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Meta tolerates rampant ad fraud from China to safeguard billions in revenue (www.reuters.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Last year, Meta had to reckon with an ugly conclusion about its Chinese advertising customers: They were defrauding Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users worldwide.

Though China’s authoritarian government bans use of Meta social media by its citizens, 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.

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[–] 21 points 10 months ago

Amazon also endorses fraud. Found a product which had a blatant lie in the description and specification pages but do you think I can find the report product button? Absolutely no where to be found.

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    [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    Meta likes money. News at 11.

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    [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    a doii

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    [+] -39 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    Haha, what a bunch of lol propaganda. It just gets thicker and thicker. Baad baad Chinese, West good :)

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  • [–] 15 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Are you illiterate? This post is about meta, an American company. Chinese involvement is meaningless for us in this case

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago

    To be fair, Chinese culture here is also fucking terrible. That doesn't make Facebook or western countries good, because only a child thinks like that.

    No, everyone is shit. that's the adult take away here.

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    • 13 comments in c/world@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 19 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Pretty sure Google does too.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    Google resells their search ad buys to middlemen that then place web ads of the lowest quality across the web. Its a few billions worth industry. I briefely worked for a company in that "value" chain.

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    • [–] 8 points 10 months ago

    Just fucking regulate them. If somebody gets scammed…make Facebook pay for part of the restitution. 

    This is what happens when companies “self regulate”. The strategy is basically “we’ll do absolutely nothing to hurt revenue…but we’ll absolutely pretend we’re doing something”.

    The only way Facebook is going to hire actual people to look at random ads before they’re posted…which is the only thing that will work…is if they pay a steep enough penalty when people get scammed.

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    [–] 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    No matter what we will not tolerate this. I urge everyone to stop "tolerating" meta and boycott their products like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Also install uBlock Origin and block all the ads.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    My mother…boomers and a lot of Gen X…are completely addicted to Facebook. They find it essential because of all its lame social organizing groups and marketplace…so they end up also getting all their information from it…information mixed with these scams.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    The best you can do is help them install uBlock Origin and FB/Insta Lite (not great options, but better than the mainline apps).

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    • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    The only thing I use it for is marketplace and that is shit. I wish my American Legion post would stop using it.

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    [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    Same goes for google. I initially refused to believe it, but after seeing with my own eyes them telling me "This does not go against ToS" after clearly showing them AI generated president of my country advertising crypto scams really convinced me

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    [–] 7 points 10 months ago

    Dead platform full of bots clings desperately to life by selling out the attention spans of the remaining few users too oblivious to notice the pot boiling.

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    [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    Shhh you're giving away trade secrets.

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    1 comment in c/news@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] [S] 4 points 10 months ago

    I'm sorry this was already posted on world@lemmy.world. I tried deleting it but it was still showing up under cross-posted to so I ended up undeleting it. I'm not sure if that was the right action to take.

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