"The details of Meta's confidential self-appraisal are drawn from documents created between 2021 and this year across Meta's finance, lobbying, engineering and safety divisions. Together, they reflect Meta's efforts to quantify the scale of abuse on its platforms - and the company's hesitancy to crack down in ways that could harm its business interests."
"Much of the fraud came from marketers acting suspiciously enough to be flagged by Meta's internal warning systems. But the company only bans advertisers if its automated systems predict the marketers are at least 95% certain to be committing fraud, the documents show. If the company is less certain - but still believes the advertiser is a likely scammer - Meta charges higher ad rates as a penalty, according to the documents. The idea is to dissuade suspect advertisers from placing ads."
Meta projected late 2024 that about 10% of annual revenue—roughly $16 billion—would come from ads for scams and banned goods. Internal documents estimate platforms display about 15 billion “higher risk” scam advertisements per day and that these ads generate roughly $7 billion in annualized revenue. Many fraudulent marketers were flagged by internal warning systems, but advertisers were banned only when automated systems assessed fraud at 95% certainty; otherwise Meta imposed higher ad rates as a penalty. Ad personalization increased users' exposure to repeat scam ads. Documents span 2021–2024 across finance, engineering, safety and lobbying divisions.
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