Adscend Media is the jerk ad agency responsible for many of the “OMG LOL THIS VIDEO IS SO GOOD JUSTIN BEIBER” links on Facebook that, when clicked, spam the same crap link to your friends. It has just been fined $US100,000 by a Washington court for spamming and scamming Facebook users.
The thing is, that $US100,000 fine looks tiny compared to the $US1.2 million that Adscend Media brings in every month; 80 per cent of which comes from the scammy links that, really, should be punishable by orbital bombardment. Facebook itself is trying to legislate stuff like this out of our lives, and this decision is a step in that direction, but there’s still a lot of lawyering left to do. [Venture Beat]