The $16 Billion Secret: Internal Docs Reveal Meta Profits Massively from Scam Ads
The corporation Meta derives enormous profits from advertising fraudulent schemes and prohibited goods. According to internal documents reviewed by Reuters, roughly 10% of the company’s 2024 revenue—about $16 billion—originated from such advertisements. Every day, users across its platforms are shown approximately 15 billion suspicious ads.
Internal reports produced by various Meta divisions between 2021 and 2025 reveal that the company had, for years, been either unable or unwilling to halt the flood of advertisements linked to fake investment projects, illegal online casinos, counterfeit shops, and dubious medical products. Although Meta’s automated systems detected thousands of suspicious campaigns, the company removed only those with a fraud probability exceeding 95%. The rest continued operating, albeit under higher “penalty rates,” allowing Meta to simultaneously “punish” and profit from potential scammers.
One section of the reports notes that users who once clicked on suspicious ads subsequently encountered them more frequently—Meta’s personalization algorithms fine-tuned ad delivery according to their interests. The company also documented that its own platforms had become the central hub of the global online fraud economy. In the spring of 2025, Meta’s security division concluded that one-third of all successful online scams in the United States were conducted through its products.
Regulators across multiple countries have already launched investigations. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is examining advertising campaigns tied to financial fraud. In the United Kingdom, the national regulator determined that over half of citizens’ payment fraud losses in 2023 were connected to Meta’s platforms. The company’s own internal documents acknowledge that placing fraudulent ads on other platforms, including Google, is considerably more difficult.
According to Meta’s financial forecasts, ads carrying the greatest legal risks—such as counterfeit brands or fake celebrity pages—generate around $3.5 billion every six months. Even potential fines estimated at $1 billion are deemed insignificant compared to these revenues. In one memo, managers stated that the company would act only under the threat of sanctions, not out of voluntary compliance.
Particular attention is devoted to the company’s internal “loss limiters.” The team responsible for vetting dubious advertisers was forbidden to make decisions that could reduce revenue by more than 0.15% of total earnings—about $135 million for the first half of 2025. The head of the department explicitly urged staff to “exercise caution” and adhere to established “financial boundaries.”
Amid growing pressure, Meta announced its goal to reduce the share of revenue from fraudulent advertising from 10.1% in 2024 to 7.3% by the end of 2025, and to 5.8% by 2027. However, the company concedes that a sharp decline in these revenues could negatively impact its financial performance, particularly as it invests tens of billions of dollars in artificial intelligence and data center infrastructure.
The problem extends beyond paid advertisements. Meta records roughly 22 billion “organic” fraud attempts daily—free posts on Marketplace, fake social media profiles, and fraudulent charity groups. In some cases, police provided Meta with lists of obvious scams, yet the company classified only a quarter of them as policy violations, claiming the rest “violated the spirit, but not the letter, of the rules.”
Within the company, a satirical column emerged titled “The Most Fraudulent Fraudsters”—a weekly report naming the advertiser that received the most complaints. Yet even after such mentions, many accounts continued to operate, some generating tens of millions of dollars per month.
Meta maintains that it is taking active measures and claims that the number of user complaints about fraudulent ads has fallen by 58% over the past 18 months. Company spokesperson Andy Stone stated that Meta has already removed more than 134 million pieces of fraud-related content and continues to invest heavily in safety measures.
Nevertheless, internal documents expose a stark contradiction between public declarations and corporate practice: Meta fully recognizes the scale of the issue—and even quantifies its revenue from “policy-violating” ads—yet opts for incremental action to avoid jeopardizing its own profitability.
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