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It\u2019s barely been a month since Facebook unleashed its cryptocurrency Libra into the wild and published its whitepaper. But already, the social media giant has been forced to address a growing number of fake communications associated to its digital asset.<\/p>\n
Around a dozen \u201cfake accounts, pages, and groups,\u201d claiming to be official Libra outlets, have sprung up on Facebook and Instagram, The Washington Post reports<\/a>. This is on top of the growing list of websites claiming to already be selling Libra tokens<\/a>.<\/p>\n The fake communications reportedly featured Facebook\u2018s logo, branding, photos of Mark Zuckerberg, or Libra\u2018s official marketing imagery.<\/p>\n The big F has already removed a number of the accounts after it was notified by The Washington Post (WP) yesterday.<\/p>\n \u201cFacebook removes ads and pages that violate our policies when we become aware of them, and we are constantly working to improve detection of scams on our platforms,\u201d a spokeswoman said in a statement to WP.<\/p>\n Facebook\u2018s lackadaisical attitude to keeping its own platform free of fake ads and scams won\u2019t do it any good in the long run.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a deep irony here in Facebook being used as the platform that could undermine trust in the currency Facebook is trying to build trust in,\u201d Eswar Prasad, economics professor at Cornell University, told The Washington Post.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Facebook\u2018s head of Calibra, David Marcus, faced questions at a senate hearing. Marcus received numerous questions that interrogated many of Facebook\u2018s claims about its digital currency. Indeed, trust was a common theme and cropped up 69 times<\/a> during the questioning.<\/p>\n Alongside these groups, Facebook has been fighting against a swathe of fake Calibra websites, too.<\/p>\n In June, Hard Fork spotted a fake website<\/a> claiming to be offering a Libra token pre-sale. The website\u2019s URL replaced the \u201ci\u201d in Calibra with a Unicode character known as \u201cLatin small letter I with grave,\u201d to trick visitors into thinking they were on a legitimate site.<\/p>\n The website has now been removed and it appears the Ethereum address associated to the scam didn\u2019t see any cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n At the time a spokesperson from Facebook told Hard Fork that it was \u201caware of this and [was] looking into it.\u201d<\/p>\n This was just one of hundreds of websites \u2013 according to The Independent<\/a> \u2013 thought to be illegitimately capitalizing on interest in Facebook\u2018s new venture.<\/p>\n Facebook certainly has its work cut out if it\u2019s going to build trust when so many fakes exist on its own platform and beyond.<\/p>\n \n Published July 23, 2019 \u2014 11:44 UTC\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n