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Last year, Meta projected that 10% of its overall annual revenue — $16 billion — would come from fraudulent advertisements on its apps, according to a report from Reuters.
The documents accessed by Reuters also show that for three years, Meta failed to protect its users from ads promoting illegal gambling, investment schemes, and banned medical products. These fraudulent ads purport to offer a product or service that isn’t actually real, and may be intended to solicit payments from less savvy users.
Meta has a system for detecting the likelihood that an advertising campaign is a scam, but the company only deactivates an advertiser’s account if it is 95% sure that the advertiser is committing fraud. Otherwise, Meta will charge more money from advertisers that it suspects may be doing fraud as a way to discourage them from buying more advertising — but when those advertisers follow through anyway, it pads Meta’s bottom line.
TechCrunch contacted Meta for comment, but did not hear back before publication. Per Reuters’ report, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone claimed that the documents Reuters used “present a selective view that distorts Meta’s approach to fraud and scams.”
Stone added that over the last 18 months, Meta has reduced user reports of scam ads by 58%, and the company has removed over 134 million scam ads from its platforms.
