Meta says it deleted ads off its platforms to get rid of scams, not hide them.
A review of internal documents, however, spurred allegations that Meta was attempting make certain ads “not findable” to government regulators.
‘To suggest otherwise is disingenuous.’
According to a report by Reuters — which said it reviewed the docs — Meta began deleting possible fraudulent ads from its search function after Japanese regulators were upset over obvious scams on Facebook and Instagram that pushed fake celebrity product endorsements or investment schemes.
Reuters said that, according to the documents, Meta feared Japan would force the company to verify the identities of its advertisers.
In order to test Meta’s work on “tackling scams,” Japanese regulators allegedly used the search function on Meta’s “Ad Library” to seek out fraudulent ads; the library acts as a “comprehensive, searchable database for ads transparency,” the company states on its website.
This “simple test,” as described in documents, was allegedly the avenue Meta took to make good with the regulators. Documents purportedly showed that Meta identified the top keywords and celebrity names that the Japanese were searching to find fraud, and then deleted ads that appeared fraudulent.
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The deletions made certain content “not findable” for “regulators, investigators, and journalists,” Reuters claimed.
A few months later, a Meta memo allegedly stated that “less than 100” of the unwanted ads had been discovered in the last week of a testing period, “hitting 0 for the last 4 days of the sprint.”
This was apparently applauded by the Japanese government, and Japan did not end up forcing advertiser verification.
Meta then reportedly added the deletion tactics to its “general global playbook” to be deployed against, as Reuters described, regulatory scrutiny in other markets like the U.S., Europe, Australia, and more. The alleged playbook was a strategy to stall regulators and prevent advertiser verification requirements, the report claimed.
A Meta spokesperson has since called the allegations disingenuous, and argued that Meta deleting fraudulent ads off its platforms is a good thing, not bad.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone told the outlet that there is nothing misleading about removing the scam ads from the library. “To suggest otherwise is disingenuous,” he insisted.
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“Meta teams regularly check the Ad Library to identify scam ads because when fewer scam ads show up there that means there are fewer scam ads on the platform,” Stone added.
On top of claiming that verifying advertisers is “not a silver bullet,” Stone said that chasing down scam ads is a job that will “never end.”
Verification “works best in concert with other, higher-impact tools,” the spokesman noted. “We set a global baseline and aggressive targets to drive down scam activity in countries where it was greatest, all of which has led to an overall reduction in scams on platform.”
Meta also claimed that it has seen a 50% decline in user reports of scams over the past year.
Return reached out to Meta for additional comments. This article will be updated with any applicable responses.
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