Overview
- Reuters-reviewed internal documents show Meta generated about $18 billion from Chinese advertisers in 2024, with roughly 19%—more than $3 billion—linked to scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned content.
- A China-focused anti-fraud team briefly cut the share of problematic ads from about 19% to 9% in late 2024 before being paused and disbanded, after which the rate rebounded to roughly 16% by mid-2025.
- Meta disputed the characterization of its actions and said it is removing or rejecting large volumes of ads, citing a more than 50% drop in user scam-ad reports over 15 months and millions of ad takedowns.
- Sens. Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal asked the FTC and SEC to investigate Meta’s alleged facilitation of scam and banned-content ads and the company’s profit from them.
- Internal practices cited in the documents include a 95% confidence threshold before banning suspected scammers and higher auction fees for risky advertisers, while a Meta-commissioned audit flagged inconsistent enforcement in China compared with rivals.