"Instead of promptly removing bad actors, Meta allowed "high value accounts" to "accrue more than 500 strikes without Meta shutting them down," Reuters reported. The more strikes a bad actor accrued, the more Meta could charge to run ads, as Meta's documents showed the company "penalized" scammers by charging higher ad rates. Meanwhile, Meta acknowledged in documents that its systems helped scammers target users most likely to click on their ads."
""Users who click on scam ads are likely to see more of them because of Meta's ad-personalization system, which tries to deliver ads based on a user's interests," Reuters reported. Internally, Meta estimates that users across its apps in total encounter 15 billion "high risk" scam ads a day. That's on top of 22 billion organic scam attempts that Meta users are exposed to daily, a 2024 document showed."
"Last year, the company projected that about $16 billion, which represents about 10 percent of its revenue, would come from scam ads. "High risk" scam ads strive to sell users on fake products or investment schemes, Reuters noted. Some common scams in this category that mislead users include selling banned medical products, or promoting sketchy entities, like linking to illegal online casinos."
Internal Meta documents show the company projected billions in revenue from scam ads and hesitated to remove accounts tied to high-risk scams. Meta allowed "high value accounts" to accrue hundreds of strikes without shutdown and applied higher ad rates as a penalty, increasing revenue from bad actors. Ad-personalization systems helped scammers target users most likely to click, and users who clicked received more scam ads. Meta estimates users encounter 15 billion "high risk" scam ads and 22 billion organic scam attempts daily across apps. The company projected about $16 billion, roughly 10% of revenue, from scam ads. High-risk scams include fake products, banned medical goods, and links to illegal online casinos.
Read at Ars Technica
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