Internal Meta documents, reviewed by Reuters, revealed the company expected to earn roughly $16 billion last year from ads promoting scams and banned products, accounting for about 10% of its total revenue.
According to the report, the documents also show that billions of users on company platforms like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were exposed through ads to fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online gambling and banned medical products for over three years without the company intervening to stop it.
One December 2024 document shows that the platforms display an average of 15 billion “higher-risk” scam ads each day. This distinction is for ads that meet a clear criteria of being fraudulent. From messages marked in this category, Meta earns approximately $7 billion annually.
While it may appear that Meta was unaware the ads were scams, Reuters reported that the activity was flagged by the company’s internal warning system designed to identify suspicious marketers. Meta only bans advertisers when its automated systems assess a 95% or higher likelihood of fraud. Advertisers deemed likely, but not certain, to be committing fraud are instead charged higher ad rates as a penalty.
Findings indicate that once a user interacts with one scam ad, they are likely to be served more fraudulent content since the algorithm prioritizes specific patterns and interests.
The insights into Meta’s internal review comes from documents spanning 2021 to 2025, covering the company’s finance, lobbying, engineering and safety divisions. The discovery not only highlights Meta’s unwillingness to institute regulations that might harm their profit goals but speaks to the larger problem with regulating advertising in big tech as a whole.
In a statement made to Reuters, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the documents “present a selective view that distorts Meta’s approach to fraud and scams.” According to Stone, the company’s number was far lower than 10% of its annual revenue. “The assessment was done to validate our planned integrity investments – including in combatting frauds and scams – which we did,” Stone continued. “We aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don’t want this content, legitimate advertisers don’t want it and we don’t want it either.”
Meta, however, does seem aware that it’s a growing problem as some of the documents reportedly show Meta “vowing to do more” with goals to reduce overall ad scams.
Meta did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
