Thailand Threatens to Shut Down Access to Facebook
The government in Thailand is threatening to shut down access to Facebook due to the fraudulent ads and profiles that appear on the social network.
As AP reports, Thailand's minister of Digital Economy and Society, Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn, says Facebook allows ads and fake profiles to appear on its service. The fake profiles claim to be "reputable financial and investment advisers offering high profits," but ultimately lead to people losing their money through scams. There are more than 50 million Facebook user accounts in Thailand.
Thanakamanusorn has already appealed to Facebook's parent company Meta to deal with the problem, but the request only resulted in around 5,000 ads being blocked. Now the minister is threatening to go to criminal court and have access to Facebook turned off in the country.
Meta in Thailand is asking for all queries to be sent to its press department by email and is so far not commenting further on the allegations made by the Thai government. Thanakamanusorn should take note and some comfort from the fact Norway did at least manage to ban personalized ads appearing on Facebook.
Facebook was hit with a $1.3 billion fine by the EU for failing to secure users' Facebook data and is currently paying out a $725 million privacy settlement. Those fake ads Thailand is seeing may actually just be the tip of the iceberg, however, as Meta is currently experimenting with AI-generated ads to help advertisers improve their effectiveness.
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