More than 9,000 scam Facebook pages deleted after Australians lose 43.4m to celebrity deepfakes

Australians could see fewer deepfake images of celebrities being hauled off in handcuffs, or promoting a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment on Facebook, after Meta launched a new one-stop shop for banks to share information on scams that has blocked 8,000 pages and 9,000 celebrity scams in its first six months of operation. From January to August 2024, Australians reported 43.4m in losses from scams on social media to Scamwatch, with close to 30m relating to fake investment scams. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has faced pressure from politicians and regulators in the past few years to tackle the plague of scams featuring deepfake images of public figures such as David Koch, Gina Rinehart, Anthony Albanese, Larry Emdur, Guy Sebastian and others which are used to promote investment scams. The company is being sued by the mining magnate Andrew Forrest over the company's alleged failure to tackle scams using his image. Meta announced on Wednesday it had partnered with the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX) to launch the Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange (Fire) that provides a dedicated reporting channel for scams between Meta and financial providers of the victims of the scams.