Americans have lost billions due to fraudulent social media advertising. Meta profited from scam ads targeting seniors, with a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) revealing that Meta earned $14.3 million in ad revenue from malicious Medicare-related advertisements in 2025. These ads, promising fake benefits and using AI-generated celebrity deepfakes, primarily targeted users aged 65 or older in Texas and Florida. CCDH analyzed 90,000 ads from Meta’s library, leading to 215 million impressions from known scammers. Despite Meta’s removal of many ads, similar ads replaced them, continuing to create significant revenues.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone stated that they actively combat scams, removing over 159 million scam ads last year. The FTC reported $2.1 billion in losses in 2025 due to social media scams. A Reuters report revealed Meta’s annualized revenue from scam ads to be approximately $7 billion, with expectations to earn $16 billion from “high risk” advertising in 2024.
A class-action lawsuit based on these revelations was filed against Meta in April, accusing the company of earning profits while ignoring user fraud reports. Meta refuted the allegations, describing them as misrepresentations of their efforts to combat scams.