Internal docs reveal Meta's tactics to fend off pressure to crack down on scammers, including efforts to make scam ads “not findable” for regulators and others
As regulators press Meta to crack down on rogue advertisers on Facebook and Instagram, the social media giant has drafted a “playbook” to stall them.
ReutersJeff Horwitz
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta had already publicly described scams on Facebook and Instagram as an “epidemic,” while reporting indicated staff concerns that tougher enforcement could impede the ad business. The newly reported playbook turns that tension into a question of whether regulators can independently observe the platform’s enforcement choices.
Meta faces more acute regulatory and reputational scrutiny over whether its scam-ad controls were designed to prevent harm or to limit outside detection.
Regulators investigating Facebook and Instagram scam advertising have a clearer basis to seek evidence of how ads are surfaced, reviewed and withheld from discovery.
Second-order effects
Pressure is likely to shift from general promises to fight scams toward demands for independently testable access to ad libraries, enforcement records and targeting or delivery controls.
Advertisers and enforcement vendors may face greater pressure to distinguish legitimate campaign protections from systems that could shield rogue advertisers; Meta’s earlier acknowledgment of an scams epidemic raises the stakes of that distinction.
Third-order effects
If similar evidence recurs, platform-safety oversight could move toward access-based regulation: rules that test what regulators and researchers can actually see rather than relying chiefly on company disclosures.
The broader structural issue is whether ad-funded platforms can retain control over integrity measurement when their commercial incentives and enforcement claims are in conflict; this report strengthens the case for external verification, though the eventual policy response remains uncertain.
The trend: Platform governance is shifting from voluntary content-safety commitments toward enforceable, independently auditable access to the systems that determine what harmful advertising is discoverable.
Meta created ‘playbook’ to fend off pressure to crack down on scammers, documents show https://www.reuters.com/... including efforts to make scam ads “not findable” when authorities search for them. Anyone surprised? #Meta #Facebook
Meta created ‘playbook’ to fend off pressure to crack down on scammers, documents show. Fucking insatiably greedy parasites, deliberately keeping us in harms way https://www.reuters.com/...
At least $7 billion in meta ad revenue is “rampant fraud” and the company has an actual playbook to cover this up from regulators https://www.reuters.com/...
Drawn from multiple sources and authored by employees in departments including finance, legal, public policy and safety, the documents also reveal ways that Meta, to protect billions of dollars in ad revenue, has resisted efforts by governments to crack down.
Reducing your time on algorithmic social media sites in favor of an open web is also a way to reduce your exposure to scams and fraud. — www.reuters.com/investigatio...
For social media companies, the fight against tech regulation has nothing to do with free speech but everything to do with continuing to generate profit from the scam industry, which is stealing money from their users, without oversight or accountability. — www.reuters.com/inve…
Another great @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social investigation into Meta, this one about the company's secret playbook for deceiving and manipulating the regulators investigating its massive scam problem www.reuters.com/investigatio... [image]
New reporting from @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social shows meta actively altering shared data to produce rose-tinted results in searches of the as library. — Can we reasonably trust the data they share with academics? — www.reuters.com/investigatio...
Heard rumour of this kind of “targeted scrubbing” of data a while back, plus intentional weaknesses in ad library searching. Very VW behaviour. [embedded post]
⚠️Wow... This is major! According to @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social, Meta had a policy in place to prevent scam ads from being detected by regulators. It's reminiscent of the “diesel dupe” scandal from a decade ago, when major carmakers were accused of using “cheat” software to fake …
Hong Kong financial regulators pushed Meta on why it wasn't verifying the ID of financial advertisers (a very common source of scams) — Meta staffers boasted about how, through “skillful negotiation,” it redirected HK to organizing an anti-scam charter signing event requiring n…
Two countries — Taiwan and Singapore — have passed laws mandating certification. Scam ad revenue dropped there — but held steady worldwide. Staffers found that Meta's systems simply targeted more dodgy ads to users elsewhere: — “revenue was redistributed.... This would go for…
We got Meta's “general global playbook” for defeating advertiser verification regulations, which the company knows would reduce scams. It includes making scam ads “not findable” for regulators searching Meta's ad library through targeted scrubbing. — www.reuters.com/investigat…