A recent story reported by The Washington Post covers an interesting call on Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of META, from US Senators who believe that Facebook and Instagram became promotional grounds for various crypto scams. These fraudulent activities have been reported quite frequently by users of Facebook and Instagram which are used by bad actors to trick people into investing in scam projects or just send them money directly.
Meta’s social platforms were involved in over 67% of all scams reported to the FTC and law enforcement authorities in the US. We can expect that numbers would be the same if not higher in other countries. FTC says that over 95 thousand citizens and residents of the US lost over $770 million in scams that were conducted on social media. Note that crypto scams were just a portion of reported losses, as about 30% are attributed to romance and another 30% to shopping scams.
US Senators want to hear the response of Meta’s CEO to such claims by the FTC. It is interesting whether Mark Zuckerberg is aware of these fraudulent activities on his platform amidst his frantic attempts to push the metaverse on users who do not want it. If he is aware then not only US Senators, we all want to know how the company is planning to battle scammers.
While the Senate is dealing with our beloved alien billionaire, we have to point out that social media is not a good source of financial advice in general. You wouldn’t ask an Instagram influencer whether you should invest in commodity futures. Many influencers and even self-proclaimed analysts do not know anything about blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs.
The sad part is that social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram were an integral driving force that pushed cryptocurrencies into the spotlight in the first place. However, the time has come for us to stop reading poorly written articles about the next meme coin published on a platform that was designed to entertain teenagers! We must stop taking advice on investment from people popular on social media platforms!
