Good Questions, Real Answers: How Facebook Helps Brands Protect Against Counterfeits
Good Questions, Real Answers: How Facebook Helps Brands Protect Against Counterfeits
Facebook BusinessCheck out the first Good Questions, Real Answers blog post on how the data our platform receives shapes people’s ads experiences.
As the ad industry evolves, we know it’s important that advertisers understand how our platform enables the creation of relevant, impactful ads that put people’s interests first. It’s why we recently launched a new section of our website designed to connect you with answers to some of your most important questions around topics like data-handling, ad measurement, and protecting your brand. Today, we're sharing more about how we deal with counterfeit goods and help advertisers protect their intellectual property (IP) on Facebook and Instagram.
Protecting IP rights across our services is always a priority, but leading up to the holiday season it’s often especially top-of-mind for advertisers. We have strict policies against counterfeit goods and other kinds of IP violations. As part of our commitment to transparency, we regularly release a report that includes updated information on our IP practices, the volume and types of IP reports we receive, and how much content those reports affect. In our most recent transparency report, we revealed that in the first half of 2019, we removed 462.4k pieces of content in response to about 62.3k counterfeit reports submitted to Facebook, and 359k pieces of content in response to about 39.2k counterfeit reports submitted to Instagram.
IP reports submitted in 2019 (Jan-April), as measured by Facebook's transparency report. See the full chart in the report.
What is Facebook Doing to Combat the Spread of Counterfeit Goods?
We’ve built multiple tools to help brands take action
You can directly report content that you believe infringes on your company’s rights, including content that offers counterfeits. This includes Facebook and Instagram, and whether the content appears on a Profile, Page or Group, or is an ad or Marketplace listing. Content is typically removed within a day or less after we receive a rights holder’s report, and often faster – within a few hours or even minutes. You can use the following forms to report counterfeits on Facebook and Instagram:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/counterfeitform
- Instagram: https://help.instagram.com/contact/instagramcounterfeitform
You can report pieces of content individually or in bulk, as well as entire Profiles, Pages or Groups.
And we’ll take further action if we see evidence of widespread infringement
Even when a rights holder reports only one item to us as counterfeit, we typically don’t stop there. Often, we take steps to review an entire Page, Instagram account or ad account if we see evidence of widespread infringement. In addition to taking down reported content or users, we disable the accounts of repeat infringers where appropriate. This includes Profiles, Pages, Groups and ad accounts on Facebook and Instagram. We also take action to help stop someone from becoming a repeat infringer, such as imposing temporary feature limits or removing access to certain product features (e.g., Marketplace) when they have been reported a certain number of times for infringement. When we remove someone’s content based on an IP report, we also send messaging explaining why their content was taken down and what might happen if they continue to infringe.
In addition to our reporting forms, rights holders can easily search for and report infringement on Marketplace, Facebook Group sales posts, and ads on Facebook and Instagram with our Commerce & Ads IP Tool. The tool provides unique functionalities like the ability to search Marketplace globally in a single search, and to search across all currently-active ads using any keyword.
What is Facebook Doing to Proactively Tackle Counterfeit Goods?
We invest in technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence to help block or reduce the distribution of potentially counterfeit content on both Facebook and Instagram.
These technologies work by:
- Using automation to review both Marketplace posts and ads against our policies before they go live, and blocking content that may be selling counterfeits based on signals such as brand names, logos, keywords, prices, discounts and other suspicious indicators
- Making it harder for people to find potentially infringing Instagram posts by blocking hashtags that contain certain combinations of brands and keywords that indicate counterfeiting (e.g., “replica”)
- Limiting visibility of potentially infringing Instagram posts by incorporating signals such as keywords in text and hashtags, as well as additional suspicious behavior indicative of potential counterfeiting activity
How Does Facebook Discourage People From Buying Counterfeit Goods?
We want to make sure our community is aware of the dangers of counterfeits and have put in place a number of measures to help educate people about those dangers.
- We have detailed IP Help Centers for both Facebook and Instagram to help people understand what posts are and are not allowed.
- On Marketplace, we also:
- Allow people to flag Marketplace listings they think are counterfeits for review; rejected listings are fed back into our machine learning systems to better detect them going forward
- Provide Tips for Buying and Selling Safely on Marketplace, including a section specifically on our policies against counterfeits
- Educate people in Marketplace when they show interest in either buying or selling products in categories that may be more susceptible to counterfeiting
- Have Purchase Protection policies, which means if someone unknowingly purchases a counterfeit product with the checkout feature on Facebook, they may be eligible for a refund
People’s safety is important to us, and we’ll continue to find new ways to protect consumers, sellers, and brands as IP holders. Learn more about how we’re making our platforms better for people and businesses, straight from the people who build them, on our Good Questions, Real Answers site.
