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The Story
Meta’s platforms carried scam ads at huge scale; whether that became knowing legal wrongdoing is still before investigators and courts.
Meta’s ordinary institutional explanation is that scam advertising is a difficult moderation problem at enormous scale, not proof that every harmful ad was deliberately approved. The company denies that allegations describe its work accurately and says it has reduced scam reports, while regulators and courts continue examining its conduct.
- Meta said allegations that it profited from scam advertising misrepresent the reality of its work and said it would fight the lawsuit.
- Meta told senators that scam reports had fallen by 58%, while the senators still sought FTC and SEC investigations.
- A federal court order records allegations that Meta knew or should have known scammers used its platform, but the order itself does not establish those allegations as proven facts.
Deeper Insight
Meta's crackdown playbook treated scam ads as a revenue risk, turning moderation into a fight against its own business model.
Fifteen billion high-risk ads a day is not a glitch in the wallpaper. Reuters found Meta projected about $16 billion from scam and banned-product ads, while internal documents weighed crackdown costs and even mapped ways to limit regulatory pressure. That makes public lawsuits and investigations the levers users still have.
- Reuters reported that Meta internally estimated its platforms showed users about 15 billion higher-risk scam ads daily and projected roughly $16 billion, or 10% of annual revenue, from scam and banned-product ads.
- Internal documents reviewed by Reuters indicated Meta wanted to minimize the revenue impact of cracking down on fraudulent Chinese advertising, with about 19% of its Chinese advertising revenue tied to scams and other banned content.
- Reuters reported that Meta created a playbook to delay or limit pressure from regulators, including making scam ads harder for authorities to find.
Sources · 7
Featured · Analysis · reuters.com
Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show | Reuters
Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show | Reuters # Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, documents seen by Reuters show. And the social media gian
Read sourcePrimary source · storage.courtlistener.com
storage.courtlistener.com
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA CHRISTOPHER CALISE, et al., Plaintiffs, v. META PLATFORMS, INC., Defendant. Case No. 21-cv-06186-JSW ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART DEFENDANT META PLATFORMS, INC.’S MOTION TO DISMISS Re: Dkt. No. 57 Now before the Court for con
Read sourceAnalysis · techdirt.com
Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Meta Had A Lotta Scams, Lotta Scams, Lotta Scams
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation ‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts , Overcast , Spotify , Pocket Casts , YouTube , or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed . To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on Patreon . In this week’s episode, Ben is joined by
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