Danish TV hosts are uniting in the fight against fake ads on social media and are criticizing Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, for not taking sufficient responsibility. In a joint video released by DR and TV 2, several well-known faces from Danish TV, including Kåre Quist and Anders Lund Madsen, urge Meta to take action against the misuse of their images in scam campaigns. These campaigns lure users to pages promising quick profits through investing in cryptocurrency, which are actually scams. This practice not only has personal consequences for the hosts involved but also damages the overall trust in the media.
“Dear Facebook. We will not lend our faces to more fake news. It’s your platform, and it’s your responsibility,” says Kåre Quist in the video, which has been widely shared on social media. Two weeks ago, DR, TV 2, and BT took it a step further by sending an open letter to Meta demanding efforts to remove the fake ads. Despite this initiative, there has been limited response from Meta’s side, and frustrations are growing.
Sandy French, news director at DR, expresses great frustration over Meta’s lack of engagement and transparency. “Then we have to use other tools. What unites us all is the enormous frustration and anger that Meta does not take it seriously and remove grossly misleading content but hides,” she says. Meta has previously acknowledged the problem in an email to Politiken and expressed regret over the situation.
“It is of course damaging to Meta when all sorts of celebrities and personalities scold us for allowing these types of ads to be found on our platform,” writes Martin Ruby, Meta’s political chief in the Nordics. Despite the challenges of combating fraud, Meta emphasizes that they are working to improve their systems to prevent similar cases in the future.
“If we could completely remove fraud immediately, we would gladly do so, but it is harder than you would think, even for large platforms like us,” Ruby adds. This case raises important questions about responsibility and regulation of content on social media, which will continue to be a central theme in the debate on digital ethics and security.