@campuscodi indeed horrific. Meta even admits that 10% of its global revenue comes from fraud and scam ads.

A small correction, they write: " 14.5 million ads running on Meta platforms across the EU and UK, representing more than 10.7 billion impressions. Nearly one in three of those ads (30.99%) pointed to a scam, phishing or malware link. In total, scam ads generated more than 300 million impressions"

So one in three ads CREATED was classified as scam. But "only" 2.8% of ads SHOWN was scam.

@campuscodi reference for Meta scam ads revenue: https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/08/faecebook/#too-big-to-care

@campuscodi When I was on FB, I tried reporting the scam ads, but they got their coin and didn't care. It's appalling.

@campuscodi so as a company advertising on it i should be able to claim that Facebook is intentionally inflating the marketplace impacting my Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)!

@kimlockhartga @campuscodi Yeah, only once did they accept/ act on my report and the same scam company was back not six months later. That was probably 2016ish.

@campuscodi

I guess the main difficulty is for ministers and regulators to resist those brown envelopes of cash and post-politics job offers.

@campuscodi Griftonomics

@grumpasaurus @campuscodi This sounds like Trauma that inevitably spells ROAST'ed.

@numodular @campuscodi it's definitely one of those actonyms rhat fucking came out of nowhere and suddenly within a week EVERYONE WAS SAYING IT "ROW-AS"

@campuscodi They've already factored in the cost of government enforcement. I don't have the exact numbers, but they calculated that at most they'd lose something like 10% of the revenue from the scam ads due to enforcement, so it was worth it to keep allowing them.

I'm not saying that governments shouldn't crack down on this, but I don't think we can expect enforcement to make a difference until laws are changed that make the enforcement actually meaningful, until then they'll keep exposing their users to scams, and they'll keep profiting, while paying a small enforcement tax.

@campuscodi It's almost as if profit motive is incongruent to public good.

I hate what we've done to the world.

@campuscodi
Conclusion: Companies like this basically are responsibly for screwing up our internet beyond repair. Mark Z has been at the absolute firefront of that.

Having established that, though.. People still using his stuff today can no longer say they don't know. So they are aiding and abetting.