For several months, Facebook has been under increasing fire in the UK over its role in hosting financial scammers on its platforms. And last week, the pressure was turned up even more when a large banking and finance lobby group wrote a letter to government officials claiming that 61 percent of all push payment fraud in the country is connected to Meta-owned platforms.

Banks have begun to push for companies like Facebook to be more accountable for fraud hosted on its platforms. That led to the UK government introducing a national fraud strategy. However, Facebook is not yet financially responsible for the victims of these scams. Still, some trade leaders are confident these companies can help address the problem.

“Tech companies will continue to undertake further significant actions to cut fraud as set out in the recent UK fraud strategy and we are currently working at pace with the government and the financial services sector to address the issue of authorized push payment fraud,” trade association leader Julian David told the Financial Times.

For its part, Facebook defended itself by noting that it has already toughened its rules for advertisers so that they now must first be approved by a regulatory agency known as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

“We don’t want anyone to fall victim to these criminals which is why our platforms have systems to block scams, financial services advertisers now have to be FCA-authorized and we run consumer awareness campaigns on how to spot fraudulent behavior,” a spokesperson for the company said.

While these aren’t perfect solutions, the UK is still lightyears ahead of the US when it comes to holding Facebook responsible for scams on its platforms. Hopefully we can learn a thing or two in this country about how to force the company to take action.

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