Internal Documents Reveal Meta Made Billions of Dollars from Fraudulent Advertising

JAKARTA – Meta, the company that owns Instagram and Facebook, reportedly reaps enormous profits from fraudulent advertising and the availability of prohibited goods on its various platforms.

This was revealed in a confidential internal document shared by Reuters on November 6, 2025. The document noted that 10 percent of Meta's total annual revenue, equivalent to US$16 billion (IDR 266 trillion), comes from fraudulent advertising.

Meta was also found to have failed to prevent the presence of fraudulent ads on its platform. These ads could lure billions of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users into fraudulent investment schemes, illegal online casinos, and the sale of prohibited medical products.

An internal document prepared in December of last year showed that Meta displayed an average of 15 billion high-risk fraudulent ads daily. Another document stated that Meta generated US$7 billion (IDR 116 trillion) annually from fraudulent advertising.

The fraud circulating on Meta's platform was so suspicious that it should have been detected by the company's internal warning system. However, Meta only banned advertisers if its automated system predicted a 95 percent certainty of fraud.

Meta also implements unusual prevention measures. If an advertiser is suspected of being a fraudster, Meta will apply a higher ad rate as a penalty. This policy is implemented to discourage advertisers from continuing to place ads.

However, if the advertiser is willing to pay, Meta will still display it on the platform and receive the advertiser's profit.

Even worse, these fraudulent ads will harm users in the future. Users who click on fraudulent ads are likely to see more similar ads in the future. The system serves ads based on user interests detected from previous clicks.

In response to the report, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said that the document seen by Reuters "presents a selective view that distorts Meta's approach to fraud and spoofing." He also called the document "harsh and overly inclusive."

Stone added that the initial estimate of 10.1 percent of revenue from fraudulent ads was too high because it included many legitimate ads. To reassure users, Stone emphasized that Meta has been combating fraud on its platform for years.

"We aggressively fight fraud and spoofing because people on our platform don't want this content," Stone said. "Over the past 18 months, we have reduced user reports of fraudulent ads globally by 58 percent."