Meta is (reportedly) letting scammers target its users, so long as it keeps making the big ad dollars

In 2024, 10% of Meta‘s revenue–around $16 billion–came from predatory ads targeting users for things like scams, illegal gambling, and banned products.

And Meta knew about it.

An investigation from Reuters revealed that in early 2024, Meta devoted resources to figuring out why so much scam advertising was coming out of China. Chinese ads are big business on Meta; there are entire industries built around making, deploying, and “optimizing” them to reach the most eyeballs (often by finding loopholes in Meta’s platform rules), and together they purchase enough marketing to supply over one-tenth of Meta’s global annual revenue.

But Meta had noticed that with the flood of normal ads came a deluge of dangerous material: ads for unproven health supplements and directions to WhatsApp groups that pushed people from foreign nations to buy overpriced stock.

So, it took a closer look at Chinese ads–and the results were dire. “We need to make significant investment to reduce growing harm,” staffers told Meta leaders in an April 2024 presentation, Reuters reports.

Meta responded by forming an anti-fraud team that was focused on China. The team was effective: During the latter six months of 2024, it cut rule-breaking Chinese ads in half, dropping them from accounting for about 19% of China’s total ad revenue to 9%. That meant users were safer from scams–but it also meant Meta was bringing in less money.

According to Reuters, that just didn’t sit well with Mark Zuckerberg.

In late 2024, the China ads team was “asked to pause” work, it reports. This decision came from on high: “As a result of Integrity Strategy pivot and follow-up from Zuck,” an internal memo notes.

Ultimately, the special team wasn’t only paused–it was disbanded. At the same time, Meta walked back a freeze it had instituted to prevent new Chinese ad firms from accessing its platform, and inexplicably trunked other anti-scam efforts that it had determined would be effective..

You’re probably not going to be surprised by what happened after those changes were made: By the middle of 2025, Chinese scam/gambling/banned product ads were almost back to their previous levels, and now totally unchecked. Internally, Meta staffers refer to China as the platform’s #1 “scam exporting nation.”

Rob Leathern, who worked as a Senior Director of Product Management at Meta but left in 2020, told Reuters the level of predatory ads is “not defensible.”

“I don’t know how anyone could think this is okay,” he said.

Meanwhile, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the special China ads team was always meant to be temporary, and that actually, Zuckerberg didn’t order the team to be disbanded. Instead, Zuck’s order “was to redouble efforts to reduce [scams] all across the globe, including in China.”

“Scams are spiking across the internet, driven by persistent criminals and sophisticated, organized crime syndicates constantly evolving their schemes to evade detection,” Stone said. “We are focused on rooting them out by using advanced technical measures and new tools, disrupting criminal scam networks, working with industry partners and law enforcement, and raising awareness on our platforms.”

This all boils down to Meta (reportedly) being willing to sacrifice its users’ safety to earn an extra dollar. But while it may (reportedly) be willing to do that, some American lawmakers aren’t.

After another Reuters report last month, where the outlet noted Meta earns $7 billion a year from scams ads it considers “high risk,” U.S. senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal asked both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to look into Meta’s practices.

“The FTC and SEC should immediately open investigations and, if the reporting is accurate, pursue vigorous enforcement action where appropriate,” the duo wrote.