An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last - Winston Churchill
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Facebook promises to cull the advertising scammers
SOCIAL NOTWORKING outfit Facebook has updated its developer platform terms of service to kill off ad networks that it says were running deceptive advertisements.
Facebook has been suffering from a wave of bad PR after allegations that some companies that power offer and survey related moneymaking operations for social gaming applications on platforms like Facebook's have effectively been scamming users. Named and shamed was Offerpal Media.
Writing in the company blog, Facebook's Nick Giano wrote that the battle was far from over.
He said Facebook faced stimulus scam ads on its own system earlier this year and pushed them off the site with "rigorous enforcement". It had to do the same thing months later when deceptive ads from third-party ad networks appeared in applications. Now it is doing that again as it sees the same adverts appear in the form of offers.
More than 100 developer applications have been either "suspended or brought into compliance" over advertising. More than half of them were used by at least a million Facebook members per month.
Facebook is not saying which ad networks or applications it has banned. µ
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As a lawyer, I can say that the addition of a clause banning "fraudulent" or "deceptive" advertising is not a simple matter to enforce. Yes, you can include the clause, but the enforcement hinges on the definition of deceptive and fraudulent. These are notoriously difficult to define with precision and will be interpreted in different ways by different judges and juries. Plus, enforcement will require a lawsuit, the prosecution of which can be costly, while the outcome can be uncertain. Better that Facebook charge a nominal monthly or annual subscription fee and eliminate advertising entirely. Users have to come to terms at some point with the fact that there is no free lunch on the web. Either the user pays or the advertiser does.
Most of these companies (or rather their lawyers) are experts at writing long and elaborate contracts in legalese.
Why not simply put a clause in there that the advertisements must not be fraudulent or deceptive?
That can't be too difficult, can it?