This promotion and profiteering off of scam ads includes making money from their cut on Facebook and Instagram, including for even banned products.
(My letter to reps below.)
Reuters – Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show – Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, documents seen by Reuters show. And the social media giant internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day. Among its responses to suspected rogue marketers: charging them a premium for ads – and issuing reports on ’Scammiest Scammers.’ By Jeff Horwitz November 6, 2025 On average, one December 2024 document notes, the company shows its platforms’ users an estimated 15 billion “higher risk” scam advertisements – those that show clear signs of being fraudulent – every day. Meta earns about $7 billion in annualized revenue from this category of scam ads each year, another late 2024 document states.
It’s not just META, all these tech companies make fortunes on crummy products, scams, and disinformation. Youtube has been profiting off climate denialism for years, and that’s before you get to the sometimes downright disturbing ads on Youtube, including disinformation purveyors previously banned.
Center for Countering Digital Hate – YOUTUBE’S CLIMATE DENIAL DOLLARS. How Google is breaking its promise to stop profiting from ads on climate denial videos. Published: May 03, 2023 Repeated research projects by the Center for Countering Digital Hate show that Google has repeatedly broken its promise not to profit from ads on climate denial content: Tests indicate that 63% of popular climate denial articles still carry Google ads. Google allowed Daily Wire to run ads on searches for “climate change is a hoax”. YouTube videos promoting climate denial with millions of views still have ads.
Cory Doctorow says this is part of the enshittification process with the “too big to care” companies. And I see enshittification everywhere anymore. I imagine I’m not the only one who deals with sifting through bad service even with legitimate products and services sold by straight-forward companies. Lina Khan was trying to make a dent in that with the FTC in the Biden administration, and some Republicans apparently supported her efforts. Now Lina Khan was hired for Zohran Mamdani’s team which I’d call a good sign, but corporate conservatives certainly don’t see it that way, their PR is invoking conspiracy theories to trick their working class conservatives against efforts to reign in big business and corporate corruption of society.
Pluralistic: Facebook’s fraud files (08 Nov 2025) Author Cory Doctorow Posted on November 8, 2025 A blockbuster Reuters report by Jeff Horwitz analyzes leaked internal documents that reveal that: 10% of Meta’s gross revenue comes from ads for fraudulent goods and scams, and; the company knows it, and; they decided not to do anything about it, because; the fines for facilitating this life-destroying fraud are far less than the expected revenue from helping to destroy its users’ lives: The crux of the enshittification hypothesis is that companies deliberately degrade their products and services to benefit themselves at your expense because they can. An enshittogenic policy environment that rewards cheating, spying and monopolization will inevitably give rise to cheating, spying monopolists
Most people hate the corrupt feudalist system being pushed on us by privatization, corporations, the business lobby, and unchecked billionaires.
My letter to reps:
Big tech companies profit off advertising for actual scams. Reuters has a report that Meta’s own internal documents essentially admit that they’re taking a vig profiteering off the scammy ads, by charging even more for the ads they know are fraud or for banned products. What are you doing to stop this harm perpetrated against Americans?
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.