紐時賞析／垃圾與詐騙內容 充斥在臉書政治廣告

Meta上充斥着大量的詐騙與垃圾廣告。路透

Spam and Scams Proliferate in Facebook’s Political Ads

垃圾與詐騙內容 充斥在臉書政治廣告

An ad that appeared in thousands of Facebook feeds this summer featured an altered video of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at a regular press briefing. In it, she appeared to say Americans could claim a $5,000 relief check on an official government site. An arrow that then appeared instead led to an advertiser called Get Covered Today.

今夏，一則廣告出現在成千上萬篇臉書動態。這是支遭竄改的影片，內容是關於白宮發言人李維特記者會的畫面。片中她看似宣佈，美國民衆可在政府網站申請5000美元紓困金。然而隨後的箭頭將民衆導向廣告商Get Covered Today頁面。

Similar ads showed fabricated videos of Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts promising similar rebates that did not exist. “This is not a gimmick,” the impersonation of Warren says.

類似的廣告還出現佛蒙特州參議員桑德斯與麻薩諸塞州參議員華倫的假造影片，宣稱將發放根本不存在的回饋金。假扮華倫的人甚至說：「這不是騙局。」

In fact, it was.

事實上，這就是騙局。

Even so, the company behind the ads and others like it were among the top political advertisers on Facebook, according to an analysis by the Tech Transparency Project.

然而，根據非營利組織「科技透明計劃」分析，這些廣告背後的公司仍位居臉書政治廣告數一數二的金主。

The ads are a lucrative part of Facebook’s advertising revenue that, the project’s researchers and others say, has led the company to turn a blind eye to a flood of low-quality or deceptive content, spam and in some cases outright fraud on the platform.

該計劃研究人員指出，這類廣告爲臉書帶來可觀收入，也使母公司對平臺上大量低品質、具誤導性甚至詐欺性內容睜一隻眼閉一隻眼。

“Meta is very aware of these types of scams,” said Katie A. Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project. “They just didn’t care.”

科技透明計劃主任凱蒂．保羅表示：「Meta非常清楚這些類型的詐騙。他們只是不在乎。」

In a report released Wednesday, the project identified 63 advertisers that have by several measures employed deceptive or fraudulent practices. They amount to roughly 1 in 5 of the platform’s top 300 spenders in the category of political or social advertising.

週三發佈的報告中，該計劃辨別出63家廣告商採用不同程度欺騙和詐騙手法，佔臉書政治與社會議題類前300名廣告主中5分之1。

Collectively they bought nearly 150,000 ads, spending almost $49 million over the past seven years, according to data in Facebook’s ad library.

根據臉書廣告資料庫數據，這些業者過去7年間共購買近15萬則廣告，總支出約4900萬美元。

Ads from all of the 63 advertisers have previously been removed for violating Facebook’s policies, meaning their deceptive practices were not unknown. Meta has suspended some of them, but more than half were able to continue posting new ads as recently as this week.

這63家廣告商的內容皆曾因違反臉書政策遭下架，顯示其欺騙手法早已被平臺掌握。Meta雖已停權部分帳號，但超過一半仍能在本週繼續刊登新廣告。

Facebook, which is owned by Meta, prohibits advertising that uses “identified deceptive or misleading practices, including scams to take money from people or access personal information.” It has explicit rules against impersonations, and it ultimately removed the video of Leavitt, though not all the others.

Meta旗下的臉書明文禁止「已知的欺騙或誤導性手法，包括爲騙取金錢或個資的詐騙行爲」。平臺亦明定不得冒充他人，最終移除了李維特的假影片，但沒有刪除其他類似影片。

In a statement, the company said it enforced its rules vigorously and would “invest in building new technical defenses” against what it called an industrywide issue. “Scammers are relentless,” the statement said, “and constantly evolve their tactics to try to evade detection.”

Meta聲明，公司「嚴格執行規範」，並將投入資源建立新的技術防護，以對抗所謂「整個產界普遍存在的問題」。聲明指「詐騙者絕不罷手，頻頻變換手法以逃避偵測。」

文／Steven Lee Myers，譯／羅方妤

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