By: Howard M. Riell
The good news is that there are plenty of medical face masks available for sale on Instagram.
The bad news is that you may not want them.
According to a report from social media research firm Ghost Data (available at https://ghostdata.io/report/gd_covid19_masks_.pdf?mod=article_inline), “there are also many online counterfeiters and unscrupulous people eager to take advantage of these platforms to scam and exploit consumers all over the world.”
After analyzing texts placed on the images (OCR) and accompanying text of targeted posts, executives at Ghost Data found 10,450 accounts that are now selling medical masks on Instagram.
According to Andrea Stroppa, the founder of the Ghost Data, some of those offers have appeared on Instagram only during the past four to eight weeks – and most of them seem to be emanating from China, whose products have been known to be unreliable.
The large majority of the “dubious” accounts that Ghost Data identified on Instagram “purposely sell medical masks and originate from China,” the report reads. “Overall we found 25,000 Instagram posts exploiting COVID-19 hashtags to attract potential buyers.
This trend poses great safety and economic risk to the many people using social network platforms every day. The sale of goods is carried out by sellers who are not
legit or certified. There are no guarantees that advertised products are genuine and safe, not to mention the possibility of health and safety threats for a potential buyer. Their communication, payment and shipment methods should be aggregated in a multi-layered strategy deployed by the platform managers, in order to coordinate and verify the authenticity and reliability of anybody interested in selling items through large social platforms such as Instagram.”
Ghost Data’s recommendation to social networks is to try and approach their e-commerce efforts in “a more decisive and constructive way, at least by implementing a feedback and seller profile verification system in the short-medium term. This would allow for a higher consumer confidence and safety, while providing an on-going control on sensible items sold on their platforms. This is particularly true and necessary in a situation like the current pandemic. Our hope is that our independent research could provide some useful help in this direction.”
In her Wall Street Journal blog, Deepa Seetharaman pointed out that Ghost Data’s report became public “about a month after Facebook, which is Instagram’s parent company, banned ads and listings that sell medical face masks. The ban was part of a broader effort by the company to prevent its services from being abused during the pandemic. Facebook has also altered its search results to promote credible information about the virus and offered the World Health Organization unlimited free ads, among other steps. The company has said it would update its policies “if we see people trying to exploit this public health emergency.”
