Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) is facing intense scrutiny after internal documents revealed that up to 10 % of its 2024 annual revenue — roughly $16 billion — may have come from advertisements tied to scams and banned goods. These disclosures highlight a growing concern over how digital-advertising systems may be facilitating large-scale fraud.
What the documents show
A cache of internal papers reviewed by Reuters shows that Meta projected around 10.1 % of its 2024 revenue would derive from “violating” ads — scam content, illegally targeted goods, gambling, and other higher-risk categories. One December 2024 deck noted that Meta’s platforms delivered about 15 billion “higher risk” scam advertisements every day.
Further findings include:
- Meta’s automated enforcement system would only ban advertisers when it was at least 95% certain of fraud; if certainty was lower but still high, the advertiser would pay higher ad rates rather than being removed.
- For the first half of 2025, internal guardrails specified that the team monitoring suspect ads should not reduce company revenue by more than 0.15% via enforcement actions — equivalent to about $135 million if applied to Meta’s reported revenue.
- Internal presentations acknowledged that Meta’s platforms may be involved in one third of all successful scams in the U.S., as of May 2025.
Meta has responded, stating the figures are “rough and overly inclusive” and representing a conservative high-end estimate rather than the final tally. A Meta spokesperson said the company is “aggressively fighting fraud and scams”.
Why this matters
The revelations come at a time when social-media advertising volumes are exploding, and regulatory pressure is mounting globally. For Meta, the implications are significant:
- Financial risk: A substantial chunk of revenue may be tied to ads that fall into regulatory or legal grey zones. Meta anticipates penalties of up to $1 billion — yet internal documents indicate half-year revenues from the high-risk category alone could exceed $3.5 billion.
- Reputational damage: As the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, Meta’s public-facing brand must contend with findings indicating its platforms were used for large-scale scams.
- Regulatory scrutiny: In the UK, regulatory filings note that Meta’s platforms were involved in 54 % of payment-related scam losses in 2023.
- Advertising ecosystem trust: If major platforms are shown to indirectly benefit from scam ads, advertiser trust and ad-market standards could shift, affecting cost structures and platform policies.
How Meta says it will respond
Meta says it has already taken measures: over the past 18 months, it claims to have removed more than 134 million pieces of scam-ad content and reduced user-reported scam ads by 58%. Internal documents also show plans to reduce the share of revenue from illicit ad streams from ~10.1% in 2024 to 7.3% by end of 2025, and further to around 6% by 2027.
The company’s approach includes “penalty bids” — charging higher auction prices for ads from advertisers flagged as suspicious rather than outright banning them immediately.
What it means for users, advertisers and regulators
- Users may be more vulnerable than they realise: the scale of scam ads suggests many will continue to get exposed via trusted platforms.
- Advertisers may face a shifting landscape: brand safety concerns and rising scrutiny could lead to higher ad-costs, stricter vetting or migration to other platforms with lower risk exposures.
- Regulators may push for greater transparency: given that large-platform ad revenue may hinge on questionable content, calls for audits, disclosures and fines will likely grow.
What happens next
Meta will likely face increased investigations by regulatory bodies such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the UK’s payments-fraud regulator. The internal documents signal that Meta is aware of this, and projections anticipate material impacts on revenue from future crackdown efforts.
At the same time, advertisers and users will watch how Meta translates its internal commitments into action. The size of the issue — billions of dollars in possible scam-ad revenue and tens of billions of exposed users — may drive changes not only at Meta but across the digital-advertising industry.
In short: the leaked documents reveal that Meta’s platforms played a far larger role in the scam-ad economy than previously publicly acknowledged. Whether the company can meaningfully reduce that exposure — without undermining its ad business — will be among the key tech regulatory stories of the coming year.
