A Reuters investigation ↗ revealed that Meta made $16 billion from scam ads in 2024—10% of total revenue. Internal documents show the company knowingly profited from fraud to fund AI development.
Users encounter about 15 billion “high risk” scam ads daily, plus 22 billion organic scam attempts. Meta platforms are involved in roughly one-third of all successful scams in the United States.
Meta’s System Makes It Worse#
Meta only bans advertisers when it’s 95% certain they’re fraudulent. Everyone else flagged as suspicious gets charged higher ad rates as a “penalty.” So Meta profits more from suspected scammers than legitimate advertisers.
Thanks to “ad personalization”, users who click one scam ad get shown more scam ads. It’s a feedback loop that maximizes revenue while exposing vulnerable users to escalating fraud.
Some accounts accumulated over 500 strikes before being shut down. Four campaigns alone generated $67 million monthly before removal. Meta’s enforcement teams operated under “revenue guardrails”—they couldn’t take actions costing more than $135 million per quarter.
The math: Meta estimated $1 billion in potential fines while earning $3.5 billion from risky scam ads every six months. Three-to-one profit margin on fraud.
Real-World Impact#
In October 2024, scammers hijacked a Royal Canadian Air Force recruiter’s account and ran crypto fraud ads using her identity. Despite over 100 reports, Meta took weeks to act. Five people were defrauded—one victim lost C$40,000 ($28,000 USD) believing he was talking to his trusted friend.
Meta’s own safety staff found 96% of valid fraud reports were ignored. Santa Clara County prosecutor Erin West: “I don’t know I’ve ever seen something taken down as the result of a single user report.”
Meta claims they reduced scam ad reports by 58% and removed 134 million scam posts in 2025.
Maybe people just gave up reporting because Meta doesn’t do anything about it.
Why would they try to fix it? They make tons of money from it, and they dictate the entire process from start to finish. They could make it go away very quickly if they cared to, but they don’t. They clearly spent all their time covering it up, instead of trying to fix the problem, because they do not agree on what the problem is. Even with this kind of reporting, my guess is that exactly nothing will change.