In the Deputy Editor’s Notebook | Régis Labeaume is not dead

No, Régis Labeaume is not dead.

Nor does Normand Brathwaite, contrary to what you read on “LAPRESSE.CA”.

The actor is not involved in a “global scandal”, he did not “regret having revealed his secret” to Everybody talks about itand he wasn’t “called a liar in front of thousands of live viewers” after finding a loophole in the global monetary system to enrich himself with cryptocurrency.

This is all false.

And all this has been circulating with impunity on Facebook for two years, under the logo of The Pressthe yellow button “I support La Presse”, the link lapresse.ca… which leads to a fraudulent site which tries to extract hundreds of dollars from you, and which sometimes succeeds, unfortunately, in doing so.

The same ploy uses newspaper dressing other times The world, CBC or CTV. It heavily stars Normand Brathwaite, but also sometimes Véronique Cloutier, Claude Legault or Marie-Claude Barrette.

I am talking about this to call on you to exercise the greatest caution when you see this type of status on social networks, but also to explain to you why we cannot eliminate them, despite all our attempts, legal interventions and formal notices. since May 2022…

These fake news sites may well have been denounced by a large number of media outlets across the country, but they come back every month like a weed, much to the anger of personalities whose identities are stolen.

And you can guess it: we completely share this anger. In addition to the photo of these artists, it is our brand image that is circulating, and fraudsters use the credibility associated with it to lure their victims.

The height of irony: Facebook banned real news from The Press from its platform since last August… but lets the false news from “La Presse” circulate. And even collects a commission from the band, because it is sponsored content!

Add to that that the user behind this content is often Mike Olbinski. A man in the flesh who exists for real, but whose identity and Facebook page were hacked, without Facebook doing anything about it.

It’s a sort of immense black hole created by the web giants, into which stars and media are sucked, totally powerless in the face of this use of their image.

And it is indeed helplessness that we feel at The Press, even if we are not deprived of resources. Our team of lawyers has been working for months to eliminate these fraudulent statuses.

In addition to sending two official formal notices, our lawyers Patrick Bourbeau and Jean-François Demers spoke with customer service representatives from Meta (sometimes a certain Beulah, sometimes Ember)… and read these exchanges would make your hair stand on end.

First, Meta’s responses ooze the crassest disempowerment. For each email received, the person on the other end of the emails responds that we did not send the right thing, the right image, the right URL, and thus pushes the problem forward.

Then the ping-pong of emails (all in English, of course) goes on for weeks and weeks, leading nowhere.

And finally, the final response sent by Facebook is mind-boggling: “Thank you for contacting us. We have reviewed your report and it is unclear whether the reported content infringes your trademark rights. »

Adding this insulting climax: “To learn more about intellectual property, please visit the Intellectual Property section of the Help Center”…

Exploding head emoji 🤯.

Perhaps it would be worth taking them to court after two years of unsuccessful efforts, you say?

Not so obvious. Do we really want to channel large sums of money into a legal battle that would obviously be long and very expensive? And this, for a result that is far from assured?

Imagine if we launched a lawsuit against Meta, one of the richest companies in the world, established in the United States, in a legislative context that we know is terribly favorable to the web giants: we would have for years and millions of dollars. And once the judgment has been filed, the fraudsters would only have to invent other fake sites, with other addresses, other frauds.

Here we touch on the total impunity of the web giants, of which we have yet another confirmation.

An impunity reinforced by the fact that only States – and then again – are capable of fighting with them.

An impunity that allows them to look the other way when it comes to disinformation and fake news, even if their platforms are largely responsible.

An impunity, in addition, which allows them to eliminate all traces of truthful news from their platform, while claiming to be incapable of removing this false news which increases the confusion… and their profits, of course.

Read the article “Fake obituaries: clickbaits that exploit death”

Read the article “Facebook: stop the media, green light to their usurpers”