Meta, the largest social media company in the world, knowingly makes billions from scam ads, recent reporting on the company says. According to internal documents revealed by Reuters, users of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp see 15 billion ads a day promoting scams, from fake Trump stimulus checks to deepfakes of Elon Musk hawking cryptocurrency. The company reportedly knows this; Reuters said that its own trust and safety team estimated that one-third of scams in the US involved a Meta platform. So why hasn’t Meta done more? Perhaps because these ads are apparently highly profitable, to the tune of $7 billion US or more a year.
Scams are not a small problem. Americans alone reported $16 billion in losses to the FBI last year, and this number is likely lower than the actual amount because scams are notoriously underreported. (Victims of scams are often deeply embarrassed for falling for them.) Globally, the numbers are enormous: the Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimates that scammers stole more than $1 trillion from people worldwide in 2024.
And the people who lose money from scams can scarcely afford it. Often, victims of scams are elderly people on fixed incomes, young people looking for jobs, immigrants, and others going through transitions or difficult times. These are people for whom the promise of an extra thousand dollars in government benefits or a stable job is highly motivating. Losing even a few hundred dollars to a scammer can be devastating.
But not for Meta. Reuters reports that internal company documents show Meta earns $16 billion — 10 percent of its overall annual revenue — each year from scam ads and ads for banned goods. $7 billion of this comes from ads that present obvious hallmarks of scams, such as falsely claiming to represent public figures or brands. Even heavy fines would pale against these enormous profits.
As researchers who’ve written about AI and scams, we are often asked what can be done about it. Rather than financial literacy and anti-scam campaigns that put pressure on individuals — which often add to the shame people feel when they do fall victim to scams — we must hold Meta accountable for its role in this shameful cycle of harm.
The solution to scams isn’t putting the responsibility on individuals to avoid them
Meta appears easily able to identify many scam advertisements. But according to Reuters, its own systems require 95 percent certainty that an ad is fake before it is removed. And when an ad is identified as a scam, The Wall Street Journal reports that Meta grants between eight and thirty-two “strikes” before the account that posted it is banned. As a result, even scam advertisers with flagged, removed ads can run other ads for months — or even other versions of the same ad — reaping thousands of dollars from innocent victims. The online payment platform Zelle told The Wall Street Journal that half of scams reported by their users involved Meta.
Unfortunately, the online ad ecosystem makes the problem worse. Someone who clicks on a scam ad will be shown more scam ads, due to the algorithmic recommendation systems integrated into virtually all social platforms. This means that people who are most vulnerable to fraudulent ads, those who are interested enough to click on them, will receive even more.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone disputed the Reuters report. “The leaked documents present a selective view that distorts Meta’s 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,” Stone said in an email to The Verge. “This number was a rough and overly-inclusive estimate rather than a definitive or final figure; in fact, subsequent review revealed that many of these ads weren’t violating at all.” Stone emphasized the growing scale and sophistication of scam efforts and said user reports of scam ads have declined by over 50 percent in the last 15 months.
Scams are a global industry, fueled by the growth of Southeast Asian scam compounds run by transnational criminal organizations with heavy ties to online gambling. These scam compounds are staffed by victims of human trafficking, lured by promises of white-collar jobs into conditions similar to slavery. Threatened by violence, young people are forced to spend long days on romance and investment scams. These criminal enterprises are rapidly adopting automation and artificial intelligence to supercharge their scams, increasing their scope and scale and constantly diversifying their techniques. The types of ads that Meta platforms run are often AI-enhanced, using deepfakes of famous entrepreneurs to promote fraudulent investment opportunities and synthetic video of American politicians to tout nonexistent stimulus checks. As technology improves and criminal syndicates continue to thrive, this problem will likely get worse.
If a tiny nonprofit can identify fraud better than a multibillion-dollar company, the company is at fault
Meta has a responsibility to act. First, it should lower the barrier to removing scam advertisements. Once an advertiser has a single scam ad removed, all the others should be removed as well. Second, Meta should expand the sophistication of the tactics used to identify fraudulent ads. The investigative watchdog group the Tech Transparency Project was easily able to find scam ads by using a simple set of criteria: the ad was hawking fake government benefits, it was using FTC-identified scam tactics, victims had complained to the Better Business Bureau about the scam, or, simply, Meta had removed the advertiser’s former ads for scamming. (If a tiny nonprofit can do a better job of identifying fraudulent ads than a multibillion-dollar company, the company is clearly at fault.) Third, Meta should institute verified advertiser requirements, where only advertisers using “real names” can purchase ads. This would also cut down on the use of deepfake ads and provide a paper trail for regulators and law enforcement.
Clearly, more regulation over online advertising is also necessary. Governments should treat major tech platforms like Meta as complicit actors in the scam ecosystem, given that these companies make billions of dollars in profit annually from fraudulent advertisements, while using deliberately weak detection standards that allow scammers to operate with near-impunity.
Governments should elevate scam prevention to a national priority, and put platforms like Meta at the center of those efforts. The FTC has the right to regulate “unfair or deceptive acts or practices,” including false advertising. They could require platforms to verify advertiser identity and review ads before they run and allow independent, third-party audits of online advertising systems. Regulators should also raise the fines platforms face for scam ads to amounts that would actually deter them from running them. A scam victims compensation fund could be financed by these fines.
State-level legislatures could pass laws mandating similar requirements if the federal government is unwilling to act. State attorneys general can launch consumer protection lawsuits under existing state consumer fraud and deceptive trade practices laws. This is not a partisan issue. Scams affect everyone.
Meta has repeatedly shown that the health and well-being of its users are less important than its bottom line. In 2018, the company, then known as Facebook, admitted that it had not done enough to prevent its platform from being used to foment genocide in Myanmar — now a failed state and home to the very scam compounds whose ads make Meta so much money. If its past actions aren’t enough to move law- and policymakers to act on the company’s negligence, maybe the billions of dollars sucked out of vulnerable users’ pockets will be.
