A very recent and disturbing article from Reuters claims that Meta, the mother company that owns Facebook, projected (implying awareness) 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from publishing scammers ads. The social media giant internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day.
Meta internally projected late last year that it would earn about $16 billion (10% of its overall annual revenue) from showing scam and banned goods ads, internal company documents show.
Unreported documents reviewed by Reuters also shows that the social media giant, for at least three years, failed to identify and stop an avalanche of ads that exposed billions of Meta users on several platforms like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos, and even the sale of banned medical products!
One could argue that a huge company like Meta failed to identify these scam ads due to technological limitations or very large traffic. However, the Reuters report suggests this is allegedly a conscious decision made by the company, as it only bans advertisers, if its automated systems predict the marketers are at least 95% certain to be committing fraud, the documents show. 95% certainty is an EXTREEMLY high threshold. To underscore how infuriating this is, consider this analogy: if a security system had a 94% certainty that a fire was about to start, would it ignore the warning? Meta is effectively letting highly likely scams continue to show because they fall just below this high 95% bar. Even lowering that threshold, would you want a plane to take off with a 25% certainty of a mechanical failure? Wouldn’t you start checking further? Why then are the mental health and money of Meta’s users and clients treated as less important?
According to the documents, if the company is less certain, but still believes the advertiser is a likely a scammer, Meta will still show the ad, but it will charge a higher ad rate as a penalty. And to make things worst, the documents further note that 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.
Bottom line, not only Facebook has become (in my opinion) a platform for the spread of misinformation, cesspool of hate of all sorts, political turmoil, it also gives scammers a platform to thrive on, while its users pay the price.