US Senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal are calling for an investigation into Meta over its alleged role in profiting from scam-laden advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. The demand follows a Reuters investigation reportedly based on internal Meta documents that estimated that nearly 10% of Meta’s 2024 revenue — about $16 billion — came from alleged “illicit advertising.”
In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the lawmakers urged regulators to “immediately open investigations and, if the reporting is accurate, pursue vigorous enforcement action … to force Meta to disgorge profits, pay penalties and agree to cease running such advertisements.”
One document reportedly alleged that Meta earned $3.5 billion in just six months from what it classified as “higher-risk” scam ads.Â
The same internal records reportedly suggested that many ads allegedly violating fraud rules were permitted to run because they “did not apply to many ads… [that staff] believed ‘violated the spirit’ of its rules against scam advertising.”
Meta denies all of these allegations.
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Why this matters for you
The scale of this alleged fraud raises serious concerns about Meta’s business model. Many question whether the company is doing enough to police its ad ecosystem, given that a major revenue stream appears to be tied to deceptive or outright fraudulent campaigns.Â
The senators allege that Meta’s lax enforcement — combined with the continued presence of gambling ads, payment scams, political deepfakes and other dangerous content in its public Ad Library — underscores significant risks.Â
In their letter, Hawley and Blumenthal highlighted that reducing reports of scam ads by 58% over 18 months — as Meta says — may not tell the whole story. They pointed to broader trends that, according to their own reading of the documents, Meta’s platforms may be allegedly implicated in “about a third of all US scams” and linked to more than $50 billion in consumer losses last year.Â
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What Meta is saying
Meta responded defensively to this call for investigation.Â
Meta spokesman Andy Stone criticized the senators’ allegations as “exaggerated and wrong,” insisting that the company “aggressively fights fraud and scams because people on our platforms don’t want this content, legitimate advertisers don’t want it, and we don’t want it either.”Â
Ongoing misinformation on Meta platforms
Among the more provocative allegations is that some of the scam ads impersonate government figures or political leaders. The senators point to specific examples, including a bogus advertisement that falsely claimed President Donald Trump was offering $1,000 to food assistance recipients.Â
They also raise concerns that foreign cybercrime groups based in countries such as China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and the Philippines could be behind many of the scam campaigns.Â
In general, the senators’ push for FTC and SEC action seeks accountability for a social media giant whose ad system may be fueling fraud at an unprecedented scale, though Meta publicly underscores its commitment to user safety. With so much of Meta’s business potentially tied to high-risk ads, the outcome of any investigation could reshape not only its practices but also broader regulatory expectations for major tech companies going forward.
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