The Federal Trade Commission wants public comment by Nov. 30 on a question that touches the largest names in online advertising: should social media sites, search engines and shopping platforms be made to vet the advertisers behind scam ads that impersonate businesses. A consumer alert posted on Nov. 2 put the open comment period in front of the public again. The answers could decide whether a rule that now punishes scammers gets extended to the platforms that carry their ads.
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The scale of the problem is the agency’s argument. Consumers filed more than 1 million imposter scam reports with the FTC in 2025 and reported nearly $3.5 billion in losses. Close to 30% of the people who said they lost money named social media as the place the scammer first reached them, and that group reported $2.1 billion in losses.
Those figures come from the September 24 announcement, which said the Commission voted 2-0 to send an advance notice of proposed rulemaking to the Federal Register. Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said impersonation scams “erode the very foundation that allows competitive markets to function.” The notice asks whether the ad-optimization tools that platforms sell, such as audience targeting and ad-content creation, help scammers pose as real companies and government agencies, and whether that conduct is unfair or deceptive.
Three platform duties the agency has floated
The FTC consumer alert lists the possible requirements in plain terms. Platforms could be required to vet advertisers and their ads before anything is posted. They could be required to give people a way to report an ad that impersonates a business or the government. And they could be required to investigate suspected impersonation ads and remove the ones that turn out to be scams.
The alert frames all three as questions, not decisions. The FTC says it is considering changes to the existing rule or a brand-new rule, with the goal of making social media companies, search engines and other digital marketplaces more accountable for impersonation ads.
Vetting is the most demanding of the three, because it shifts the checking from after a victim complains to before an ad ever runs. The advance notice probes how that might work in practice, including whether reviewing an advertiser’s website or confirming who is behind an account would be enough, and what such checks would cost the platforms that already process enormous volumes of ads.
From the 2024 Impersonation Rule to an advance notice
The rule at the center of this is 16 CFR Part 461, finalized in March 2024. As the Federal Register text shows, it bars materially and falsely posing as a government or a business, or misrepresenting an affiliation with or endorsement by one, and it took effect on April 1, 2024. In that same document the Commission declined to finalize a proposed provision aimed at those who supply the means and instrumentalities of impersonation, and sought more comment instead.
The new notice returns to that unfinished territory. In the advance notice itself, filed under Matter No. R207000, the agency names Google, Facebook, Amazon, the Apple App Store and LinkedIn as examples of digital marketplace platforms. It asks how many of them accept ads, which optimization tools they offer, how much revenue those tools generate, and whether they verify an advertiser’s identity before granting access to the tools. It also asks whether identity verification would be a cost-effective way to cut down on deceptive ads.
The legal theory rests on Section 5 of the FTC Act, which bars unfair or deceptive acts or practices. The notice argues that some platform conduct could violate that section and be addressed by rule, and it separately asks whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act limits that authority.
Reporting tools and removal duties are less novel, since many large platforms already offer a report button on ads. The open question is whether a rule would turn those voluntary systems into obligations with deadlines and records the agency could audit.
Filing a comment before Nov. 30
Comments were due 60 days after the notice ran in the Federal Register, which puts the closing date at November 30, 2026. Anyone can file, whether a consumer who has been fooled by a fake brand ad, a small business whose name was borrowed, or a platform that disagrees with the whole idea. Submissions can be made online or in writing, and the Federal Register document carries the filing instructions. The press release says comments will be posted to Regulations.gov.
An advance notice is the earliest stage of the rulemaking ladder. Nothing in it obliges a platform to do anything yet. If the comments persuade the Commission to proceed, the next step would be a formal proposed rule with specific text, followed by another round of comment. How long that takes, and whether Section 230 turns out to be a barrier, are the open questions the FTC itself put to the public.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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