according to the material from the site - By Cryptopolitan_News
Last year, Meta faced a harsh truth when it discovered that Chinese advertisers had flooded Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp with malicious ads targeting users around the world.
Generally, China does not allow its citizens to use these platforms, but Beijing permits Chinese companies to promote their products to foreign audiences, turning the country into a major source of revenue for Meta, increasing its advertising revenue in China in 2024 to over 18 billion dollars.
According to Reuters, about 19% of that money came from ads related to fraud, illegal gambling, pornography, and prohibited goods.
Documents reportedly indicate that employees warned management about the scale of abuse, with one from April 2024 stating: "We need to make significant investments to mitigate the growing harm."
Documents also indicate that China was responsible for a quarter of all fraudulent advertising on Meta platforms, with victims including buyers from Taiwan purchasing counterfeit supplements and investors from the U.S. and Canada losing their savings due to fraudulent schemes.
In 2024, Meta created a new fraud-fighting team to tackle the chaos, and employees reduced the share of blocked advertising in China from 19% to 9% in the second half of the year. However, this step proved to be short-lived.
After what is described in internal documents as "subsequent actions by Zuckerberg," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg ordered teams to suspend the fight against fraud. The company then disbanded its China task force, lifted the moratorium on approving new Chinese advertising agencies, and postponed a series of enforcement measures, the effectiveness of which had been confirmed by trials.
Consultants from Propellerfish also informed Meta that their own policy helps fraudsters. However, after a few months, new Chinese agencies once again began flooding the system.
By mid-2025, the share of blocked ads in China's revenue had reached 16% again. Former Meta integrity chief Rob Lettern said, "The levels you are talking about are unacceptable. I don't understand how anyone can consider this normal."
A company representative, Andy Stone, told Reuters that the fraud task force had always been temporary, and that Zuckerberg ordered teams to "double down on efforts" worldwide. Stone stated that Meta's automated tools blocked or removed 46 million ads placed in China over 18 months and that Meta severed ties with some Chinese partners and reduced commissions for others who violated the rules too frequently.
He added: "There is a sharp increase in the number of fraudulent schemes online, driven by persistent criminals and sophisticated organized crime syndicates constantly refining their schemes to evade detection."
Reuters reports that Meta expected to receive $16 billion from its revenue for 2024 from fraudulent and blocked ads. Later, two U.S. senators called on regulators to investigate. Inside the company, China was named the leading "country-exporter of fraud." Employees even noted that global fraud rates decrease during the Chinese holiday "Golden Week."
In March 2025, U.S. prosecutors in Illinois stated that the FBI seized $214 million from a Chinese stock fraud scheme that used Meta advertising to redirect victims to WhatsApp groups run by people "posing as American investment consultants." Seven individuals from Taiwan and Malaysia were charged.
A significant part of the problem lies in China's network of Meta resellers: 11 leading agencies that attract smaller agencies, creating a multi-layered system of intermediaries.
A report from Propellerfish claims there is widespread use of fake accounts, identity masking tools, AI-generated documents, and "advertising optimization specialists" funded by informal lenders. The report states that the Chinese government does not intervene "when violations affect a foreign audience," meaning that fraudsters face "minimal or no risk."
Meta's level of oversight was assessed as weaker than that of TikTok and Google. Internal documents indicate that Meta will not strive for full compliance with global standards, but instead will maintain the current level of "global harm" from China.
For less than $30 paid in cryptocurrency, they gained access to accounts of second-tier agencies linked to leading partners such as GatherOne and Cheetah Mobile. They then placed ads promising quick riches for investments, which went through without resistance and generated dozens of responses. After inquiries, Meta removed its public catalog of "Partners with relevant badges."
Internal data showed that advertising revenue in China more than doubled—from $7.4 billion in 2022 to $18.4 billion in 2024. By the end of 2024, half of the $240 million received from new verified Chinese resellers had violated the rules. Employees created dashboards and resumed the moratorium on new verifications.
Meta also found that more than half of the ads placed by Beijing Tengze Technology violated its rules. Instead of severing the contract with the company, Meta charged it higher fees. Later, Chinese records showed that Tengze had closed, and the address it provided did not exist. Its owner, Lin Zedong, also controls Shenzhen Fugaoda, which disappeared from its office after failing to pay rent but later posted job ads for people with experience selling "small illegal goods" in Europe and America.
In early 2025, Meta adjusted the commissions for Chinese agencies based on the quality of ads. But behavior did not change. An investigation conducted in May 2025 revealed that 800 accounts generated $28 million in one month from rule-violating ads. More than 75% of expenses were attributed to accounts supported by affiliate programs.
