Reuters: Meta Tolerates Rampant Ad Fraud From China to Safeguard Billions in Revenue ⇥ reuters.com

Jeff Horwitz and Engen Tham, Reuters:

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.

According to Reuters’ interpretation of these documents, Meta’s internal efforts to reduce this fraud were hampered after Mark Zuckerberg intervened. Andy Stone disputes that characterization.

While “Beijing lets Chinese companies advertise to foreign consumers” on Meta’s platforms, it should be noted that Meta also accepts advertising. The company is officially opposed to operating in China on free speech grounds — a stance it has now, but it was previously comfortable with compromising until it was spooked. It is not okay with the requirements imposed upon it to permit no-cost user participation, yet it is okay with accepting advertising dollars from companies offering the same speech compromises.

Meta continues to prove it has no principles. It never had any. At its heart, it runs on the same vibe of indifference to its broader impact that defined the earliest years of Facebook.