Facebook, an internet machine that turns lies into money, is swimming in scammers who buy ads with political messages, according to a new report from ProPublica. The fact that Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram contain scams should obviously not be news to anyone. But this new article helps give some idea of ​​the scale of Meta’s problem and the company’s inability to control content at scale. A surprising fact from the article? ProPublica identified fraudulent networks that ran ads viewed “900 million times on Facebook and Instagram.”

The new report is part of an investigation by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia Journalism School and the Technology Transparency Projecta nonprofit organization that studies Big Tech companies. And ProPublica notes that most of the fraud networks identified in its report are part of lead generation companies that collect and sell personal information. The ads often appear to be promoting deals endorsed by federal politicians like Donald Trump and Joe Biden, while others become more local, like an ad identified by ProPublica featuring the governor of ‘Illinois, JB Pritzker.

An ad cited in the article features a photo of Governor Pritzker, saying, “The state recently approved that Illinois residents under the age of 89 can now receive funeral insurance up to $35,000.” $ to cover all ends of life. expenses of life! You can see how this would specifically target vulnerable Illinois seniors, attracting people in their 70s and 80s and promising good deals on funeral insurance.

Other ads are more specifically tied to partisan anger, like an account selling Trump merchandise that says “liberal activists rip Trump-Vance signs out of the ground, sparking a wave of controversy across the country.” ProPublica spoke with a Trump supporter who didn’t realize he was signing up for a recurring subscription when he purchased one Trump Coins.

Watch this video of an AI-generated news anchor selling a “limited edition Trump-Vance coin” and calling both candidates “handsome devils.”

The presenter warns that “radical left-wing groups” are “campaigning to ban the play”.

Confused? Read the full story in TTP’s report: pic.twitter.com/ipvJn7Y01O

– Technology Transparency Project (@TTP_updates) October 31, 2024

There were also many advertisements targeting honest people who claimed to have free government health insurance. A series of ads mentioned in the new report directed Facebook users to “unethical insurance agents who changed the details of their existing ACA plan or enrolled them in plans for which they were not eligible.” “. Why would scammers do this? Simply to earn a commission.

Another shocking fact from the article, which is definitely worth it read in fullThis is because even when scammer ads are identified, accounts from the same network can continue to operate.

From ProPublica:

Meta removed some ads after initially approving them, the investigation found, but it failed to capture thousands more with similar or even identical content. In many cases, even after removing the infringing ads, this allowed associated Facebook pages and accounts to continue operating, allowing the parent networks to generate new pages and ads.

Gizmodo contacted Meta on Thursday for comment, including how scam networks can continue to operate after their content has been flagged as fraudulent. The company did not respond to our question, but instead sent the same statement it sent to ProPublica, insisting that it is constantly working to update its application systems.

“We welcome ProPublica’s investigation into this fraudulent activity, which included misleading advertisements promoting Affordable Care Act tax credits and government-funded rental subsidies. The ads, some of which were several years old, were all available for public review in Meta’s ad library, where ads are held for seven years,” read a statement from a Meta spokesperson.

“Our investigation showed that, as part of our ongoing work against scams, identity theft and spam, our enforcement systems had already detected and disabled a large proportion of the pages – and we have reviewed and taken actions against the rest of these pages for various policy violations. . This is a high-conflict space, and we continue to update our enforcement systems to respond to the evolving behavior of fraudsters.

There is, of course, some irony in the fact that Meta is dabbling in artificial intelligence while being so bad at identifying fraudulent ads on its own platform. Detecting scams and making sure accounts associated with those scams can’t buy advertising seems like a perfect job for AI. Or at least it would be a perfect job for the AI ​​if it were anything other than a plagiarism machine.

Of course, Facebook is not the only platform fighting against scams. Each network of Social truth has Grindr Scammers try to extract money from people illegally. But with its global reach and billions of users, Meta is in a unique position to be inundated with garbage. The only question left is why people willingly submit themselves to the garbage pit every day.