Meta Tolerates Rampant Ad Fraud From China To Safeguard Billions In Revenue (reuters.com) 54
A Reuters investigation found that Meta knowingly tolerated large volumes of scam and illegal ads from China worth billions in revenue. Reuters reports: Though China's authoritarian government bans use of Meta social media by its citizens, Beijing lets Chinese companies advertise to foreign consumers on the globe-spanning platforms. As a result, Meta's advertising business was thriving in China, ultimately reaching over $18 billion in annual sales in 2024, more than a tenth of the company's global revenue. But Meta calculated that about 19% of that money -- more than $3 billion -- was coming from ads for scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned content, according to internal Meta documents reviewed by Reuters.
The documents are part of a cache of previously unreported material generated over the past four years by teams including Meta's finance, lobbying, engineering and safety divisions. The cache reveals Meta's efforts over that period to understand the scale of abuse on its platforms and the company's reluctance to introduce fixes that could undermine its business and revenues. The documents show that Meta believed China was the country of origin of roughly a quarter of all ads for scams and banned products on Meta's platforms worldwide. Victims ranged from shoppers in Taiwan who purchased bogus health supplements to investors in the United States and Canada who were swindled out of their savings. "We need to make significant investment to reduce growing harm," Meta staffers warned in an internal April 2024 presentation to leaders of its safety operations.
To that end, Meta created an anti-fraud team that went beyond previous efforts to monitor scams and other banned activity from China. Using a variety of stepped-up enforcement tools, it slashed the problematic ads by about half during the second half of 2024 -- from 19% to 9% of the total advertising revenue coming from China. Then Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg weighed in. "As a result of Integrity Strategy pivot and follow-up from Zuck," a late 2024 document notes, the China ads-enforcement team was "asked to pause" its work. Reuters was unable to learn the specifics of the CEO's involvement or what the so-called "Integrity Strategy pivot" entailed. But after Zuckerberg's input, the documents show, Meta disbanded its China-focused anti-scam team. It also lifted a freeze it had introduced on granting new Chinese ad agencies access to its platforms. One document shows that Meta shelved yet other anti-scam measures that internal tests had indicated would be effective. The document didn't detail the specifics of those measures.
Meta took these steps even as an outside consultant it hired produced research that warned "Meta's own behavior and policies" were fostering systemic corruption in the Chinese market for ads targeting users in other countries, additional documents show. The upshot: Within a few months of Meta's brief crackdown, a new crop of Chinese advertising agencies was flooding Facebook and Instagram with prohibited ads. By mid-2025, banned ads climbed back to about 16% of Meta's China revenue. Rob Leathern, who was a senior director of product management at Facebook until 2020 and is no longer at the company, said the scale of predatory advertising revealed in the documents represents a major breakdown in consumer protections at the social media giant. "The levels that you're talking about are not defensible," he said of the percentage of abusive ads. "I don't know how anyone could think this is okay."
The documents are part of a cache of previously unreported material generated over the past four years by teams including Meta's finance, lobbying, engineering and safety divisions. The cache reveals Meta's efforts over that period to understand the scale of abuse on its platforms and the company's reluctance to introduce fixes that could undermine its business and revenues. The documents show that Meta believed China was the country of origin of roughly a quarter of all ads for scams and banned products on Meta's platforms worldwide. Victims ranged from shoppers in Taiwan who purchased bogus health supplements to investors in the United States and Canada who were swindled out of their savings. "We need to make significant investment to reduce growing harm," Meta staffers warned in an internal April 2024 presentation to leaders of its safety operations.
To that end, Meta created an anti-fraud team that went beyond previous efforts to monitor scams and other banned activity from China. Using a variety of stepped-up enforcement tools, it slashed the problematic ads by about half during the second half of 2024 -- from 19% to 9% of the total advertising revenue coming from China. Then Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg weighed in. "As a result of Integrity Strategy pivot and follow-up from Zuck," a late 2024 document notes, the China ads-enforcement team was "asked to pause" its work. Reuters was unable to learn the specifics of the CEO's involvement or what the so-called "Integrity Strategy pivot" entailed. But after Zuckerberg's input, the documents show, Meta disbanded its China-focused anti-scam team. It also lifted a freeze it had introduced on granting new Chinese ad agencies access to its platforms. One document shows that Meta shelved yet other anti-scam measures that internal tests had indicated would be effective. The document didn't detail the specifics of those measures.
Meta took these steps even as an outside consultant it hired produced research that warned "Meta's own behavior and policies" were fostering systemic corruption in the Chinese market for ads targeting users in other countries, additional documents show. The upshot: Within a few months of Meta's brief crackdown, a new crop of Chinese advertising agencies was flooding Facebook and Instagram with prohibited ads. By mid-2025, banned ads climbed back to about 16% of Meta's China revenue. Rob Leathern, who was a senior director of product management at Facebook until 2020 and is no longer at the company, said the scale of predatory advertising revealed in the documents represents a major breakdown in consumer protections at the social media giant. "The levels that you're talking about are not defensible," he said of the percentage of abusive ads. "I don't know how anyone could think this is okay."
