Dear Mark (part #2),
I’d like to follow up on my previous letter about trust. In case you didn’t have time to read it, in it I argue that you trust the wrong people, your advertisers and not your customers.
In this letter I figured it might be helpful to give you one real and tangible example of that. Often when we talk abstractly we lose touch with the details. So, in this letter I thought I’d dive into one specific example.
Now, mentally you are probably preparing yourself to say “this is an outlier”, but … the number of times I’ve seen ads talking about the latest thing that Elon Musk or Warren Buffet is investing in has gotten so frequent that I can say with confidence no it’s not.
These ads are a regular occurrence (at least on FB internationally). I’d go as far to say that millions of not hundreds of millions of your customers see these ads every single day. Enough talk, let’s get to it!
Today’s scam ad on facebook:
We’ve got a CNN-esque screenshot… brand names and distinct references to $. The real telltale signs though are that there is no connection between the Page (“Pro Financial Advisors”) the domain (“cosmos-facts.win”) and the content.
Everything you say publicly leads me to believe that you really have no idea that this is how you are making your billions. So, let’s take a few minutes and dive into this specific ad and how it’s stealing money from your customers (and paying you for the privilege).
Clicking on this ad to learn about Elon Musk’s latest adventure takes us to the following landing page:
You’ll immediately notice a few fishy facts:
- The domain is “cnn.com-edition.org”, not actually cnn.com. It also doesn’t match the domain that’s referenced in the ad (“cosmos-facts.win”).
- The blatant copy of the CNN Money logo and site layout… this site does everything in it’s power to seem like a real news story.
- If you try to load the landing page directly, it returns a 404. E.g., “tracking them” is difficult. The only way to get there is by clicking on the Facebook ad and having a valid referrer. They’re trying to hide from somebody (probably your audit team).
If you scroll down, it gets better… they’ve taken real facebook profiles, and put fake reviews on this landing page (I’ve blurred the photos & names to protect their privacy).
Checking the footer, although there are links for Terms of Service and a Privacy Policy, neither exist.
I think we see clearly, this is not really CNN, it’s not a real news story. By now, you’re probably wondering… what is this Fintech thing.. it sounds exciting.
Let’s check Elon Musks’s new Fintech LTD!!
OMG! Daniel Roberts, the proud owner of Fintech LTD is going to give me instant profits!
The script is amazing … a few excerpts…
“Fintech LTD software works by creating multiple trades on Binary Options.[…] it is incredibly simple yet incredibly safe because it doesn’t rely on the price of shares only going up, they can go down in value and you’ll make just as much money. […] On our final trial version I invested $20,000 […] at the end of the week, my legs buckled when I looked at the results. FinTech’s software had made me $445,000 in just five days!!!”
“I know I can’t make everyone rich. But I can help you. So what do I want in return? Well apart from knowing I made a difference in your life? What I don’t want is your money. To join Fintech is totally free and there are no catches. […] What I want is your individual trading data. The more data we have, the more accurate and successful our software becomes and EVERYONE makes more money. […] But, we have to restrict our membership and we can only accept 7 people per day.”
“You can make $14,000 in just one week, guaranteed.”
Ok. This sounds too good to be true. LET”S DO IT! Can we be one of the seven people they accept?????? Let’s click “Sign Up”.
YES WE CAN! I’m IN! OMG, can you believe how lucky I am to be one of the 7 they accepted today? All I need to do now is fund my account using “Ashford Investments”!
Oh, and sweet! I can do so using my credit card, well isn’t that easy!
Here’s where I’ll stop. A company whose operational address is in Malta, incorporated in Bulgaria is asking me to charge a minimum of $250 to my credit card. Yeah. No. I think we all know what happens here.
So, let’s get back to the point. These ads, a daily occurrence, at least for me, on Facebook. Figuring out that they are scams is an insanely trivial task that requires no technical skills and just a tiny bit of common sense… and yet, you continue to allow them.
Now, if it makes you feel better, you’re not alone. “Native Advertising” companies like Outbrain are the champions of this kind of crap advertising. Ironically, the real CNN Money’s article about your testimony this week has a very similar ad that looks like it’s a very similar scam… but there’s a difference.
You see, you’ve talk regularly about wanting to do good for the world. To build communities. TO build “safe communities”. So let me close with a question..
With ads like this running, do you think Facebook is a safe community?
Sincerely,
Mike Nolet
PS: I’ve spent nearly a decade of my career fighting shitty advertisers like this, and am happy to share some tips if it’s helpful!