A Reuters investigation has found that Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, chose to tolerate high levels of fraudulent advertising from China despite internal findings that billions of dollars in revenue were tied to scams, illegal gambling and other banned content. Internal company documents reviewed by Reuters show Meta executives were concerned about minimizing the “revenue impact” of any sustained crackdown, even as staff warned of growing harm to users worldwide.
Although China bans its citizens from using Meta’s platforms, Chinese companies are allowed to advertise to foreign audiences, creating a lucrative business for the U.S. tech giant. According to the documents, Meta’s annual advertising revenue from China reached more than $18 billion in 2024, accounting for over a tenth of its global sales. The company estimated that about 19% of that revenue, more than $3 billion, came from advertisements linked to scams, pornography, illegal gambling and other prohibited activities.
The internal records, generated over the past four years by Meta’s finance, engineering, safety and lobbying teams, reveal repeated efforts to measure the scale of abuse and assess potential countermeasures. They also show consistent reluctance to adopt fixes that might threaten business growth. Meta concluded that China was the origin of roughly a quarter of all scam and banned-product ads appearing on its platforms worldwide, affecting victims from Taiwan to North America.
In response to rising concerns, Meta launched a China-focused anti-fraud team in 2024 and temporarily intensified enforcement. Using enhanced monitoring tools, the company cut the share of fraudulent ads tied to China by about half in the second half of the year. But internal documents indicate that after follow-up from Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and an internal “Integrity Strategy pivot,” the crackdown was halted. The China-focused team was disbanded, freezes on new Chinese ad agencies were lifted, and other effective anti-scam measures were shelved.
Reuters was unable to determine the precise nature of Zuckerberg’s involvement, but the documents show that within months of the policy shift, fraudulent advertising rebounded. By mid-2025, banned ads again accounted for roughly 16% of Meta’s China-derived advertising revenue. Former Meta business integrity executive Rob Leathern described the levels of abuse as indefensible, saying the scale revealed a major breakdown in consumer protection.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Reuters that the China-focused enforcement team was always intended to be temporary and that the company’s broader strategy was to reduce scams globally. He said Meta’s automated systems blocked or removed 46 million ads submitted by Chinese partners over the past 18 months and that the company has cut ties with some agencies and adjusted commissions to penalize repeat offenders. However, the statement did not address many specific questions raised by Reuters about the internal documents and strategic decisions.
The findings come as Meta faces growing scrutiny over scam advertising more broadly. Reuters previously reported that the company earns billions of dollars annually from high-risk ads and that U.S. lawmakers have urged federal regulators to investigate. Internal documents describe China as Meta’s top “Scam Exporting Nation,” noting that even national holidays in China can influence global scam levels on Meta’s platforms.
Consultants hired by Meta warned that the company’s own policies and reliance on layers of Chinese advertising intermediaries fostered systemic abuse. According to those reports, weak identity verification, widespread account sharing and special protections for top-tier ad agencies made enforcement difficult and allowed scammers to operate with little risk. Despite these warnings, Meta documents show the company decided to tolerate elevated levels of misconduct from Chinese advertisers on a long-term basis rather than pursue parity with ad quality elsewhere.
The human cost has been significant. U.S. prosecutors said earlier this year that they seized more than $200 million tied to a stock fraud scheme promoted through Facebook and Instagram ads that funneled victims into WhatsApp groups run from China. While Meta said it cooperated with law enforcement, the Reuters investigation concludes that the company’s trade-offs between revenue and user safety are nowhere clearer than in its China advertising business, where internal warnings repeatedly clashed with commercial priorities.
