutor has to be
able to prove that the crime is deliberate. This means that the criminal
act has been committed consciously or intentionally. Liability for fraud
is conditional on the objective requisites being covered by the perpetrator’s intent. It is not possible to judge a person to be liable for fraud because someone has been paid too much compensation as a result of negligence, or because the person did not know about certain obligations in
conjunction with the compensation. Carelessness is thus not sufficient.
It must be possible to prove that the perpetrator has committed the act
intentionally. This intent must cover all elements of the criminal act.
The great problem with fraud crime is to prove the intent. The actual
circumstances surrounding what really occurred are often a lesser pro-
blem. The assessment of the intent is complicated by the fact that the
rules concerning social insurance can be difficult to understand.
The difficulty in proving intent has meant that several assessors have
considered that the fraud regulations do not work quite as they should.
Proposals have therefore been made that negligence should be sufficient
for judging that a person has misled the Social Insurance Agency or
some other payment-issuer within the compensation and benefit systems
(Örnemark Hansen, 1995). This criticism against the intention require-
ment has led to the new Benefit Crime Act (2007:612).
The media commpanies that have filed the report are not the victims of the fraud and would not have a case to sue. And the defrauded people don't have the means. The media companies can however report a committed crime, and their high profile brings it more attention
There is a deluge of financial scams across all Meta platforms but also Twitter. A centralized platform have all the right to moderate content, but they must also be liable for obvious scams.
Either you are an open messenger like the postal service or an ISP. Or you own the platform. You cannot have it both ways.
I never understood why they all get away with doing nothing. Meta's own investigation showed 10%+ of all revenue is from outright scams, and all they do is charge the scammers a premium.
I have reported scams myself and have been completely stonewalled just like everyone else. They obviously earn a lot of money by looking the other way. That can't possibly be legal in any jurisdiction. Let's hope the Swedish justice system takes this seriously and sets an example for others.
>Either you are an open messenger like the postal service [...]
In what way is the postal service "open"? Sure, anyone can send a letter, but anyone can also create a facebook messenger account. If you want to do business with it (eg. sending bulk mail or delivering international mail), you still need to enter into a commercial agreement.
It's open in the sense that anyone can use it. Without restriction. And there's no way to be banned from it. Since anyone can just drop off an anonymous letter in the post. You don't have to enter a service agreement. Just dump you satchel of letters with stamps on them, in the nearest mail box.
It's not just practically open. It's legally open; at least here in Canada, the federal postal service has a legal obligation, arising from the constitutional right to free speech, to carry any mail that has legal content, regardless of how Canada Post or its employees might feel about it. They're obligated to take those commercial service agreements regardless of content. (This has been a point of contention sometimes with graphic anti-abortion flyers delivered as ad-mail.)
The main means to deal with someone abusing the postal system is the criminal law and court orders.
>It's open in the sense that anyone can use it. Without restriction. And there's no way to be banned from it. Since anyone can just drop off an anonymous letter in the post. You don't have to enter a service agreement. Just dump you satchel of letters with stamps on them, in the nearest mail box.
1. So this sounds like the section 230 debate all over again? eg. "Facebook can ban people from facebook messenger, so if they're not banning scammers they should be on the hook for it"?
2. What about ISPs? The internet might be open, but ISPs certainly aren't. People get banned for AUP violations or alleged copyright infringement all the time. If ISPs reserve the right to ban users for various ToS violations, should they be on the hook of scammers turned out to be using their connection?
Thinking about it I think I have received one scambait paper mail ever. Dunno why not more. Maybe the stamp makes it not profitable.
It's because mail fraud carries significant penalties, and the involvement of physical objects makes activity much more traceable.
This should be just the begging as Social Media companies will not be able to just declare themselves over the law on fraud claims.
Related:
- "Social media giants liable for financial scams under new EU law " https://www.politico.eu/article/social-media-giants-meta-tik...
- "Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show" https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...
Making these ad companies liable for the scams they allow (even take a premium for running them) seems like the only way forward.
Related:
Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45834840
My (swedish) grandfather keeps falling for these Meta scams. Scrolling through his feed is insane and disgusting. So many ads that mimick OS alerts saying storage is low, insane amounts of AI crap and fake products. I 100% agree with this. Try scrolling through your grandparents’ Instagram or Facebook and see for yourself. It’s obviously _very_ easy for Meta to filter out these scams, but they choose not to.
