Meta’s (Facebook) Scam Problem Is Much Bigger Than You Think

Internal documents show something staggering. Meta is serving 15 billion scam ads a day. At the same time, it expected 10 percent of its 2024 revenue to come from ads for scams and banned products.

What really shocked me is how Meta deals with suspicious advertisers. If it is not 95 percent sure they are scammers, it does not remove them. It just charges them more to run the ad.

So the answer to mass fraud is not to protect users. It is to bill the scammers a premium.

Meta’s systems also mean that if you click on one scam ad, you are likely to see more of them. And its own research says the platforms are involved in a third of all successful scams in the US.

This is the real story. Not the press releases. Not the spin.
A global tech giant earning billions from ads it believes are fraudulent, while presenting itself as a leader in safety.

If banks were allowed to profit from fraud like this, there would be outrage. It should be the same here.