Artist Rights Alliance Seeks Facebook Fraud Investigation

RADIO ONLINE | Wednesday, October 28, 2020 | 8:24am CT

The Artist Rights Alliance (ARA), an artist-run, non-profit fighting for songwriters and musicians in the modern music economy, joined with consumer group partners in a letter to the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the state Attorneys General of Vermont and California to call for an investigation into Facebook. The letter asks for an examination of the social media giant for "participating in a scheme to defraud cellist Zoe Keating, an unknown number of her fans, and undoubtedly thousands of other working artists."

As reported by Axios, Zoe Keating was scheduled to perform a concert on August 30th, but due to the pandemic, the concert was canceled several months ago. On the day of the event, however, a party unknown to Ms. Keating posted a solicitation on Facebook selling access to a purported live stream of the non-existent event, using Ms. Keating's name and photograph as part of the scheme. Upon reporting this fraudulent solicitation to Facebook, the company responded that this instance "doesn't go against any one of our specific community standards," and failed to take action.

Along with the ARA, the letter's signatories include Advocating Against Romance Scammers, Alliance to Counter Crime Online, Freedom from Facebook and Google, and Public Citizen.

Fraud and impersonation scams are unfortunately not new in the digital age. Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois has been impersonated over the years due to numerous fraudulent romance scams on Facebook and Instagram, prompting Mr. Kinzinger to send a letter to Mark Zuckerberg last year demanding an update on Facebook's safety protocols. New Jersey video editor Will Battaglia lost his life savings to a scammer on the business-to-business platform BizBuySell.com. Upon reporting the fraudster to BizBuySell, the company informed Will that the firm doesn't bother holding liability insurance these types of issues, according to a blog posted by the Alliance to Counter Crime Online.