Brandon Pho, reporting for San Jose Spotlight
The lawsuit filed Monday alleges that instead of cracking
down on deceptive ads designed to trick users out of their money,
Meta has hamstrung its own fraud prevention teams and helped fake
companies bypass its filters to enable the tech powerhouse to
enjoy an estimated $7 billion in ad revenue from the scams every
year. […]The county lawsuit seeks attorney fees and a ruling barring Meta
from further alleged violations of false advertising and unfair
competition laws. Much of the lawsuit’s allegations stem from a
2025 Reuters investigation suggesting Meta was at one
point involved in one-third of all successful Internet scams in
the U.S.The company has vowed to fight the lawsuit.
“This claim relies on Reuters reporting that distorts our motives
and ignores the full range of actions we take to combat scams
every day,” a spokesperson for the company told San José
Spotlight. “We aggressively fight scams on and off our platforms
because they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that
rely on our services.”
Reuters’s Jeff Horwitz and Engen Tham were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting for their reporting on this story.
