Meta sues 'nudify' app-maker that it claims ran 87k+ Facebook, Instagram ads Meta has sued an app maker for advertising on Facebook and Instagram a so-called "nudify" app that uses AI to generate nude and sexually explicit images and videos of individuals without their consent. The social media giant on Thursday filed the lawsuit in Hong Kong against Joy Timeline HK Limited. The company allegedly is …
At least every other person on this website wouldn't have the slightest difficulty figuring out ways of circumventing any sensible measures taken by Facebook if they put their mind to it.
Even if adverts are individually approved you have have an advert that displays the advert as being pulled from example.com/image.jpg advertising eating 4 apples a day to keep the doctor away and linking to example.com/trackerscript which then redirects to a service delivering 4 apples to your door every day. (or whatever)
Once approved as an advert this then example.com/image.jpg gets changed to different image, and example.com/trackerscript redirects to a different location. Short of Facebook hosting all of the advert images etc and forbidding anything but a link to the end website they aren't going to be able to solve this by technical means. Even then, you can redirect where a domain name lands rather trivially.
You say that like it's implausible.
It would certainly be unique in the advertising business. Everybody else allows you to provide not just images but full scripts from external hosts.
I'm not saying that's right; just that's what is actually done and a website typically has an attitude of "whatever you want" towards the people paying it money because those people are actually the paying customers; not the end users who get a free service.
What..the..actual..fuck?
Sorry but why would anyone think that creation of such an app was a ‘good idea’?
Oh no wait, it sold, and, presumably made them money, short term, anyway?
Sometimes, I despair of the human race, but then I think of people on sites such as this, that will call it out for what it is, and am heartened, and think, OK maybe it’s not as bad as I fear!
That's the people who think using the app is a good idea. When it comes to creating such an app, the existence of a large number of perverts with money - sorry, an extensive potential user base - is a reason to do it. But you still have to ask what kind of person thinks it's a good idea, or something that anyone should actually be doing.
You actually state the reason why: There's people with money who will pay, so that means there's a market, so someone will see it as an opportunity to profit.
Same as anything, really: If there's money to be made, someone will go out to make it, regardless of the morality or legality of what's involved.
Well, yeah, but I mean the sort of companies that are proper legal entities, and not some fly-by-night dodgy character with a false name doing a runner after taking your cash.
We tell people to ignore dodgy spam, and unheard of websites, but if a non-techie friend told me that she thought the advert must be safe because it was on YouTube, I couldn't blame her.
I've reported scam ads on Youtube to them using their process, and they simply do nothing. They acknowledge the report, but there is never any follow up, and I continue to receive the same ads.
They are obvious scams.
Over winter it was "this trick the energy companies don't want you to know will heat your whole house for less than 10% of the cost of normal heating" and the ad is basically selling a little fan heater with built in plug that you plug into the wall. It quite obviously only delivers whatever heat corresponds to the electricity it uses. Basic physics. It won't magic heat out of nowhere.
Now its summer, I see very similar ads but now it's "the device that's taking the world by storm, it can cool your house for a fraction of the price of expensive air conditioners"
There is quite obviously no oversight whatsover of the ads, and even when alerted to scams, they do absolutely nothing. The same ads just keep going and keep going.
There's a whole raft of reasons why the scam Ads get through, but they generally boil down to greed.
1: Too many ads to moderate effectively
2: Ads get supplied through third party companies that aren't screening the ads effectively (if at all)
3: As noted: They make money from advertising, so what's the difference to them between a scam ad and a legit ad?
It's why they hate ad blockers and are willing to spend time and effort combatting blockers and not cleaning up the ad platform they operate. And hence more people turn to ad blockers which hits these company's bottom line. However, the scam advertises don't care 'cause those blocking their ads wouldn't be spending money with them anyway.
"I told it to picture Zuckerberg nude. I think it got confused because all it did was produce images of creaky old motherboards."
I found that incredibly funny but I am totally puzzled as to why. I imagine once AI acquires an authentic sense of humour we are buggered.
I notice the targeted nations are more those with "anglosaxon" attitudes to nudity and nakedness (not quite the same thing.) I don't think the Swedes would bat an eyelid at an unclothed celebrity - even former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel who I imagine was hotter than Berlusconi would have us believe.
But I can see the real danger that teenage girls who already struggle with their body and self images when confronted with unsolicited and unauthorised nudified images of themselves might result significant harm. (These days I understand teenage boys are also struggle with these issues; perhaps to a lesser extent.)
> it is clear that unless restrained by a competent court, the Defendant will continue to publish such Violating Ads on Facebook
So you're saying you're not competent enough to decide what gets published by your publishing platform?
> We'll continue to take the necessary steps – which could include legal action
But don't include verifying the things that we put our name on and present to kids.
I guess you're not, at that.
I presume you take all the necessary steps to verify these advertisers' payment details, of course. Nothing unwittingly slips through there does it?
Facebook relies on automated systems to flag ads. Scam advertisers know this and figured out how to get around those systems. with the sheer volume of posts hitting their pages, including through compromised and spoofed accounts, it would dig deep into FB's profits to hire enough people to have a hope to keep up, and even then some would slip through.
I honestly doubt Zuk is willing to give up his billions just to save us from scam and morally questionable adverts.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate the hilarity that Facebook is actually going to court to stop a customer from repeatedly purchasing services which its web site has quite happily sold to them.
Imagine the brains trust at Meta getting to this point. Surely first they thought about implementing some kind of block, or getting their super hot AI to review advertisers? But they decided to go to court rather than fix their own broken process.
If they can't stop these, then they can't stop any other scam adverts (e.g. the one's with Martin Lewis's likeness, etc...). So the court should prevent them accepting all further advertising* until they can reliably control what adverts are displayed.
*I know it doesn't work like that. I can dream.
Isn't Martin Lewis suing them for those ads? Because they refuse to take them down until he finds them and reports them. So perhaps this case is part of their defence in the other case? Proves we're not lying when we tell you that we're too incompetent to be able to vet the ads we make money from.
And yet, when I reported a Nudify ad to Facebook (one that featured outright frontal nudity), they told me:
"We didn’t remove the ad
Thanks again for your report. This information helps us improve the integrity and relevance of advertising on Facebook.
We use a combination of technology and human reviewers to process reports and identify content that goes against our Advertising Standards. In this case, we did not remove the ad you reported."
No wonder the company has been able to repeatedly advertise!
So let me get this right. Meta are so bad at running their own business that they can't manage to decide which ads to accept or not, and have to get the courts to do their job for them? If they are really that bad perhaps the courts should step in to require them to have systems in place that work, before they find themselves advertising hitmen, and child prostitution rings.
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