Martin Lewis is right to take on Facebook – it has too much power

One of the ways Facebook has been able to get away with some pretty questionable behaviour over the years is that exploiting users’ data is an abstract problem that doesn’t seem to impinge on our daily lives, and for which there is no obvious solution. What can we really do if Facebook figures out our commute time to work and uses that information to sell advertising? And is it worth doing anything if we don’t even notice it’s happened?

This is why the news that Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert.com is planning on suing Facebook for defamation – after it failed to stop scam adverts appearing on its site that featured his face – presents an opportunity for campaigners seeking to impose regulations on Facebook. Lewis is an eminently recognisable figure, who is largely seen to be on the side of those who oppose swindling corporations. He has said he isn’t planning on keeping any potential damages from the case, but is partly using it as an opportunity to raise awareness about fake adverts. Facebook’s assertion that it is Lewis’s responsibility to report scams exploiting his image looks absurd.

To be clear, these adverts have not just appeared on Facebook, but all across the internet (including the Guardian) via what is known as “programmatic advertising”, which involves online publishers and platforms selling advertising space to brands or agencies. The adverts are displayed automatically, meaning Facebook doesn’t vet them. But some publishers are trying to tackle the risks inherent to programmatic advertising: last year Daniel Spears, programmatic director at the Guardian, appealed to publishers to clean it up, calling it “the art of buying crap”. Facebook, on the other hand, has told Lewis he must report adverts that use his name himself if he wants the matter to be addressed – despite the fact that Facebook is one of the internet’s biggest platform for programmatic advertising.

This is a new iteration of the Facebook scandal that is grounded in people’s experiences, and will have material consequences if left unaddressed. Campaigners can use it to emphasise the fact that the platform is a multinational corporation existing in the real world, not simply a website cooked up by a student in his dorm room – as Mark Zuckerberg might have it. As our lives become increasingly digitised, it’s more important than ever to hold internet giants to account; to be clear what their responsibilities are, and insist that they meet them.

When oil companies cause huge spills in our oceans, we have a collective understanding that they must clear them up (not that it always works out that way); when manufacturers sell faulty goods, they bear the cost and responsibility of recalling them. Yet Facebook refuses to take even minimal ownership over the content on its own website – despite the fact that it currently holds detailed information on 2 billion people. Zuckerberg himself is often treated like an overgrown nerd who became a billionaire and one of the world’s most powerful people by accident.

The only way the public will see Facebook regulation as an urgent matter is by recognising that the company’s level of power, if used irresponsibly, presents a danger to civic life. The Martin Lewis story presents an opportunity to do that – and campaigners should seize upon it. It’s time to stop allowing internet giants to behave as though they are operating in the wild west and impose the same level of restriction and regulation on them as we would on publishers. That is, after all, what we have governments for. It’s time to make sure they’re doing their jobs.

• Ellie Mae O’Hagan is a freelance journalist