Meta projected it will earn billions from intentionally ignoring scam advertisements

A new report citing internal documents has revealed that Meta internally projected it would earn billions from ignoring scam advertisements on its platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

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The bombshell report from Reuters revealed five years of Meta's practices, along with failures to prevent scammers from exploiting users on its platforms. As the documents showed, Meta was tentative about removing accounts; it even considered the "scammiest scammers". The hesitation to remove these accounts was, in part, a concern about the revenue drop the company could face without them on these platforms.

Instead of immediately removing accounts it believed to be scam, Meta enabled these accounts to accrue more than 500 strikes without them being disabled. Moreover, the report states that Meta increased the cost to run ads for these accounts, as the documents indicate Meta "penalizing" scam accounts by charging higher rates. Furthermore, the documents showed Meta acknowledging that scam accounts used Meta's system to target users who were more likely to click on the scam advertisements.

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"Users who click on scam ads are likely to see more of them because of Meta's ad-personalization system, which tries to deliver ads based on a user's interests," reported Reuters

Additionally, Meta's internal documents revealed that its users across all platforms are estimated to be hit with 15 billion "high risk" scam ads every day, which is separate from the 22 billion organic scam attempts that Meta users endure every day, per 2024 documentation. Notably, Meta estimated last year that it would generate about $16 billion from scam ads, which is approximately 10% of the company's revenue.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Reuters that the documentation the publication acquired presents a "selective view that distorts Meta's approach to fraud and scams," and the estimate the company would earn about 10% of its 2024 revenue from scam ads was "rough and overly-inclusive." However, Stone didn't divulge the accurate number.