Photo/Illutration A fake ad on Facebook using a photo of entrepreneur who founded now-defunct Livedoor Co. Takafumi Horie promises instant riches. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Twenty-nine people and one corporation across the Tokyo metropolitan area and Kansai region have filed a lawsuit against U.S. corporation Meta and its Japanese subsidiary.

The lawsuit was made simultaneously in five district courts—Osaka, Kobe, Yokohama, Chiba and Saitama—and calls out Meta for allowing social media advertisements that impersonate famous figures seeking investors.

They are seeking a total of about 430 million yen ($2.8 million).

This is the second lawsuit following the one filed at the Kobe District Court in April.

The defense team on Oct. 29 held a news conference in Osaka Prefecture, where eight individuals filed a lawsuit.

The plaintiffs allege that they were lured onto the Line messaging app after seeing false ads on Meta-operated Facebook and Instagram. The ads used the names and images of entrepreneurs such as Takafumi Horie and Yusaku Maezawa.

Plaintiffs said they were defrauded of cash, with the maximum damage per person sitting at about 106 million yen.

The defense team pointed out that there is an existing public awareness amid the spread of similar schemes where celebrities' names were deceitfully co-opted. 

The lawsuit asserts the Meta side is liable for compensation. 

This is based on the Supreme Court's ruling that “if there are special circumstances that lead the advertiser to doubt that the truth of an advertisement, and if the advertiser can foresee damage, the advertiser has an obligation to examine the contents and not allow false advertisements.” 

On the other hand, the U.S. Meta side argued in a prior lawsuit in the Kobe District Court that “under Japanese law, social media providers are not obligated to exhaustively detect (problematic) investment advertisements or investigate and confirm the truthfulness of their content.”

Furthermore, the company argued that the plaintiffs communicated with the perpetrators of the scam through the Line app for a lengthy period of time after seeing a false ad.

It reasoned that “the plaintiffs’ damages were caused by the communication on Line and are not related to the inaction (on the part of U.S. Meta).”

The company said the plaintiffs claim that the advertisements that “Meta neglected” were not the direct cause of what led to the fraudulent damages.

According to statistics from the National Police Agency, 4,639 cases of investment fraud using social media were confirmed by August of this year.

This figure is 4.4 times greater than that of the same period from the previous year.

The amount of damages was also 5.6 times higher at 64.1 billion yen.

Dealing with false and misleading information, including false advertising, has been left to platform operators, such as social networking sites and search engines.

However, in response to the increasing severity of the damage, the Japanese government has also begun taking action.

A communications ministry expert panel is discussing countermeasures. Its members include constitutional scholars and information technology specialists.

The ministry intends to submit a related bill to the ordinary Diet session next year at the earliest to strengthen ad screening.

(This article was written by Yuki Hanano, Natsu Miyasaka and Takeshi Narabe.)

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