Meta Tolerates China Ad Fraud to Protect Billions

"Last year, Meta had to reckon with an ugly conclusion about its Chinese advertising customers: They were defrauding Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users worldwide. Though China's authoritarian government bans use of Meta social media by its citizens, Beijing lets Chinese companies advertise to foreign consumers on the globe-spanning platforms. As a result, Meta's advertising business was thriving in China, ultimately reaching over $18 billion in annual sales in 2024, more than a tenth of the company's global revenue. But Meta calculated that about 19% of that money - more than $3 billion - was coming from ads for scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned content, according to internal Meta documents reviewed by Reuters."

"The cache reveals Meta's efforts over that period to understand the scale of abuse on its platforms and the company's reluctance to introduce fixes that could undermine its business and revenues. The documents show that Meta believed China was the country of origin of roughly a quarter of all ads for scams and banned products on Meta's platforms worldwide. Victims ranged from shoppers in Taiwan who purchased bogus health supplements to investors in the United States and Canada who were swindled out of their savings."

""We need to make significant investment to reduce growing harm," Meta staffers warned in an internal April 2024 presentation to leaders of its safety operations. To that end, Meta created an anti-fraud team that went beyond previous efforts to monitor scams and other banned activity from China. Using a variety of stepped-up enforcement tools, it slashed the problematic ads by about half during the second half of 2024 - from 19% to 9% of the total advertising revenue coming from China. Then Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg weighed in"

Meta's Chinese advertising business reached over $18 billion in annual sales in 2024, exceeding ten percent of global revenue. About 19% of that China-sourced revenue—more than $3 billion—came from ads for scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned content. Meta assessed that roughly a quarter of all ads for scams and banned products on its platforms originated in China. Victims included shoppers in Taiwan and investors in the United States and Canada. Meta formed an anti-fraud team and applied stepped-up enforcement tools, reducing problematic Chinese-origin ad revenue from 19% to 9% in the second half of 2024, and senior leadership became involved.

Read at Newsmax