“Meta tolerates rampant ad fraud from China to safeguard billions in revenue”, 15 Dec 2025

[...] Beijing lets Chinese companies advertise to foreign consumers on the globe-spanning platforms. As a result, Meta’s advertising business was thriving in China, ultimately reaching over $18 billion in annual sales in 2024, more than a tenth of the company’s global revenue.

But Meta calculated that about 19% of that money – more than $3 billion – was coming from ads for scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned content, according to internal Meta documents reviewed by Reuters.

[…] Victims ranged from shoppers in Taiwan who purchased bogus health supplements to investors in the United States and Canada who were swindled out of their savings. “We need to make significant investment to reduce growing harm,” Meta staffers warned in an internal April 2024 presentation to leaders of its safety operations.

To that end, Meta created an anti-fraud team that went beyond previous efforts to monitor scams and other banned activity from China. Using a variety of stepped-up enforcement tools, it slashed the problematic ads by about half during the second half of 2024 – from 19% to 9% of the total advertising revenue coming from China.

[…]

But after Zuckerberg’s input, the documents show, Meta disbanded its China-focused anti-scam team. It also lifted a freeze it had introduced on granting new Chinese ad agencies access to its platforms. One document shows that Meta shelved yet other anti-scam measures that internal tests had indicated would be effective. […]

Within a few months of Meta’s brief crackdown, a new crop of Chinese advertising agencies was flooding Facebook and Instagram with prohibited ads. By mid-2025, banned ads climbed back to about 16% of Meta’s China revenue.

[…]

In a statement to Reuters, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the work of the special team devoted to fighting Chinese fraud was always meant to be temporary. He later added that Zuckerberg didn’t order the team’s disbanding. Zuckerberg’s order to teams working on scams and other high-risk harms, he said, “was to redouble efforts to reduce them all across the globe, including in China.”

As part of its normal enforcement processes, Stone said, Meta’s automated systems over the past 18 months have blocked or removed 46 million ads submitted through its Chinese business partners, usually before users saw them. Stone said Meta has severed relationships with unspecified Chinese agencies over misbehavior in the past and that the company docks commissions for Chinese partners that run too many violating ads. […]

[also mentions and include non-responses from Beijing Tengze Technology Co Ltd, Cheetah Mobile, GatherOne, Propellership, Shein, Shenzhen Fugaoda Technology Co Ltd, Temu, Yinolink]