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   Meta reportedly makes 10% of its revenue from fraudulent ads and scams   
      
   Date:   
   Fri, 07 Nov 2025 14:40:50 +0000   
      
   Description:   
   Meta apparently makes huge profits from fraudulent ads - so is it in the   
   companys interest to crack down?   
      
   FULL STORY   
      
   The number of scam adverts and less than legitimate product listings on    
   social media platforms certainly seems to have dramatically increased in the   
   last few years, but a new report claims the websites themselves could be   
   partly to blame.    
      
   Internal projections seen by Reuters reveal Meta, the company behind Facebook   
   and Instagram, apparently earns a projected 10% of its annual revenue from    
   the advertising of scams and banned goods - amounting to around $16 billion.    
      
   Documents also suggest the social media conglomerate failed to identify and   
   stop an avalanche of ads, leaving billions of Instagram, Facebook, and   
   WhatsApp users at risk from the fraudulent ecosystem.   
      
   A so-called crackdown    
      
   Over the years, Meta has publicized efforts to undergo major crackdowns on   
   organized crime , pig-butchering scams, and social engineering attacks - even   
   going so far as to remove up to 2 million accounts from the Facebook    
   platform.    
      
   Meta told TechRadar Pro it is 'aggressively fights fraud ' on its platforms,   
   'because people on our platforms dont want this content, legitimate   
   advertisers dont want it and we dont want it either'.    
      
   "Scammers are persistent criminals whose efforts, often driven by ruthless   
   cross-border criminal networks that operate on a global scale, continue to   
   grow in sophistication and complexity. As scam activity becomes more   
   persistent and sophisticated, so do our efforts. Unfortunately, the leaked   
   documents present a selective view that distorts Metas approach to fraud and   
   scams by focusing on our efforts to assess the scale of the challenge, not    
   the full range of actions we have taken to address the problem."    
      
   But, these new documents revealed that even marketers that were suspicious   
   enough to be flagged by Metas internal warning systems are often allowed to   
   continue, only getting banned once the prediction for fraud reaches 95%.    
      
   That means, if Meta is 94% sure that an advert is scamming its users - its   
   allowed to continue. Shockingly, Meta actually makes more money from adverts   
   it believes to be scams - charging a higher ad rate as a penalty.    
      
   So, is there really much of an incentive for Meta to remove fraudsters    
   preying on users? Even Meta doesnt think so.    
      
   In the documents, Meta reportedly weighs up the revenue it earns from scam   
   adverts, and the regulatory fines that it believes are inevitable if these   
   high-risk scam ads are not mitigated. Note here that Meta is not suggesting    
   it would voluntarily do more to vet advertisers in order to protect    
   consumers, but rather that it would act under threat of impending regulatory   
   penalties.    
      
   Thousands of scams have been spotted on Meta platforms with varying degrees    
   of success and severity, but criminals are undoubtedly making a lot of money   
   from these tricks (and so is Meta). In the UK, Meta products were involved in   
   as much as 54% of all payment-related scam losses in 2023, the report reveals   
   - outlining just how endemic this problem is, making it all the more    
   abhorrent that Meta chooses to continue profiting from it.   
      
   ======================================================================   
   Link to news story:   
   https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/meta-reportedly-makes-10-percent-of-its   
   -revenue-from-fraudulent-ads-and-scams   
      
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