This New UK Law Might Force Major Tech Companies to Crack Down on Scam Ads

Social media has allowed people to connect with others in a way that just wasn’t possible previously in history, but with the advantages that such connection brings also come a fair number of disadvantages and harmful impacts. For example, scams have become rather widespread on social media because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up exposing the scam to a larger number of people which scam artists would definitely be rather interested in.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that a lot of scams actually get premium digital ad space on various online platforms including Facebook, Google, Twitter and several others. The government of the UK is drafting a law that will make it mandatory for these corporations to crack down on ads that are fraudulent to any extent at all, something that will definitely start moving things in the right direction and reduce the number of scams that the average user would end up being forced to endure.

The manner in which this law will be enforced is through Ofcom which is the communication regulations agency that is operating within the UK. Ofcom will investigate major tech companies and if they have not placed suitable restrictions on fraudulent ads that might include a few scams here or there, these companies would be fined a large sum of money. The fines might go as high as $24 million dollars, and they could even comprise 10% of the annual turnover the each company has managed to acquire.

One thing to note here is that this fine is actually not all that high if you think about it. These companies earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and paying this much money might not be all that big of a deal for them. The pandemic resulted in countless scams being advertised on social media and other tech platforms, so it might require a much more strict and severe action in order to make these companies do the right thing.

H/T: TC.

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