Finance expert sues Facebook over misleading ads featuring celebs

Lewis, an English finance journalist and money-saving expert, on Monday started High Court proceedings against Facebook, accusing the social network of defamation related to deceptive cryptocurrency advertisements.

Lewis has launched legal action against the company claiming that within the last year the social platform has published more than 50 cryptocurrency ads with illicit use of his face and name to promote financial products. He says that the ads often endorse get-rich-quick schemes with titles like “Bitcoin code” or “Cloud Trader”, which are “fronts for binary trading firms based outside the EU” and “financially dangerous”.

Martin Lewis commented, “I don’t do adverts. I’ve told Facebook that. Any ad with my picture or name in is without my permission. I’ve asked it not to publish them, or at least to check their legitimacy with me before publishing. This shouldn’t be difficult – after all, it’s a leader in face and text recognition.”

Damian Collins, the chair of the parliamentary committee investigating online disinformation, told The Guardian he would ask the social network to consider new ways to block fake promotions when the company’s chief technology officer appears to answer questions in parliament on Thursday.

“Martin Lewis’s case highlights yet another failure on the part of Facebook to protect its users,” said the Tory MP, who leads the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. “The fact that the face of a man who has dedicated himself to aiding consumers to spend their money wisely could be used to defraud those very same people is something that Facebook should be ashamed of,” he said.

“Facebook is able to develop and roll out technology such as facial recognition to increase revenue,” he added. “These tools should be deployed first and foremost to protect users.”

Lewis, the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, announced on Sunday that he is suing Facebook for defamation. He said one solution would be for Facebook to deploy the technology it already has in place to recognise the social network’s users in photos uploaded by their friends.

“They are the facial recognition experts, they should be able to recognise when they are being paid,” Lewis told the BBC, saying it is exasperating that he currently has to report each fake advert featuring his face on a case-by-case basis.

“I have put Facebook on notice. I don’t do adverts. Full stop. No company pays me to do an advert, I do not appear in adverts,” he said.

Lewis said images of Virgin boss Richard Branson, plus Dragons’ Den stars Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones, are also often used to advertise dubious financial scams on Facebook.

Scammers use pictures of celebrities to grab attention, increase the number of clicks on an advert, and imply the public figure has endorsed the product or investment.

Many popular scam adverts have involved promotions for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Meaden’s website now carries a prominent warning that she has never endorsed any Bitcoin investments, while Jones has made it clear that claims he has backed a cryptocurrency business are “entirely false” following a spate of scam adverts.

Facebook implemented a blanket ban on all adverts involving cryptocurrencies in January although some advertisers initially found ways to evade the new rule by changing the spelling of certain words.

A spokesperson for Branson reiterated his previous demand that the “platforms where the fake stories are spreading need to take responsibility” and said the Virgin boss believed the responsibility for stopping fake and misleading content being posted “should not fall solely on the shoulders of those high profile individuals being targeted”.

Facebook did not immediately return The Guardian’s request for comment on whether it would consider using its facial recognition technology to reduce the number of unauthorised scam adverts featuring celebrities.

Lewis also pointed out that several news sites reporting on his legal case, including The Guardian, had also been accompanied by misleading adverts featuring his image.

A Guardian News & Media spokesperson said such adverts featuring Lewis would not appear again in future: “The adverts in question were blocked this morning. We have asked our tech providers involved to urgently investigate how they passed their relevant quality checks.”

In March, the world’s biggest search engine, Google, updated its Financial Services policy and will ban cryptocurrency-related adverts of all types in June 2018 (See: After Facebook, Google moves to ban cryptocurrency ads).