Facebook sues Indian engineer for running deceptive ads on COVID-19
What's the story
Facebook has sued an Indian-origin software engineer for making and selling a tool capable of sharing deceptive ads on its platform. The program, as the company explained, was used to bypass its advertisement review process, eventually allowing advertisers to show misleading and potentially harmful information around COVID-19 and other pressing issues to Facebook users. Here's all about it.
Issue
Software 'cloaking' ad content
The lawsuit, filed in the US district court in the Northern District of California, alleges that Basant Gajjar used his unregistered California-based company LeadCloak to market a tool that hid the true content of adverts and bypassed Facebook's ad review systems. Once approved by Facebook's systems, the actual misleading/harmful content of these ads appeared to the end-users of Facebook, the company added.
Impact
Several misleading posts were approved due to this
Facebook added in the lawsuit that Gajjar's tool enabled some advertisers to sneak in and promote fake news posts as well as scams related to diet pills, pharmaceuticals, cryptocurrency, and the novel coronavirus disease which has been wreaking havoc across countries. The tool was also used to bypass Instagram's ad review systems, and showed similar misleading information to the users of the photo-sharing service.
Action
Action taken against accounts using LeadCloak's tool
In addition to the lawsuit against Gajjar, Facebook also claims to have taken action against the accounts which were found to be using his tool to promote misleading content. The company says that some personal and ad accounts using the deceptive tool have been disabled and additional enforcement action might be taken against them, as well.
Other companies
Other companies also targeted by LeadCloak
Notably, along with Facebook and Instagram, LeadCloak's ad cloaking tools have also been targeted at other big tech companies relying on ad-based revenue, including Alphabet's Google, Oath, WordPress, and Shopify. Gajjar has not commented on the lawsuit yet or on the exact work profile of his company, which has been active since 2016, according to Reuters.