“We were expecting a good product, but this is what they sent us.”
Ayachock is far from the only victim as social media becomes a breeding ground for everything from bogus cryptocurrency ads, to “romance” scams and hoaxes aimed at extracting people’s personal data. “Scammers follow the headlines and there isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t hear about how to conserve energy, rising gas and utility prices, and the need for renewable energy,” Amy Nofziger, director of fraud victim support at the US-based nonprofit AARP, told AFP.
Critics, including Patricia Schouker, a fellow at the Colorado-based Payne Institute, say algorithms that prioritize content based on preferences have let scam ads prey on users most likely to engage.A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s owner, said it views the “threat of scams seriously” and had taken action including disabling many of the ad accounts responsible for fraud reported by AFP’s fact-checkers.
Last October, AFP debunked Facebook posts claiming free electric bikes were on offer in Indonesia after the government raised fuel prices. Meta said it had disabled pages and profiles linked to the scam.