Late 2024, huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder what else [theguardian.com] happened in late 2024...
Meta reflects Zuckerberg (Score:5, Insightful)
He has complete control of the company. If he doesn't know what is going on somewhere in the company, it is because he isn't paying attention or doesn't want to know.
And this has been his only job. His entire adult life has been dedicated to manipulating people through a screen to make line go up.
Why would he care about people getting scammed when the line can go up?
Re:Meta reflects Zuckerberg (Score:4, Insightful)
Bingo, think about their incentives; the government isn't going to care as of late 2024, they are probably not seeing customers leave at an amount to be concerned about, not anywhere near enough to counter the money. The markets don't care and then the shareholders obviously love it, maybe these employees feel a tinge of concern but you know then they look at their portfolio.
So what's the incentive for Meta to stop this? It's overall probably bad for society and the economy and consumers and even national security but there's no incentive for Meta to care about those.
Companies choosing to care about the greater social impact they have is very old fashioned and even when they were kinda trying to pretend to care half the country and media excoriated them and made ESG a slur. So what's left?
Meta Reflects America (Score:2)
It's easy for foreign intelligence services to find an American willing to sell out their country for the right price, in this case 1.9% of revenue.
This is small though, compared to some of the scams the Chinese, Saudis, and more pull, aided by America's own government. It's like a circle jerk of guys fucking over their own countries and sending money back and forth between each other. A few of them need to go to break the cycle.
Re: (Score:2)
Only if the fine for each scam ad would be a billion he'd care.
Re: (Score:3)
Meta is like Trump (Score:1, Funny)
Both criminal ped0s.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't believe it's been proven that Trump is personally a pedophile. Merely that he is friends with a few.
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It hasn't been proven in court, but there's been more solid evidence presented than there was against Cosby. Who, BTW, totally also did all that shit, inb4 some bullshit
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It hasn't been proven in court, but there's been more solid evidence presented than there was against Cosby.
No fan of Darth Cheeto, but that is simply not true. Cosby was deposed in a civil suit and admitted in his testimony to drugging women so he could have sex with them.
Who, BTW, totally also did all that shit
He totally did (see above). It is, in fact, why he is not currently in prison because, despite the DA granting him immunity for said testimony to remove his 5th amendment protections, that deposition was used against him in his criminal trial and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated his conviction as a result.
So while it hasn't been proven in a court (Score:2)
That's in addition to 20 that at least involved adult women.
Now the first time a woman accuses a man of raping her when she was a child that's bad but he's famous and maybe... The second time you have to start to wonder but again maybe... By the third time we've got a pattern and by the 5th I don't think any reasonable person would not be believing the women. By the 8th he's practically a Catholi
Re: (Score:2)
Im fairly sure quite a few of his supporters have been coming to that conclusion.
I'd wager if you got MTG away from a camera and the threat of being smacked by trumps team of lawyers, she'd have some choice words on this matter. (and probably some crazy words on it too, this is after the jewish space lazer woman, but I digress.....)
They don't care (Score:1)
A depressingly large number of men in their 20s hit on high school girls because they are vulnerable and easy pickins. Now Trump went after girls as young as 13 with an emphasis on ones that looked Young. I think Trump is an actual full-blown clinical pedophile. And that's just the clinical definition he's certainly a pedophile by any reasonable person's definition.
But as long as there is the slightest amount of
Oh come on you're exaggerating (Score:2)
Holy shit I didn't think this bot (Score:2)
It makes me wonder if we couldn't do another santorum if we put a little bit of effort into it.
Like if everybody just went on to their socials and just started posting the unmitigated fact that Trump fucks kids and reminded people over and over and over and over again how Trump does in fact fuck kids if mnd b
Re: (Score:1)
Oh yeah just that he liked hanging out in the miss teen USA locker rooms and that he knew epstein likes his women "on the younger side" but also that he was a great guy.
But we have yet to find a photograph of trump boning a high school freshman. Right? So let's be fair people!
Obligatory (Score:1)
Fuck the Zuck!
OH! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Why just pick on Meta? YouTube is also a haven for scam advertising. That robot AI puppy ad has been running for *weeks*, despite thousands of people reporting it and tweets to @teamyoutube on X who simply say "leave it with us, we'll look into it" -- yeah, on what timescale?
The reality is that big-tech is not interested in protecting users of their services, they're only interested in the bottom line and a scammer's money is as good as anyone's.
How is it that YouTube can take down *millions* of videos an
Re: (Score:2)
If anything, their adverts put me off their brand/products.
Facebook has ads? Huh. (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.facebook.com/?filt... [facebook.com]
This displays only friends and accounts I follow, in reverse chronological order.
