Meta to Implement Facial Recognition to Combat Celebrity Investment Scam Ads

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced a new initiative to fight the surge of celebrity investment scam advertisements using facial recognition technology to detect those who most often have their images used. The company will begin trialing this technology with a select pool of 50,000 celebrities and public figures worldwide on an opt-out basis starting this December.

If Meta’s existing systems suspect an ad may be a scam, the new technology will compare images in the ad against the public figure’s profile pictures on Facebook and Instagram. If a match is found and the ad is determined to be a scam, it will be deleted. 

“This process is done in real time and is faster and much more accurate than manual human reviews, so it allows us to apply our enforcement policies more quickly and to protect people on our apps from scams and celebrities,” said David Agranovich, director of global threat disruption at Meta. 

In addition, Meta will use the same facial recognition technology to enable users to upload a video selfie to reclaim their accounts if hijacked by scammers. The company stated that early testing with a small group has shown “promising results” in detecting scam ads quickly and efficiently. Celebrities in the initial rollout will be notified in their apps about their enrollment and will have the option to opt-out at any time.

Despite the promising results, Agranovich acknowledged that the facial recognition tool is just one of several methods used by Meta to detect scams, and some scams might still slip through the cracks. He said: “Even if it is successful, scammers will probably migrate to other tactics. And so we know we’ll have to keep iterating and building new tooling to get ahead of whatever it is they do next.”