Prof Noakes’ Fake Ad has finally been terminated!
Prof ( or “Dr”) Noakes has recently fallen victim to a fake celebrity endorsement that has accumulated a staggering 500 000 +/- views on Facebook before it was taken down. While numerous attempts were made to report the fake Ad to META, these reports were met with a support message stating that this specific content did not go against META’s community guidelines.
Even META’s “Verified Account” status is a false sense of security and we have quickly learnt that this carries no impact in getting issues resolved or assisting with taking down the deep fakes.
Despite multiple reports from the “Verified account” the response was still the same
“Thanks again for your report. This information helps us reduce unwanted content for you and others.
We use a combination of technology and human reviewers to process reports and identify content that goes against our Community Standards. In this case, we did not remove the content that you reported.
If you think that we’ve made a mistake, you can request a review of this decision within 180 days.
We understand that this might be upsetting. If you want to see less of Brentlinger on Facebook, you can unfollow or block them.
Learn more about how we take action on reports like yours.”
Reaching beyond Metas AI tools and “bots”, was the only way for us to get this resolved, and this was only through a stroke of luck, with a resource that is not accessible or easily available to the general public.
It was disturbingly obvious that, “We use a combination of technology and human reviewers to process reports and identify content that goes against our Community Standards” was simply not true.
If this content had truly been verified by a human it would have been taken down months ago.
Even to the most untrained eye it was obvious that this content was a deep fake, and if that wasn’t convincing enough, the fact Prof Tim Noakes himself ( from his Verified account) reporting it wasn’t enough to have it taken down.
Despite reporting a fake video over a 100 times the content still went viral.
It appears the social giant typically turns a blind eye to cybercrime and digital fraud, the benefit is clear, as they reap the rewards through AD spend.
To them it’s irrelevant if the content is legit or not, or if the account used to promote these scams has been hacked or cloned.
We have extensive experience with “brandjacking” and deepfakes and know all too well that no amount of evidence accumulated gets past the automated reporting options.
Since actively and aggressively targeting these fake accounts almost 2 years ago we have seen an increase in awareness and education around deep fakes and fake accounts, but it’s nowhere near enough, the onus falling onto the legit account holder to educate its clients or followers about fake content at its own expense.
At this stage of our digital and AI journey it is obvious that the HUMAN element of judgment and common sense is still a vital component to fighting cybercrime and digital fraud.
META’s reporting does not work for cybercrimes that can potentially span multiple frauds
Such brandjacking via fake celebrity endorsement spans several types of crime:
- impersonation;
- (2) non-consensual image sharing; and
- (3) the infringement of a public figure’s intellectual property through copyright violation of still images and audio-video. In addition, the crime causes
- (4) reputational damage by suggesting a public figure’s association with a scam that often involves
- (5) financial fraud and hacking.
META has to take responsibility for this.
Entrusting and out sourcing micro teams around the world that have the verification human resources to assess accounts and complaints and then enable them to disable fraudulent accounts seems to be the only answer to this because the current AI landscape if failing miserably.
We have seen how easily accounts can be taken down once you break past the “bots”, where spending months reporting the accounts through personal, business and verified accounts proved fruitless.
Digital & Cyber Crime is a multi billion dollar industry, and META has far more to gain than lose by turning a blind eye.
