There’s a new wave of dozen fake accounts, groups and pages which are spread across Facebook and Instagram. — Claiming and trying to sell Facebook’s latest cryptocurrency Libra everywhere across the social platforms.
Not only that, but some of these pages offer discounted prices to sell Libra if the users visit certain “fake” third-party sites.
This wave of fakes will highlight on how Facebook will suffer and struggle a lot to fight against fraud accounts and to re-build trust on its own currency.
What's worth noticing is that there’s a high inability from Facebook to detect these fake accounts on its own. In a matter of fact, most of the fake pages and accounts were reported by The Washington Post. — They were removed from Facebook & Instagram after the report.
Many of the reported fake accounts included Facebook’s logo, photos of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Libra’s official marketing imagery. — They were claiming to be Libra’s official hub.
“There is a deep irony here in Facebook being used as the platform that could undermine trust in the currency Facebook is trying to build trust in.”( Eswar Prasad )
To be honest, I wasn’t surprised to see all these Libra scammers on Facebook or Instagram. There’s a massive increase of cryptocurrency scams which was happening during the last few years and Libra is definitely not an exception.
On the other hand, Facebook is already struggling to assure different and several regulators that’s ready to handle a global currency worldwide. But is Facebook going to be capable to face all the new wave of fakes?
Although there were other platforms that also suffered from such a wave of fakes like Twitter & Youtube, it’s still considered as a big hit towards Libra and Facebook as a platform.
The Next Web reported on a website scam which was being used to advertise a pre-sale of Libra. — This website called Calìbra.com was taken down as soon as it was reported apparently.
Usually, Facebook doesn’t allow any cryptocurrency ads from advertisers that aren’t approved on the platform but it’s trying to make some easier rules to allow a more generic ad-related version to AI, Blockchain, and Tech news.
“Facebook removes ads and pages that violate our policies when we become aware of them, and we are constantly working to improve detection of scams on our platforms.” ( A spokeperson from Facebook )