The main way in which your average social media platform would end up earning a reasonable amount of revenue is through selling ad space in their apps and websites. While it is perfectly reasonable for them to end up doing so, it should be noted that a lot of the ads that are featured on such platforms are often for scams, and it doesn’t seem like these platforms are doing all that much to stop these scams from being advertised in the first place.
Online fraud has become a truly massive problem all around the world, and British lawmakers have actually proposed a relatively unique solution for it for the most part. This solution would essentially involve social media platforms having to reimburse users that fell for scams that had been advertised on the aforementioned platforms. The solution was initially proposed by Mel Stride who currently chairs the Treasury committee, and it is something that has perked up a lot of ears in British government.
Banks are already liable to pay back fraud victims as long as said victims can prove that they did enough to protect themselves, so it makes a lot of sense that this type of legislation would be proposed for social media as well. According to stride, social media sites are profiting off of these scams as well since they receive advertising revenue for the purposes of allowing them on the site to begin with, and that is the sort of thing that they should most definitely be penalized for in order to discontinue the prevalence of such ads.
There has already been legislation put in place to force Facebook and other platforms to make sure that a financial service that they are advertising for has been registered with various regulatory authorities, but there is no current timeline that these platforms are going to be required to follow. Hence, stricter action might need to be taken. Suffice it to say that this type of legislation is likely going to be something that social media companies would push back against, but many would agree that if it is passed it would be a step in the right direction.
H/T: Reuters.
Read next: Here's how consumers pressurized brands through cancel culture
Online fraud has become a truly massive problem all around the world, and British lawmakers have actually proposed a relatively unique solution for it for the most part. This solution would essentially involve social media platforms having to reimburse users that fell for scams that had been advertised on the aforementioned platforms. The solution was initially proposed by Mel Stride who currently chairs the Treasury committee, and it is something that has perked up a lot of ears in British government.
Banks are already liable to pay back fraud victims as long as said victims can prove that they did enough to protect themselves, so it makes a lot of sense that this type of legislation would be proposed for social media as well. According to stride, social media sites are profiting off of these scams as well since they receive advertising revenue for the purposes of allowing them on the site to begin with, and that is the sort of thing that they should most definitely be penalized for in order to discontinue the prevalence of such ads.
There has already been legislation put in place to force Facebook and other platforms to make sure that a financial service that they are advertising for has been registered with various regulatory authorities, but there is no current timeline that these platforms are going to be required to follow. Hence, stricter action might need to be taken. Suffice it to say that this type of legislation is likely going to be something that social media companies would push back against, but many would agree that if it is passed it would be a step in the right direction.
Read next: Here's how consumers pressurized brands through cancel culture