Facebook gets tough on ad scams

Friday 06 November 2009 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter

Tags: Facebook, Fraud, Social Networking

In a post on its developer blog on Thursday, social networking site Facebook announced that since its update to its terms of service in the summer, it has disabled two ad networks that were running deceptive ads.

Facebook's Nick Gianos wrote in the blog post, "We faced stimulus scam ads on our own system earlier this year and pushed them off the site with rigorous enforcement. We did the same months later when deceptive ads from third-party ad networks appeared in applications. We're doing that again now as we see them appear in the form of offers."

This is the latest installment in a long-running saga over scams on social networks, with claims that some unscrupulous companies that power offer- and survey-related money-making operations for social-gaming applications on platforms such as Facebook have been scamming users into paying for services without disclosing the costs.

At the risk of appearing like a rather inadequate headmaster, Facebook seems to be trying to toughen up its act in dealing with the naughty boys. "This battle is not new and it's far from over," warns Nick Gianos. "Since introducing updated policies for third-party ads on Facebook Platform in July, we have disabled two entire ad networks and suspended or brought into compliance over 100 applications for ad-related violations in regions around the world, over half of which had more than one million monthly active users."

Commenting on the action, the CNET News site notes that it's not clear from Gianos' blog whether these suspensions are all related to scams, or to other advertising infringements, such as the Burger King marketing campaign that famously encouraged users to 'unfriend' their contacts in exchange for a free burger.

Facebook declined to 'name and shame' the advertising networks or applications that it has banned, but CNET News reports that Facebook did ban two firms back in June – Social Hour and Social Reach – citing ad network policy violations.

In his blog, Nick Gianos concludes, "The underlying issues here are bigger than ads. They're about building an experience that users will want to come back to… no spam, no surprises."

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