Web novel apps backed by ByteDance and Tencent are running hundreds of Facebook and Instagram ads showing sexual assault, violent erotica, and acts of self-harm
Emily Baker-White / Forbes : Tweets: @ebakerwhite , @mashaborak , @violazhouyi , @katienotopoulos , @iblametom , @ebakerwhite , @ebakerwhite , @ebakerwhite , and @cfarivar See also Mediagazer Tweets: Emily Baker-White / @ebakerwhite : This is the wildest story I've ever written. ‘Web novel’ apps backed by ByteDance and Tencent have been running hundreds of Facebook & Instagram ads featuring violent erotica, many of which contain vivid descriptions of sexual assault and self-mutilation. https://www.forbes.com/... Masha Borak / @mashaborak : This is one of the oddest stories of globalization I have come across. The first time I saw ads for racy werewolf novels was on my Facebook feed this year. But their story starts a long time ago in Japan and spreads beyond tech platforms and countries such as China and the US /1 https://twitter.com/... Viola Zhou / @violazhouyi : In China these companies can't do porn bc of state censorship. When they are abroad, free from govt regulations, they promote racism/child abuse/sexual assault. Really important story by @ebakerwhite https://www.forbes.com/... Katie Notopoulos / @katienotopoulos : I am always surprised by how much of the infrastructure of the modern internet is devoted to werewolf porn https://www.forbes.com/... Thomas Brewster / @iblametom : Dear lord, what is going on here?! Amazing reporting and Meta has taken down 200 ads as a result. https://twitter.com/... Emily Baker-White / @ebakerwhite : I truly cannot imagine working in child safety at ByteDance or Tencent and learning that the company paying me to fight self harm content is paying others to produce it and blast it out on a rival platform. Cannot imagine. (T&S / integrity hive: DM me!!) https://www.forbes.com/... Emily Baker-White / @ebakerwhite : Last Saturday, there were 83 of these ads on FB & IG containing the phrase “His Personal Cum Bucket.” On Wednesday, there were 31 ads featuring romanticized descriptions of teen girls cutting themselves. And those are just the ones I caught. https://www.forbes.com/... Emily Baker-White / @ebakerwhite : Some ads also used public figures' images w/o permission in awful ways. One, for a story about a “night of terror” where a teen girl would be “mated” to a “creature,” mashed up a shirtless photo of footballer Neymar with a stock image of a beaten woman. https://www.forbes.com/... Cyrus Farivar / @cfarivar : “Meta, for its part, has appeared largely incapable of halting this flood of violent fantasy erotica ads that violate its rules.” https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Emily Baker-White's Forbes investigation found that web novel apps backed by ByteDance and Tencent ran hundreds of Facebook and Instagram ads depicting sexual assault, violent erotica, and self-harm — some using public figures' images without permission — and that Meta, after the reporting, removed only about 200 of them while remaining largely unable to stop the flood. Paid placement was sailing through the same pipes where organic content gets policed.
The story lands inside a documented Meta moderation arc: sex educators and adult creators had already complained that Meta's moderation turned more punitive and less predictable since SESTA-FOSTA, while a junk-ad epidemic driven by ATT, a soft ad market, and thin moderation was eroding feed quality. What makes this piece distinct is that the offenders were paying customers — and, unusually, Chinese-backed ones buying reach on Meta's core surfaces.
First-order effects
- Meta pulled roughly 200 offending ads from Facebook and Instagram after Forbes' inquiry, but its own systems could not halt the broader flood, leaving the apps free to keep buying placements that violated its rules.
- ByteDance- and Tencent-backed web novel apps face reputational exposure in Western markets, with their user-acquisition engine — aggressive paid social — now publicly tied to imagery of assault and self-mutilation.
Second-order effects
- Brand advertisers whose spots run adjacent to this inventory have fresh ammunition to question Meta's brand safety, compounding the junk-ad pressure already documented across the industry.
- The finding that violators were paying advertisers rather than organic posters forces Meta to consider enforcement against its own revenue base — a tension that later surfaced when it sued nudify-app maker Joy Timeline to block its advertising outright.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platform trust-and-safety migrates from reactive takedowns toward legal action against specific advertisers, as Meta's later Hong Kong suit against Joy Timeline suggests — a slower, case-by-case substitute for systemic filtering.
- Regulators scrutinizing how foreign-backed apps buy distribution on US social platforms gain a concrete exhibit: moderation failures concentrated precisely where the platforms are paid.
The trend: Social platforms are proving weakest at moderating the paid-content layer, pushing enforcement from automated takedowns toward advertiser-level litigation and regulatory attention.