The Court of Santa Catarina ordered the publication of advertisements with the image of stores and their owners, which have not been purchased by official accounts of the company or businessman, to be blocked, under penalty of a fine of up to 20 million reais.
The decision taken on Monday responds to a lawsuit by Havan and Hang, according to which Google had profited from fraudulent advertisements produced using artificial intelligence that exploit the retailer’s image. The authors claim that the scenario has led scam victims to sue the company in search of compensation.
Google did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters. The decision can be appealed.
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In the order, judge Joana Ribeiro, from the 2nd Civil Court of the District of Brusque, said that hiring Google’s advertising service is not safe enough to prevent crimes, which, according to her, causes moral damage to perpetrators and weakens victims of the blows.
“It is the defendant’s obligation to offer the safe sale of its advertising, to prevent this type of illicit act from being carried out through its digital advertising operation,” wrote the judge.
In a statement, Luciano Hang said that “platforms need to be held responsible, as in addition to causing damage to the image of people and companies, they generate incalculable losses for people”.
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The defense for the businessman and Havan said that the decision is “an important step to prevent scammers from using the name of serious companies to deceive consumers”.
In August, the same judge ruled in favor of Hang and Havan in a similar case against Facebook. At the time, the judge ordered Meta’s company to block fraudulent advertisements that had not been served by the company’s official accounts, under penalty of the same fine now imposed on Alphabet’s Google.
