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Rights Alliance removes at least 1,642 celebrity fraud ads in one month

Jun 27, 2024 | Analysis

27. June 2024

By reporting infringements of media companies’ trademarks, the Rights Alliance can simultaneously remove scam ads that misuse celebrity identities.

Meta doesn’t do enough to combat the infringements that are happening in large numbers through celebrity fraud ads on their platforms. However, the Rights Alliance’s tests show that we can use existing takedown tools to remove celebrity scam ads by reporting infringements of trademarks belonging to media houses that also appear in the ads.

The Rights Alliance has removed 1,642 celebrity scam ads from Meta’s platforms in one month. The ads included 9 out of 49 celebrities that the online media TjekDet has on their list of celebrities abused in scam ads.

Personality rights must pave the way for better solutions

It is currently very difficult to remove content from social media that misuses the identity, voice and face of artists and celebrities. This is because the Personality Right is based on “unwritten legal principles”, which tech giants like Meta do not handle in their systems.

The Rights Alliance works to ensure that the misuse of faces and voices on social media can be effectively combated. This applies to both the misuse of celebrities in scam ads and the misuse of the voice and face of artists and other celebrities in AI-generated content such as deepfakes and voice clones. Therefore, the Rights Alliance supports the Minister of Culture’s intention to investigate whether imitation protection can be implemented in copyright law.

Also read: Codification of personality rights to prevent misuse of voices and faces on social media