"The documents are part of a cache of previously unreported material generated over the past four years by teams including Meta's finance, lobbying, engineering and safety divisions. 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."
Meta's China-targeted advertising business reached over $18 billion in annual sales in 2024, more than a tenth of global revenue. Beijing bans domestic use of Meta but allows Chinese companies to advertise to foreign consumers. Meta calculated about 19% of China-sourced ad revenue—over $3 billion—came from scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned content. Internal material generated over four years by finance, lobbying, engineering and safety teams revealed efforts to quantify abuse and reluctance to implement fixes that might hurt revenue. Meta believed China was the origin of roughly a quarter of worldwide scam and banned-product ads. An anti-fraud team reduced such ads from 19% to 9% in late 2024.
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