Meta tolerates rampant ad fraud from China to safeguard billions in revenue

SAN FRANCISCO - Last year, Meta had to reckon with an ugly conclusion about its Chinese advertising customers: They were defrauding Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users worldwide.

hough China’s authoritarian government bans use of Meta social media by its citizens, Beijing lets Chinese companies advertise to foreign consumers on the globe-spanning platforms. As a result, Meta’s advertising business was thriving in China, ultimately reaching over $18 billion in annual sales in 2024, more than a tenth of the company’s global revenue.

But Meta calculated that about 19% of that money – more than $3 billion – was coming from ads for scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned content, according to internal Meta documents reviewed by Reuters.

he documents are part of a cache of previously unreported material generated over the past four years by teams including Meta’s finance, lobbying, and the company’s reluctance to introduce fixes that could undermine its business and revenues. and safety divisions. The cache reveals Meta’s efforts over that period to understand the scale of abuse on its platforms
and the company’s reluctance to introduce fixes that could undermine its business and revenues.

ttps://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-tolerates-rampant-ad-fraud-china-safeguard-billions-revenue-2025-12-15/