Thailand’s Consumer Council claims Meta is fuelling the spread of misleading and illegal ads including investment scams, gambling promotions and fake profiles of public figures.
Thailand’s consumer regulator has confirmed is it suing Facebook’s owner, Meta for allowing scammers to defraud users through its platforms and failing to protect consumers.
The Consumer Council lawsuit comes as part of a wider, global effort to curb social media platform’s power, and to push platforms into implementing more significant safety measures.
Meta is currently facing a number of lawsuits for failing to protect audiences from fraudulent content, after leaked internal documents showed the platform made roughly $16bn from harmful content and scam ads – equivalent to roughly 10% of global ad revenue.
The watchdog listed eight primary grievances fuelling the legal action: the spread of misleading and illegal ads like investment scams, fake profiles of public figures, counterfeit products, gambling promotions, algorithm-driven targeting enabling scams, Facebook Marketplace pages which serve as illegal hubs for unregulated items; and the profiting from fraudulent advertising, Marketech reported.
“Thai consumers have been reduced to mere figures in damage reports. One person has had their life savings swindled, another has been tricked into debt, while platforms continue to pocket advertising fees every second,” said Boonyin Siritham, president of the Consumer Council.
Facebook is a popular platform in Thailand, with roughly 51 million thai users on the site. The council also launched several hashtags looking to hear from victims about their experiences on the site including: #IWasScammedToo, #FacebookAppGoneBad, and #FacebookFriendsStealing.
Another point of contention for the regulator is with regulatory arbitrage. The council accuses Facebook of operating as a full-blown e-commerce platform, but only registering as a social media service in the country, which limits legal accountability and contributes to tax revenue loss through offshore structures.
The legal case is set to be filed with courts on 8 June, 2026.
Affiliate Leaders did reach out to Meta for comment, but they have yet to respond.
