Meta internally projected late last year that about 10% of its annual revenue – roughly US$16 billion – would come from advertising for scams and banned products, according to internal company documents reviewed by Reuters.
The trove of previously unseen documents shows that Meta failed for at least three years to stop a flood of fraudulent ads that exposed billions of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users to fake e-commerce, investment schemes, illegal gambling, and prohibited medical products.
One December 2024 document estimated that Meta users see about 15 billion “high-risk” scam ads daily. Another put annualized revenue from this category at around US$7 billion.
Most fraudulent ads were flagged internally as suspicious, but Meta only banned advertisers if its system predicted a 95% certainty of fraud. When uncertainty was lower, Meta imposed higher ad rates as a penalty instead of removal.
The documents further note that users who click scam ads are likely to see more of them, due to Meta’s personalization algorithm.
Drawn from finance, lobbying, engineering and safety divisions between 2021 and 2025, the documents reveal Meta’s reluctance to restrict lucrative but risky ad content.
Former Meta safety investigator Sandeep Abraham, now head of Risky Business Solutions, told Reuters that Meta’s acceptance of suspected fraudulent revenue underscored weak regulation of the tech ad industry.
“If regulators wouldn’t tolerate banks profiting from fraud, they shouldn’t tolerate it in tech,” he said.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Reuters that the documents “present a selective view that distorts Meta’s approach to fraud and scams.”
He said the 10.1% estimate was “rough and overly inclusive” and included “many legitimate ads.”
Stone added: “We aggressively fight fraud and scams because users, legitimate advertisers and we ourselves don’t want this content.”
He said scam reports have dropped by 58% globally in 18 months, with 134 million scam ads removed in 2025.
Other documents showed Meta setting new goals to reduce scam ads by up to 50% in some markets this year.
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