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November 21, 2019
Good Questions, Real Answers: How Facebook Helps Brands Protect Against Counterfeits
Check out the first Good Questions, Real Answers blog post on how the data our platform receives shapes people’s ads experiences.
A
Protecting IP rights across our services is always a priority, but leading up to the holiday season it’s often especially top-of-mind for advertisers. We have strict policies against counterfeit goods and other kinds of IP violations. As part of our commitment to transparency, we regularly release a report that includes updated information on our IP practices, the volume and types of IP reports we receive, and how much content those reports affect. In our most recent transparency report, we revealed that in the first half of 2019, we removed 462.4k pieces of content in response to about 62.3k counterfeit reports submitted to Facebook, and 359k pieces of content in response to about 39.2k counterfeit reports submitted to Instagram.
IP reports submitted in 2019 (Jan-April), as measured by Facebook's transparency report. See the full chart in the report.
What is Facebook Doing to Combat the Spread of Counterfeit Goods?
We’ve built multiple tools to help brands take action
You can directly report content that you believe infringes on your company’s rights, including content that offers counterfeits. This includes Facebook and Instagram, and whether the content appears on a Profile, Page or Group, or is an ad or Marketplace listing. Content is typically removed within a day or less after we receive a rights holder’s report, and often faster – within a few hours or even minutes. You can use the following forms to report counterfeits on Facebook and Instagram:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/counterfeitform
- Instagram: https://help.instagram.com/contact/instagramcounterfeitform
You can report pieces of content individually or in bulk, as well as entire Profiles, Pages or Groups.
And we’ll take further action if we see evidence of widespread infringement
Even when a rights holder reports only one item to us as counterfeit, we typically don’t stop there. Often, we take steps to review an entire Page, Instagram account or ad account if we see evidence of widespread infringement. In addition to taking down reported content or users, we disable the accounts of repeat infringers where appropriate. This includes Profiles, Pages, Groups and ad accounts on Facebook and Instagram. We also take action to help stop someone from becoming a repeat infringer, such as imposing temporary feature limits or removing access to certain product features (e.g., Marketplace) when they have been reported a certain number of times for infringement. When we remove someone’s content based on an IP report, we also send messaging explaining why their content was taken down and what might happen if they continue to infringe.
In addition to our reporting forms, rights holders can easily search for and report infringement on Marketplace, Facebook Group sales posts, and ads on Facebook and Instagram with our Commerce & Ads IP Tool. The tool provides unique functionalities like the ability to search Marketplace globally in a single search, and to search across all currently-active ads using any keyword.
What is Facebook Doing to Proactively Tackle Counterfeit Goods?
We invest in technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence to help block or reduce the distribution of potentially counterfeit content on both Facebook and Instagram.
These technologies work by:
- Using automation to review both Marketplace posts and ads against our policies before they go live, and blocking content that may be selling counterfeits based on signals such as brand names, logos, keywords, prices, discounts and other suspicious indicators
- Making it harder for people to find potentially infringing Instagram posts by blocking hashtags that contain certain combinations of brands and keywords that indicate counterfeiting (e.g., “replica”)
- Limiting visibility of potentially infringing Instagram posts by incorporating signals such as keywords in text and hashtags, as well as additional suspicious behavior indicative of potential counterfeiting activity
How Does Facebook Discourage People From Buying Counterfeit Goods?
We want to make sure our community is aware of the dangers of counterfeits and have put in place a number of measures to help educate people about those dangers.
- We have detailed IP Help Centers for both Facebook and Instagram to help people understand what posts are and are not allowed.
- On Marketplace, we also:
- Allow people to flag Marketplace listings they think are counterfeits for review; rejected listings are fed back into our machine learning systems to better detect them going forward
- Provide Tips for Buying and Selling Safely on Marketplace, including a section specifically on our policies against counterfeits
- Educate people in Marketplace when they show interest in either buying or selling products in categories that may be more susceptible to counterfeiting
- Have Purchase Protection policies, which means if someone unknowingly purchases a counterfeit product with the checkout feature on Facebook, they may be eligible for a refund
People’s safety is important to us, and we’ll continue to find new ways to protect consumers, sellers, and brands as IP holders. Learn more about how we’re making our platforms better for people and businesses, straight from the people who build them, on our Good Questions, Real Answers site.
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Get Facebook Business news in your inbox.
Sign up for our monthly newsletter for the latest updates, insights, marketing trends and articles from Facebook.