They are US Senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal. request an investigation in Meta for its alleged role in profiting from fraudulent advertising on Facebook and Instagram. request Reuters’ investigation continues Apparently, based on internal Meta documents, it is estimated that almost 10% of Meta’s revenue in 2024 (about $16 billion) came from so-called “illegal advertising”.
One document reportedly claimed that Meta had made $3.5 billion in just six months thanks to fraudulent advertising that the company deemed “higher risk.”
The same internal documents show that many ads that allegedly violated anti-fraud rules were allowed to run because “many ads were not applicable… (staff believed they had violated the spirit of their anti-fraud rules).
Meta denies all these allegations.
Read also: Powered entirely by artificial intelligence, Meta creates the ads you see on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.
why do you care
The scale of this alleged fraud raises serious concerns about Meta’s business model. Many wonder if the company is doing enough to monitor its advertising ecosystem, as a major source of revenue appears to be tied to misleading or even fraudulent campaigns.
The senators say lax enforcement of the meta, combined with the continued presence of gambling advertising, payment fraud, political forgeries and other malicious content in your public ad revenue – highlight significant risks.
In their letter, Hawley and Blumenthal point out that a 58% drop in reports of fraudulent advertising in 18 months, as Meta says, may not tell the whole story. They pointed to broader trends that, based on their reading of the documents, Meta platforms may be involved in “roughly one-third of all fraud in the United States” and have been linked to more than $50 billion in consumer losses last year.
What Meta says
Meta responded defensively to this request for investigation.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone criticized the senators’ claims as “exaggerated and false,” noting that the company “aggressively fights fraud and scams because people on our platforms don’t want this content, legitimate advertisers don’t want it, and neither do we.”
They also fear that foreign cybercrime groups in countries such as China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and the Philippines are behind many fraud campaigns.
More broadly, the call to action by FTC and SEC senators aims to hold accountable a social media giant whose advertising system can fuel fraud on an unprecedented scale, even as Meta publicly emphasizes its commitment to user safety. Given that much of Meta’s business may be related to risky advertising, the outcome of an investigation could change not only the company’s practices, but also the broader expectations of large tech companies in the future.
