REPORT: Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Tolerated Rampant Ad Fraud from China to Protect Profits

December 15, 2025

From Breitbart: A new investigation by Reuters claims that Meta decided to accept high levels of fraudulent advertisements from China on its platforms including Facebook and Instagram to minimize negative impact to its ad revenue according to internal company documents.

Reuters reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been tolerating rampant advertising fraud originating from China in order to protect its billions in revenue from the country. Internal company documents reviewed by Reuters show that Meta identified about 19 percent of its China ad revenue in 2024, amounting to over $3 billion, as coming from ads for scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned content.

Despite being banned in China, Meta’s platforms allow Chinese companies to advertise to users worldwide. This business became a major revenue stream, generating over $18 billion in annual sales in China by 2024, representing more than 10 percent of Meta’s global revenue. However, this also opened the door to widespread abuse and fraud.

Meta formed a dedicated anti-fraud team that managed to slash the share of problematic Chinese ads from 19 percent to 9 percent in the second half of 2024. But Meta later disbanded the team, lifted a freeze on onboarding new Chinese ad agencies, and shelved other anti-scam measures that internal tests showed would be effective. Within months, the share of banned ads rebounded to about 16 percent of China revenue.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone lashed out at Reuters, claiming the outlet has misrepresented the facts. He wrote:

Once again, Reuters is misconstruing and misrepresenting the facts. With respect to frauds and scams, Mark Zuckerberg’s “integrity strategy pivot” was to ↑ teams’ goals and instruct them to redouble efforts to fight frauds and scams globally, not just from specific markets.

And you know what? That strategic direction led the teams responsible for addressing high risk harms to step up their efforts. The teams doubled their fraud and scam reduction goal and over the last 15 months, user reports of scam ads have declined by well over 50%.

And you know what? That strategic direction led the teams responsible for addressing high risk harms to step up their efforts. The teams doubled their fraud and scam reduction goal and over the last 15 months, user reports of scam ads have declined by well over 50%.

— Andy Stone (@andymstone) December 15, 2025