By Leah Montebello
The online safety bill returned to parliament yesterday after five months in limbo and a tide of rallying cries from campaigners.
The bill aims to better regulate big tech firms, threatening hefty fines for non-compliance, covering illegal and harmful content, as well as fraudulent advertising.
Although consumer group Which? praised the inclusion of online scam ads in the bill, it said any further delays to the bill becoming law would put consumers at immense risk.
In new research published today, Which?, alongside charity Demos Consulting, designed algorithms to uncover risky ads. It found Meta owned sites Facebook and Instagram, continue to show potentially fraudulent investment ads, including property and cryptocurrency paid-for scam advertising.
Calling the findings extremely worrying, Which? Director of Policy and Advocacy Rocio Concha said: “If a consumer group and another charity can design algorithms and uncover these adverts then tech giants should be able to create effective systems to do the same job on a bigger scale.”
The report echoes consumer rights campaigner Martin Lewis’ comments last week during a Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) sub-committee, where he discussed his legal battle with Facebook after over 1,000 scam ad abusing his name and image appeared on the site.
He settled out of court in 2019, with the tech giant, now called Meta, agreeing to donate £3m to an anti-scam charity and launch a new scam ads reporting button.
Whilst the MoneySavingExpert chief said the case was a success, Lewis told the committee that the government has “abrogated its responsibility” in this area of policy over the last five years.
“Look, I am one person, and I met a very senior member of government about this, who said to me before this: ‘We’re very glad you’re taking on this case because we think it’s easier for you to do that than it is forus to regulate on how to stop this [scams],” he told the committee.
The government confirmed that ads appearing on social media platforms, and those on search engines, including Google, would now fall under the remit of the new online safety bill, which is due to return to parliament next week.
And while Lewis said this was a step forward, it wouldn’t cover all scams and faces delays.
“How many people will be scammed in the meantime?” he asked.
“This house and parliament is still dilly dallying about getting something that is transparently in the public interest– stopping scam adverts for vulnerable people – and it still hasn’t been done three years later and probably won’t be done for another two years”.
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