Meta internal documents show the company projected that about 10% of its annual revenue, roughly $16 billion, would come from ads linked to scams and banned products.
The files, covering 2021–2025, describe how Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp struggled for years with a surge of fraudulent ads for investment schemes, illegal gambling and banned medical products.
A December 2024 report estimated Meta serves around 15 billion “higher‑risk” scam ads daily and earns about $7 billion a year from that segment alone. Rather than immediately banning suspicious advertisers, Meta’s systems only block them when automated tools reach 95% certainty of fraud; below that threshold, the company raises ad prices as a penalty. Its ad‑personalisation tools can also worsen exposure by showing more scam ads to users who previously clicked them.
A Reuters investigation shows that Meta knowingly scaled back a crackdown on predatory advertising. Thoughts? https://t.co/JU2oGdW2t1
— Entrepreneur (@Entrepreneur) December 15, 2025The documents reveal internal tension between enforcement and profit. Executives mapped out a plan to gradually cut scam‑linked revenue from 10.1% in 2024 to 7.3% in 2025 and 5.8% by 2027, while limiting enforcement actions that could reduce revenue by more than 0.15%. One memo estimated potential regulatory fines at up to $1 billion, far below the billions Meta earns from high‑risk scam ads.
Read: Meta to Ban Third-Party AI Chatbots Like ChatGPT from WhatsApp in 2026
Despite Meta’s claims of significant investments in fraud prevention and the removal of large volumes of ads, its own research indicates that its platforms remain central to global fraud networks and may be involved in about one‑third of successful scams in the United States.
The documents also show Meta often ignored the majority of valid scam reports, leaving users exposed even as the company treated enforcement costs and potential penalties as manageable business risks.
