The Thai Ministry of Digital Economy and Society has asked Facebook to remove crypto scams and ad fraud on its platform. If Facebook fails to comply, the Thai government said it would seek a court-approved shutdown of the social media platform.
Many online ads are shown to us because the information is suited to our needs. However, on some social media platforms, more often than not, the ads are neither randomly displayed nor coincidentally cater to our needs. They are shown to us due to artificial intelligence algorithms. Ad fraud is an example of this. Algorithms must be employed to fight against scams.
According to the US, the UK and Australia, ad fraud on social media has plagued many countries. In Europe and the US, these ads are crypto scams, whereas in Taiwan, they feature fake endorsements by celebrities due to the post-pandemic stock market boom. The names of Hsieh Chin-ho (謝金河), chairman of the Chinese-language Wealth Invest Weekly and Wealth magazines, TV host Daisy Chiu (邱沁宜) and independent investor Lee Chin-tu (李金土) have all been appropriated by scammers to commit fraud.
To curb these schemes, the Executive Yuan amended the Securities Investment Trust and Consulting Act (證券投資信託及顧問法) requiring a real-name registration system to regulate online investment ads. Social media platforms and Internet access service providers are also required to institute a mechanism through which ads can be examined beforehand and taken down afterward.
However, in practice, Internet platforms take a passive approach to complying with regulations, only removing fraudulent ads when they are notified by the police. As a result, the police have to work much harder to report online frauds. At the same time, scammers are constantly adjusting their tactics and developing new schemes to lure the public. They often utilize a hunger marketing strategy to attract and manipulate targets, demanding that they sign up as a VIP member within 24 hours. They also divide a long ad into 16 to 30 clips and display them extensively. The purpose is to entice as many people as possible to join their Line group, having them tempted little by little, and eventually swindling them.
Given that social media companies cannot regulate online scams and ad fraud in an effective way, the problem is left to the police to deal with. However, scammers have put up so many layers of smoke screen, it is hard for police to catch them. No wonder the Thai government took a harder approach and asked the court to shut down Facebook.
Adopting the four following measures could help get rid of investment fraud on social media platforms:
First, rather than simply waiting for a notification from the police, social media companies should take the initiative to uncover scams.
Second, on all social media platforms, sponsors and publishers of investment ads must be clearly identified and displayed.
Third, companies must cooperate with the police to track down those who post fraudulent investment ads.
Lastly, those who have been scammed and lost money should organize themselves and collectively claim compensation from the social media companies.
Transnational fraud rings have invested massively in spreading ad fraud. They have established various fake groups on social media platforms to influence people’s everyday lives. Fighting these scammers requires concrete strategies to regulate and govern social media.
Lin Shu-li is a doctoral student at Central Police University.
Translated by Emma Liu
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Many local news media last week reported that COVID-19 is back, citing doctors’ observations and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics. The CDC said that cases would peak this month and urged people to take preventive measures. Although COVID-19 has never been eliminated, it has become more manageable, and restrictions were dropped, enabling people to return to their normal way of life due to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. In Taiwan, mandatory reporting of confirmed cases and home isolation ended in March last year, while the mask mandate at hospitals and healthcare facilities stopped in May. However, the CDC last week said the number