So he was scammed, I'm assuming he knows that he was, but he keeps falling for them?
What type of scams are these and why hasn't he become insanely paranoid after the first or second time?
Honestly? Just delete his account and say he must have clicked some scam link. Sure its manipulative, but at this point what can you actually do to protect them?
install adblocker?
I am not familiar with the legal system in Sweden, but it seems odd that it would be a police report instead of a lawsuit.
Fraud is a crime. When a crime is committed citizens inform the police to investigate.
If someone punches you in the street or steals your wallet will you file a lawsuit or call the police? Maybe in America is different, but the normal thing to do is to go to the police. Fraud is not different, the police will investigate.
> If someone punches you in the street or steals your wallet will you file a lawsuit or call the police?
In the USA, probably both. You (or your insurance company) might sue them to recover your financial losses, the police would investigate the crime of assault and/or robbery and pass any evidence along to the prosecutor.
Of course if they have no money or other assets, suing them is a bit pointless.
In the US, you might wait for criminal action if it was progressing to initiate civil action because (1) a criminal conviction can be used as evidence (and it is asymmetrical, because an actual doesn't have the same weight), and (2) criminal process can result in a restitution order which makes civil action unnecessary (and in some jurisdictions may allow recovery from a dedicated fund for victims of crime even if no recovery is possible from the perpetrator, and in that sense may be better than winning a civil action), and (3) criminal prosecution doesn't cost the victim money, civil prosecution generally does.
Yeah point 3 is why you generally don’t bother with civil claims unless they actually have the means to pay.
In the US you can do both (and often that's what happens - parallel criminal and civil cases)
US legal system is kinda weird
Fraud is usually a crime and therefore a matter for the police, even in the US.
It means the legal system is investigating the matter and the public prosecutor may or may not decide to file charges. The publishers might have filed a lawsuit themselves, but that is very expensive so they hope the legal system will do it for them. My guess is that the investigation will be closed because I don't think Swedish authorities think they have jurisdiction over Facebook. Unless Meta happens to have offices in Sweden, which I don't think they have. In general they can only prosecute crimes committed in Sweden or committed by Swedes.
The investigation maybe will be closed, but not for that reason. Fraudulent ads that are paid for and then shown on Swedish news sites makes money change hands in Sweden. Even though the fraudsters are abroad, Meta makes business with the media in Sweden that displays the ads. Jurisdiction will not be a problem
> Unless Meta happens to have offices in Sweden, which I don't think they have
Meta operates one of their european datacenters out of Luleå in Sweden.
I know nothing about Swedish law, but in the US, there can be both civil and criminal fraud. They might be planning to file a lawsuit also.
I think fraud is always a crime? Something like breach of contract would be a civil matter, as that’s probably not fraud just a disagreement.
Interesting that he's named personally. Can any Swedish person explain whether this is the normal process?
In Sweden, you can charge someone/something two ways.
Either you and a company has a disagreement and you sue one or the other and it goes to court.
But in this case, ”Utgivarna” which are basically a company/org that represents a lot of media outlets, basically went to the police instead and said ”hey, we think that meta is breaking the Swedish law”.
What the police does is that they then investigate and then finds out who is responsible for the company (Mr. Zuck) and then eventually will indict him. Since its Meta that is breaking the law and The Zuck is the one in charge of Meta.
That makes a lot more sense than the stupid approach like America (and I’m sure other countries too) where they consider the company a person and thus all that actually happens is a fine, that almost always amounts to several orders of magnitude less than the company made for their knowingly wrongdoing
Isn't that ultimately there's people responsible for a company's actions the reason why Mr Burns has a canary that actually owns his company?
https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Canary_M._Burns
I don’t think there’s a story here, it’s a police report, not even a lawsuit.
There’s no skin in the game required when filing a police report.
