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As Facebook owner Meta Platforms moves into online commerce, the group is struggling to stop counterfeiters from offering fake luxury goods on its platforms.
Social networks have become prime places for counterfeiters to exploit their range of social and private messaging tools to reach users. “Facebook and Instagram are the primary marketplaces where counterfeit products are sold to members of the public. It was eBay a decade ago, and Amazon five years ago,” said Benedict Hamilton, managing director at Kroll, a private investigation firm hired by brands harmed by counterfeiting and smuggling.
The research, conducted by social media analytics firm Ghost Data (an Italian analytics firm founded by cybersecurity expert Andrea Stroppa, also a data analytics consultant for the World Economic Forum) identified more than 26,000 active accounts of counterfeiters operating on Facebook in a study conducted from June to October 2021. About 65 percent of the accounts found in 2021 were based in China, followed by 14 percent in Russia and 7.5 percent in Turkey.
“Counterfeit sales and fraud is a problem that has always persisted with new technologies. We are getting better every day at stopping these sales and cracking down on fraudsters,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.
Meta has joined e-commerce sites and online marketplaces to fight the sale of counterfeit goods. But unlike public listings on dedicated shopping sites like eBay and Amazon , social platforms also provide offenders with multiple channels to post in closed spaces, send private messages and use disappearing content like Instagram Stories, experts said.
According to Ghost Data’s report, counterfeiters have taken advantage of features such as WhatsApp product catalogs, which are not encrypted and are available through the app’s “business profile” option, to show off their products.
Fighting counterfeiters
In 2020, Chanel, Lacoste and Gant left a European Commission initiative to strengthen cooperation between brands and sites such as eBay, Alibaba and Facebook’s Marketplace to fight counterfeiting, saying it was not effective.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which estimated that global trade in counterfeit goods reached $464 billion in 2019, said an e-commerce boom in 2020-2021 has led to massive growth in the supply of counterfeit goods online. Chanel, Gucci and Prada said their fight against counterfeiters resulted in hundreds of thousands of social media posts being deleted last year.
Meta, which says it has 3.59 billion monthly active users across all of its apps, launched an updated tool in October for brands to search for and report counterfeits in posts, ads or business features, and says it typically responds to complaints about such infringements within 24 hours.
In a recent report, the company said it removed 1.2 million pieces of infringing Facebook content, including accounts, reported to it from January to June 2021 and about half a million on Instagram. The company said that during that period, it also proactively removed 283 million Facebook content that violated infringement or copyright rules and about 3 million on Instagram, before they were reported by brands or before they were posted online. Furthermore, Meta’s website says about infringement, “We are committed to making our platforms safer for people and businesses to connect, share content, and buy and sell items. Part of this work is to protect intellectual property and to fight the sale and promotion of counterfeit products, which harm brands, honest sellers and consumers alike.”
Read also > CHANEL, THE MOST COUNTERFEITED LUXURY BRAND IN SOUTH KOREA
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As Facebook owner Meta Platforms moves into online commerce, the group is struggling to stop counterfeiters from offering fake luxury goods on its platforms.
Social networks have become prime places for counterfeiters to exploit their range of social and private messaging tools to reach users. “Facebook and Instagram are the primary marketplaces where counterfeit products are sold to members of the public. It was eBay a decade ago, and Amazon five years ago,” said Benedict Hamilton, managing director at Kroll, a private investigation firm hired by brands harmed by counterfeiting and smuggling.
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As Facebook owner Meta Platforms moves into online commerce, the group is struggling to stop counterfeiters from offering fake luxury goods on its platforms.
Social networks have become prime places for counterfeiters to exploit their range of social and private messaging tools to reach users. “Facebook and Instagram are the primary marketplaces where counterfeit products are sold to members of the public. It was eBay a decade ago, and Amazon five years ago,” said Benedict Hamilton, managing director at Kroll, a private investigation firm hired by brands harmed by counterfeiting and smuggling.
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