Ireland is pitching a law to force big tech companies to vet ads before publication

Ireland has pitched a law to force tech companies to vet ads before publishing them, according to reporting by Financial Times. This is part of a larger push by the EU Commission to make tech entities responsible for financial fraud that occurs on their platforms. It also comes as President Trump has begun pushing the EU to scale back regulation of big American tech companies.

While a proposal by the EU Commission would indeed put companies on the hook for financial fraud, Ireland’s plan hopes to get ahead of all that. It looks to stop fraudulent ads before they are even published. The Irish finance ministry submitted an amendment to the current EU proposal that would force tech platforms to check the legitimacy of advertisers before posting their ads.

The amendment would also make it so only registered financial service providers could post these types of ads. The Bank of Ireland says that more than 75 percent of losses last year came from investment fraud that were often linked to ads placed on social media. These ads can be posted at any time and, more importantly, taken down at any time. This allows the publishers to avoid legal scrutiny after the damage has been done. Data indicates that online scammers defrauded Europeans out of nearly $5 billion in 2022.

"We can’t leave glaringly obvious holes in legislation that are allowing criminals to defraud people of their life savings," said Regina Doherty, an Irish lawmaker.

Google has declined to discuss this measure, but told FT that it fights "financial fraud in ads through our tools, people and policies." It is true that it operates a financial services certification program to help combat fraud. Meta has declined to comment. We’ve pinged both companies and will update this post if we hear back.

Around half of EU countries have expressed support for Ireland’s proposed amendment, though there is a hurdle to overcome. The EU Commission already has a provision in the Digital Services Act that says that tech companies aren’t required to broadly monitor content, though proponents of the Irish initiative have countered that the requirement to vet advertisers could be designed in such a way that conforms with current law.

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