I'm pretty sure the publishers are alleging that a crime has been committed. In that case, private parties can't open a suit (at least if Swedish criminal law is at all similar to Norwegian law), so this asks the police to open a criminal investigation into the matter. What happens next in the Norwegian system at least is that the police will conduct their investigation, and at some point when the police consider their investigations complete the prosecutor's office will decide what to do next. Next steps can be concluding that no crime has occured, to ask the police to investigate further, that a crime has been committed but the evidence are insufficient for a trial, or that someone should be tried.
Surely you can still sue separately through the civil process even if you choose to not pursue criminal charges?
If someone causes you damage through non-criminal negligence, surely you can sue them?
The idea that you couldn’t bring a civil suit over possibly criminal conduct seems unworkable. It’s possible that my neighbour was drunk when he crashed into my parked car late at night, but surely that can’t preclude me from seeking compensation through civilian courts.
It’s possible, but tremendously unlikely that Facebook is committing fraud here. In Sweden you have to prove intent to defraud, which is a tremendously high bar.
Which, again, makes the idea that you couldn’t bring a civil suit seem ever more bizarre. How could you possibly know if Facebook has committed fraud here? You presumably can’t read Zuckerbergs toughts.
In that particular example (drunk neighbour damaging your property with reckless driving) is really — in most of Europe, I would guess as Serbian laws are largely copied over from different EU country laws — handled by the insurance.
Basically, insurance against damage to others is obligatory for anyone to get the car registered and on the road.
If someone drives an unregistered, uninsured vehicle, a consortium of all insurance companies pay for the damage, and sue the perpetrator in a civil case.
In general, you can argue your level of damage with the insurance company, and can even take them to court.
In Serbia, drunk driving actually precludes the liability of the insurance company too, but they still need to pay out the damages first, and bring a civil case against the driver to get compensated. For that, they need a criminal conviction.
(I've had the unfortune to be hit by a drunk driver, luckily no other harm than to the property as both cars have been totalled, and his insurance argued a lower value for my almost new car)
I am guessing here the "intent" can also be "aware of it but did not invest enough to curb it while it is profiting off it".
Yeah, I know how car insurance works and just figured it’d be overly verbose to specify some scenario where the neighbour was driving some uninsured vehicle like a tractor and the incident happened outside of public roads.
I do think I still managed to make my point though, preventing civil lawsuits arising from possibly criminal behaviour is unrealistic. That would make it extremely difficult for individuals to seek compensation for almost any damage they might suffer, they’d have to first wait for months or years before the police gets back to them.
>I am guessing here the "intent" can also be "aware of it but did not invest enough to curb it while it is profiting off it".
Fraud by negligence is a fairly exotic concept and to my understanding usually specifically relies on laws regarding negligent misrepresentation. I’d be surprised if that would work in Sweden.
I did find this government report which is related even if it discusses a slightly different kind of fraud https://bra.se/download/18.3433db6019301deaa6b8132/173142652...
>For liability for fraud to come into question, the prosecutor has to be able to prove that the crime is deliberate. This means that the criminal act has been committed consciously or intentionally. Liability for fraud is conditional on the objective requisites being covered by the perpetrator’s intent. It is not possible to judge a person to be liable for fraud because someone has been paid too much compensation as a result of negligence, or because the person did not know about certain obligations in conjunction with the compensation. Carelessness is thus not sufficient. It must be possible to prove that the perpetrator has committed the act intentionally. This intent must cover all elements of the criminal act. The great problem with fraud crime is to prove the intent. The actual circumstances surrounding what really occurred are often a lesser pro- blem. The assessment of the intent is complicated by the fact that the rules concerning social insurance can be difficult to understand. The difficulty in proving intent has meant that several assessors have considered that the fraud regulations do not work quite as they should. Proposals have therefore been made that negligence should be sufficient for judging that a person has misled the Social Insurance Agency or some other payment-issuer within the compensation and benefit systems (Örnemark Hansen, 1995). This criticism against the intention require- ment has led to the new Benefit Crime Act (2007:612).
It's not going to be a lawsuit. You don't sue companies for breaking the law in Sweden. It's going to be a criminal case if police deem so.
The media commpanies that have filed the report are not the victims of the fraud and would not have a case to sue. And the defrauded people don't have the means. The media companies can however report a committed crime, and their high profile brings it more attention
Lord Zuckerberg is above the law everywhere in the world! 100% guarantee nothing will come of this.
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