Federal assistant treasurer Stephen Jones called for social media giants to ‘do better’ when it comes to fraud and scams while attending the Global Fraud Summit in London this week.
Fight against fraud
Member nations of the summit, including Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, Korea, Singapore, New Zealand and the US, resoundingly backed Jones’s call for Facebook parent company Meta, in particular, to up its game in the fight against fraud and scams.
The summit heard that some states had seen a threefold-plus increase in complaints to their attorneys-general in the last year from consumers who had social media accounts hacked.
Jones reminded the forum that every company had a social licence and should do what was within their power to ensure that they were contributing to the common good.
Copyrighted content
The remarks come as the government pushes for Meta to compensate for copyrighted content from Australian news outlets including the ABC, News Corp, Nine Entertainment and others under a 2021 agreement whereby Meta and Google agreed to deals worth $200 million a year to pay for this content.
The significant boost to Australian media coffers was important to newsrooms around the country.
Meta has since resiled, saying its audience has drifted away from hard news and back to the family and friends content of its heyday – notwithstanding the right-wing and fringe groups that made concerning inroads into public decision-making during the 2016 Brexit and Trump campaigns.
Indeed in Canada, the social media juggernaut has walked away from delivering news content altogether.
Countries making their own rules
Jones said that countries around the world were examining what could be done from within their own legislative and regulatory frameworks to limit the impact of Meta-hosted frauds and scams.
In the UK, banks are required to refund customers scammed during transactions, and that country is moving from a voluntary to a mandatory system.
UK banks have, accordingly, adopted stringent verification, asking for up to three confirmations for electronic transfers to combat scam incidents.
By contrast, in Australia, banks only need to refund scam victims if they fail to meet strict government-imposed anti-fraud measures.
The Australian Government is now looking to develop a social media code of practice, requiring companies to proactively take down fraudulent posts offering goods, services or investments from their platforms.