Poor Meta! Allegations about Accepting Scam Advertising
December 19, 2025
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
That well managed, forward leaning, AI and goggle centric company is in the news again. This time the focus is advertising that is scammy. “Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Allows Rampant Scam Ads from China While Raking in Billions, Explosive Report Says” states:
According to an investigation by Reuters, Meta earned more than $3 billion in China last year through scam ads for illegal gambling, pornography, and other inappropriate content. That figure represents nearly 19 percent of the company’s $18 billion in total ad revenue from China during the same period. Reuters had previously reported that 10 percent of Meta’s global revenue came from fraudulent ads.
The write up makes a pointed statement:
The investigation suggests Meta knew about the scale of the ad fraud problem on its platforms, but chose not to act because it would have affected revenue.
Guess what happens when senior managers at a large social media outfit pay little attention to what happens around them? Thanks, ChatGPT, good enough.
Let’s assume that the allegations are accurate and verifiable. The question is, “Why did Meta take in billions from scam ads?” My view is that there were several reasons:
- Revenue
- Figuring out what is and is not “spammy” is expensive. Spam may be like the judge’s comment years ago, “I will know it when I see it.” Different people have different perceptions
- Changing the ad sales incentive programs is tricky, time consuming, and expensive.
The logical decision is, based on my limited understanding of how managerial decisions are made at Meta simple: Someone may have said, “Hey, keep doing it until someone makes us stop.”
Why would a very large company adopt this hypothetical response to spammy ads?
My hunch is that management looked the other way. Revenue is important.
Stephen E Arnold, December 19, 2025
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