Why We Can't Expect Meta to Stop Online Scams on Its Own

Only Regulations Can Convince Meta to Cut Its Revenue Stream From Fraud Victims Suparna Goswami (gsuparna) • November 14, 2025

How motivated would you be to stop a source of revenue if you discovered that some of your advertisers are scamming your customers? Most businesses would want to protect their customers at all costs. In the strange universe of social media firm Meta, incentives for doing the right thing are totally different.

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A report from Reuters found that 10% of Meta's 2024 revenue came from ads for scams and banned goods. A cache of previously unreported documents reviewed by Reuters also shows that the social-media giant for at least three years failed to identify and stop an avalanche of ads that exposed billions of users of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to fraudulent ...