To completely avoid ads, I report every "sponsored" link as sexually inappropriate... triggering a human review each time
After I do this about half a dozen times, FB stops inserting ads in my reverse chron feed for several months.
When I see another "Sponsored" item, I just start reporting them again..
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Got to say, if I used Facebook at all I really love this hack.
Re: (Score:3)
What a burning insult from an AC who can't be bothered to putting their name to their opinion.
Re: (Score:1)
I gotta admit this guy has a pretty solid plan, it no doubt costs facebook money to have him around.
The one obvious flaw in this is that he has to go to facebook which is one of the most low signal to noise ratio forums on the entire net, with some of the dumbest opinions, and meanest posters.
Truly a garbage platform that stayed good only long enough to turn the rest of the net into a wasteland.
Re: (Score:2)
I've been using an FB blocker hosts file (not sure if it was this one, but here's an example: https://gist.github.com/djaiss... [github.com]) - thus far has been very effective ;-)
I like the idea of constantly reporting ads as inappropriate. Maybe start an FB group promoting that idea ;-)
When I last used facebook (many, many years ago), advertising was pretty low-key, but adblock used to get rid of it very effectively. I'd imagine ublock would do it now too. Only the hosts file definitely stops all those third party tra
Watched someone infect their computer on Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems they encourage this kind of behavior (Score:5, Informative)
From last week's article, usually Meta doesn't ban an ad reported or automatically flag as fraudulent, instead they raise their fee:
"But the company only bans advertisers if its automated systems predict the marketers are at least 95% certain to be committing fraud, the documents show. If the company is less certain – but still believes the advertiser is a likely scammer – Meta charges higher ad rates as a penalty, according to the documents"
This is big business for Meta:
"Meta internally projected late last year that it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue – or $16 billion – from running advertising for scams and banned goods, internal company documents show." - https://www.reuters.com/invest... [reuters.com]
And of those 16 billion dollars, we see today that Meta is making about 20% of that amount from advertisers in China:
"more than $3 billion -- was coming from ads for scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned content [from China], according to internal Meta documents" - https://www.reuters.com/invest... [reuters.com]
Repeal Section 230 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Repeal Section 230 (Score:5, Informative)
Repeal it, and this problem goes away.
And so does Slashdot.
Re: (Score:1)
More accurately, only Slashdot would vanish the instant 230 is repealed.
Meta and Facebook would have the resources to keep going.
Re: (Score:1)
This exactly. My first thought.
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot is already going away. New sign-ups are blocked, have been for 2 years now. As people here lose interest the site will disappear.
Business Model (Score:1)
I think the idea is to keep the forum running basically as a service to oldheads and to decorate the articles in the news feed.
I have a feeling that a lot more people READ slashdot out of 20 years of habit than actually post here, if you look you will see a lot of old accounts that were like daily or weekly posters that have a short discussion once or twice a decade.
Forums in this stage of life tend to hold out a long time this way. There are a bunch of other old forums on the net and you'll find they're l
Re:Repeal Section 230 (Score:5, Informative)
From: "Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act"
https://www.techdirt.com/2020/... [techdirt.com]
If you said "Section 230 means these companies can never be sued!"
I regret to inform you that you are wrong. Internet companies are sued all the time. Section 230 merely protects them from a narrow set of frivolous lawsuits, in which the websites are sued either for the content created by others (in which case the actual content creators remain liable) or in cases where they're being sued for the moderation choices they make, which are mostly protected by the 1st Amendment anyway (but Section 230 helps get those frivolous lawsuits kicked out faster). The websites can and do still face lawsuits for many, many other reasons.
If you said "Section 230 is a get out of jail card for websites!"
You're wrong. Again, websites are still 100% liable for any content that they themselves create. Separately, Section 230 explicitly exempts federal criminal law - meaning that stories that blame things like sex trafficking and opioid sales on 230 are very much missing the point as well. The Justice Department is not barred by Section 230. It says so quite clearly:
Nothing in this section shall be construed to impair the enforcement of ... any other Federal criminal statute
So many of the complaints about criminal activity are not about Section 230, but about a lack of enforcement.
Re: (Score:2)
Section 230 of the communications decency act gives online service providers the freedom to publish anything they want. Repeal it, and this problem goes away.
False. It protects them from the content people create. It does not given them a free pass to accept and publish their own content (paid for) commercially.
Re: (Score:1)
Lol as if the CDA is the root cause of facebook's immunity.
Instead of repealing section 230 let's do what we started 30 years ago and repeal the whole thing, desecrate the graves of former senators Exon and Gorton in front of their surviving family and build more statues with big boobs in DC to celebrate.
Meta 'truth' (Score:1)
Another day, another shitty Meta news story (Score:2)
I now only update my shitty Meta news [skoll.ca] page once in a while. There's probably enough material to update it daily or even more.
I happen to know that this is true long time ago (Score:4, Interesting)