Meta makes 7 billion per year thanks to the scams that appear on your Instagram and Facebook news feeds

The scale of the phenomenon is beyond comprehension. Meta is said to have earned about 10% of its annual revenue (or $16 billion) from ads for scams and banned products, according to internal documents seen by Reuters. A financial windfall that raises major ethical and regulatory questions.

The numbers are dizzying. Every day, 15 billion “fraudulent advertisements” parade on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. These advertisements promote misleading e-commerce sites, dubious financial arrangements, illegal casinos or even… Prohibited medicines. Meta thus generates 7 billion dollars per year only with this category of ads “high risk”.

The moderation system reveals a disturbing tolerance. The company only bans advertisers if its algorithms estimate 95% that they are committing fraud. Below this threshold, Meta simply increases advertising rates as a penalty. A strategy that allows you to retain this income while claiming to discourage fraudsters.

“If regulators would not accept that banks profit from fraud, they should not tolerate it in tech”says Sandeep Abraham, former security investigator at Meta. The documents also show that“it is easier to spread scams on Meta platforms than on Google”according to an internal analysis from April 2025 mentioned by our colleagues.

Faced with criticism, spokesperson Andy Stone assures that the company “aggressively fights fraud and scams”. He specifies that reports of fraudulent advertisements have fallen by 58% in eighteen months. But strategy documents reveal that Meta has set strict limits: its moderation teams cannot take actions that could cost more than 0.15% of total revenue.

The company plans to gradually reduce its dependence on this illicit income, aiming for 5.8% by 2027. An objective which still leaves very large room for fraud.

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