A new investigation by Reuters claims that Meta decided to accept high levels of fraudulent advertisements from China on its platforms including Facebook and Instagram to minimize negative impact to its ad revenue according to internal company documents.
Reuters reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been tolerating rampant advertising fraud originating from China in order to protect its billions in revenue from the country. Internal company documents reviewed by Reuters show that Meta identified about 19 percent of its China ad revenue in 2024, amounting to over $3 billion, as coming from ads for scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned content.
Despite being banned in China, Meta’s platforms allow Chinese companies to advertise to users worldwide. This business became a major revenue stream, generating over $18 billion in annual sales in China by 2024, representing more than 10 percent of Meta’s global revenue. However, this also opened the door to widespread abuse and fraud.
Meta formed a dedicated anti-fraud team that managed to slash the share of problematic Chinese ads from 19 percent to 9 percent in the second half of 2024. But Meta later disbanded the team, lifted a freeze on onboarding new Chinese ad agencies, and shelved other anti-scam measures that internal tests showed would be effective. Within months, the share of banned ads rebounded to about 16 percent of China revenue. A Meta spokesperson told Breitbart News in relation to allegations that these changes came at the behest of CEO Mark Zuckerberg than, “Mark’s guidance to the teams responsible for addressing high-risk harms, such as fraud and scams, was to redouble efforts to reduce them all across the globe, including in China.”
Former Meta integrity executive Rob Leathern called the scale of the fraud indefensible. “The levels that you’re talking about are not defensible,” he told Reuters. “I don’t know how anyone could think this is okay.”
In a statement to Breitbart News, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone wrote:
Scams are spiking across the internet, driven by persistent criminals and sophisticated, organized crime syndicates constantly evolving their schemes to evade detection. We are focused on rooting them out by using advanced technical measures and new tools, disrupting criminal scam networks, working with industry partners and law enforcement, and raising awareness on our platforms about scam activity. And when we determine that bad actors have violated our rules prohibiting fraud and scams, we take action.
The Company also shared statistics about its efforts to stop fraudulent ads:
The documents portray China as Meta’s top “Scam Exporting Nation” and the largest source of fraud across its platforms. Some fraud was massive in scale — in one case, federal prosecutors seized $214 million from promoters of a Chinese stock scam that used Facebook and Instagram ads to lure victims.
According to Reuters, a report commissioned by Meta from consultancy Propellerfish warned that the company’s own behavior and policies were fostering systemic corruption in the Chinese ad market. It found Meta was more tolerant of illicit practices compared to competitors, and China’s government generally turned a blind eye since the fraud targeted foreigners.
Rather than seek parity in ad quality between China and the rest of the world, a February 2025 document shows Meta managers said they would tolerate elevated misconduct levels from China permanently, aiming only to maintain the global percentage of harm from the country.
The revelations come as Meta faces scrutiny for failing to stem the deluge of scam ads on its platforms, with Reuters previously reporting that 10 percent of its 2024 revenue came from ads for scams and banned goods.
Read more at Reuters here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.