The new report quantifies the scale of fraud taking place on Meta’s platforms, and how much the company profited from them.
Meta has been making billions of dollars per year from scam ads and sales of banned goods, according internal Meta documents seen by Reuters.
Per the report, Meta internal projections from late last year said that 10% of the company’s total 2024 revenue would come from scammy ads and sales of banned goods — which works out to $16 billion.
Discussions within Meta acknowledged the steep fines likely to be levied against the company for not stopping the fraudulent behavior on its platforms, and the company prioritized enforcement in regions where the penalties would be steepest, the reporting found. The cost of lost revenue from clamping down on the scams was weighed against the cost of fines from regulators.
The documents reportedly show that Meta did aim to significantly reduce the fraudulent behavior, but cuts to its moderation team left the vast majority of user-reported violations to be ignored or rejected.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Reuters the documents were a “selective view” of internal enforcement: