A 2025 Report Showed Meta Earned $7 Billion A Year From Scam Ads

Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta on Wednesday admitted before the government that a lot of money had been paid for "boosting a certain type of content", sources told NDTV. The admission is rare, but reports claiming the US-based company earns revenue by hosting illegal content on its social media platforms aren't.

In November last year, Reuters cited secret company documents to report the company had internally projected the previous year that it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue from hosting advertisements for scams and banned goods.

The report noted that Meta failed to identify and halt ads that promoted fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos, and the sale of banned products.

A December 2024 document, accessed by Reuters, claimed the Zuckerberg-led firm showed a whopping 15 billion "higher risk" scam advertisements per day to social media consumers. Another document stated that Meta earned about $7 billion in annualised revenue from scam ads each year.

The report noted a flaw in Meta's problematic content filter, claiming the company banned advertisers only if its automated systems were at least 95% convinced of fraud. 

At the time, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the documents seen by the agency presented "a selective view that distorts Meta's approach to fraud and scams."

"The assessment was done to validate our planned integrity investments - including in combating fraud and scams - which we did," Stone had said.

 "We aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don't want this content, legitimate advertisers don't want it, and we don't want it either," he added.

The report said that Meta's internal assessment had observed that its products had become a pillar of the global fraud economy. A May 2025 presentation by its safety staff noted that the company's social media platform had been involved in one-third of all scams in the United States.

Also read: Meta's Apology, Admission On "Money Paid To Boost Certain Type Of Content"

A 2022 document, Reuters reported, flagged a lack of investment in automatic scam detection from Meta.

Meta had then directed its staff to focus on fraudsters claiming to be celebrities to swindle social media users. One document noted that such scams risked upsetting advertisers and public figures, which could impact revenue.

Reuters cited a 2023 document to report that Meta had ignored most of the user reports of scams. In that year, Facebook and Instagram users had been flagging 100,000 valid reports of fraudsters messaging them every week, but the company ignored or rejected 96 per cent of them.

Also read: NDTV Probe: CSAM, Sexually Suggestive Content, Gun Culture On Social Media

NDTV Probe Flagged Problematic Content

An NDTV probe last month reported that many social media platforms, including Meta's Facebook and Instagram, hosted ads selling sexually suggestive videos of children for as little as Rs 50.

Last month, Meta's global policy leadership, including chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan, had been summoned by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) over content that impacts public order, remains online despite allegedly violating the platform's own Community Standards, and includes child sexual abuse material (CSAM).