Scam ads and fake product listings have exploded on social media lately. A new report suggests that the companies that run these platforms, such as Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), are part of the problem.
Internal Meta documents reveal something surprising. The company reportedly earns about 10% of its yearly income, around $16 billion, from ads for scams and banned items. These documents also suggest Meta “failed to find and stop a flood of ads,” putting billions of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users at risk from dishonest schemes.
Meta has often told the public it’s fighting organized crime and other online threats, even claiming it removed millions of accounts. Meta told TechRadar Pro that they “aggressively fight fraud” because users, good advertisers, and the company itself don’t want such content. They argued that the leaked documents only show part of the story, focusing on how they track the problem rather than all the steps they take.
However, these new documents tell a different story. They reveal that even advertisers flagged as suspicious by Meta’s own systems often keep running their ads. Meta only bans them when its fraud prediction hits a very high 95%. This means if Meta is 94% sure an ad is a scam, it’s still allowed to run. Even more surprising, Meta actually makes more money from ads it suspects are scams by charging them higher rates as a penalty.
This raises a big question: Does Meta truly have a strong reason to get rid of fraudsters hurting its users? The documents suggest Meta itself doesn’t think so. The company reportedly compares the money it makes from scam ads against the fines it might face from regulators if it doesn’t reduce these risky ads. Meta would act more out of concern for potential government penalties than to protect its customers.
Thousands of scams have appeared on Meta platforms, and criminals are clearly making a lot of money from these tricks. In the UK alone, Meta products accounted for 54% of all money lost to scams in 2023. This shows how big the problem is, making Meta’s continued profit from it even more concerning.
