Facebook scam ads exposed in new Tech Transparency Project report

Facebook ads featured altered videos of officials, misleading users about non-existent relief checks. Photo / Getty Images

An ad that appeared in thousands of Facebook feeds this summer featured an altered video of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at a regular press briefing. In it, she appeared to say Americans could claim a $5000 relief cheque on an official government site. An arrow that then appeared led to an advertiser called Get Covered Today.

Similar ads featured fabricated videos of Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts promising similar rebates that did not exist. “This is not a gimmick,” the impersonation of Warren said.

But it was.

The company behind the ads and others like it were among the top political advertisers on Facebook, according to an analysis by the Tech Transparency Project, a non-profit focused on holding big technology companies accountable.

The ads are a lucrative part of Facebook’s advertising revenue that, the project’s researchers and others say, has led the company to turn a blind eye to a flood of low-quality or deceptive content, spam and, in some cases, outright fraud on its platform.

“Meta is very aware of these types of scams,” said Katie A. Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project. “They just didn’t care.”

In a report published yesterday, the project identified 63 advertisers that have, by several measures, used deceptive or fraudulent practices. They amount to roughly 1 in 5 of the platform’s top 300 spenders in the category of political or social advertising.

Collectively, they bought nearly 150,000 ads, spending almost US$49 million (NZ$84m) over the past seven years, according to data in Facebook’s ad library.

Ads from all 63 advertisers have previously been removed for violating Facebook’s policies, meaning their deceptive practices were not unknown. Meta has suspended some of them, but more than half were able to continue posting new ads as recently as this week. The analysis suggests that, even when Facebook takes action, it has profited from advertisers who try to swindle its users.

“The only thing worse than these deepfake AI videos being used to scam Americans is the fact that Meta makes tens of millions of dollars off those scam ads,” Warren said in a statement about the impersonation of her.

“We need serious guardrails in place to protect consumers online.”

In images from fabricated videos, renderings of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders promise government rebates that do not exist. Photo / The New York Times

Facebook, which is owned by Meta, prohibits advertising that uses “identified deceptive or misleading practices, including scams to take money from people or access personal information”. It has explicit rules against impersonations, and it ultimately removed the video of Leavitt, though not all the others.

In a statement, the company said it enforced its rules vigorously and would “invest in building new technical defences” against what it called an industry-wide issue. “Scammers are relentless,” the statement said, “and constantly evolve their tactics to try to evade detection.”

Facebook has long had to wrestle with criticism of the political ads it solicits on the platform. It imposed restrictions on them after Russia used them in an attempt to sow voter discontent during the 2016 presidential election and banned them entirely for a while after Donald Trump fought to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

With government officials around the world reporting a sharp rise in online fraud, Meta is facing new pressure.

Last week, Singapore’s Government gave Meta until the end of the month to crack down on scam ads and other posts after a sharp rise in content impersonating officials there. The Government threatened a fine starting at US$770,000 and rising daily if Meta did not comply.

In the United States, the company argued in court last year that it “does not owe a duty to users” to address fraudulent content, but that legal argument appears to be falling short.

A federal court in California refused last week to dismiss a lawsuit that accused Facebook of negligence and breach of contract for abetting fraud by advertisers.

“While Facebook disclaims responsibility for third-party conduct, it maintains responsibility for its own promise to ‘take appropriate action’ to combat scam advertisements and to do so in good faith,” Judge Jeffrey S. White, a district court judge in California, wrote in his ruling.

Ad revenue on Meta’s platforms, which include Instagram and WhatsApp, reached US$160 billion last year. The analysis of political ads on Facebook represents only a small fraction of the total.

A new analysis of political advertisers found that Facebook, which is owned by Meta, profits from ads that include deepfakes and other content prohibited by its own policies. Photo / Jason Henry, The New York Times

Meta keeps political ads in its library for seven years as a measure of transparency after the Russian influence operation in 2016. Ads in other categories are not preserved after they appear, making it harder for researchers to study the extent of scams among those.

Facebook has specific requirements for political advertisers, requiring them, for example, to be registered companies in the United States. However, experts say the process of submitting and approving ads that appear on the platform is largely automated, allowing dishonest actors to slip through.

Some of the advertisers studied by the Tech Transparency Project included contact information in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Vietnam or Britain, which ought to have disqualified them.

“You can be anybody,” said Iesha White, director of intelligence for Check My Ads, an advocacy group that monitors the digital ad industry and was not involved in the Tech Transparency Project’s analysis. “There are no rigorous checks.”

Meta, she said, effectively crowdsourced its enforcement, waiting for users or researchers to report fraud. “It should be identified before the ads ever run.”

Many of the ads appear to target older and conservative users. The ads often respond quickly to politically charged events.

On the day of the memorial service for Charlie Kirk on September 21, an ad appeared asking if people could forgive his assassin, as his wife, Erika, said she had. Click to vote now, it said, promising a red “We Are Charlie Kirk” hat for those who did – free, except for 99c to help cover the shipping costs.

Many of the ads highlighted by the researchers respond quickly to politically charged events, like this one that was posted the same day as the memorial for conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Photo / The New York Times

Though the hat was ostensibly free, it required a more costly monthly membership for a clothing and other merchandise supplier calling itself End the Wokeness. Entering credit card details to pay for the nominal shipping meant automatically signing up for the subscription.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has warned consumers about websites that sign them up for subscriptions they do not want.

Sculpin Media, the company that operates as End the Wokeness, has listed page administrators in the Philippines, as well as the US. It describes itself as a clothing store and media company and operates out of a small office next to a spice dealer and a car detailer in a low-slung brick warehouse near a former landfill in New York.

A man who identified himself as a co-owner appeared surprised that a reporter had found the office. He acknowledged placing the ads but declined to speak on the record. He said the staff worried about potential threats of political violence.

Inside the office were boxes of red baseball caps with the slogan Maga 2028. End the Wokeness’ website is devoted to sales of Trump- and Maga-themed knick-knacks. Among the latest is a “Patriot Pumpkin Carving Kit”, a stencil that features Trump’s face. The company’s page on Facebook includes numerous posts from users complaining about its subscription model or asking for refunds.

End the Wokeness, one of the advertisers whose content has been pulled from Facebook for violating the company’s policies, sells knick-knacks related to Trump and Maga. Photo / The New York Times

In August, the FTC warned that reported scams targeting older Americans by impersonating government officials or businesses had increased fourfold between 2020 and last year.

Frauds on social media platforms and other websites now far exceed those using text messages or phone calls. The spread of commercially available tools using artificial intelligence has clearly contributed to the surge in deceptive ads, making them easier to produce and spread.

Sanders, responding to the deepfake of him, said: “This is part of a much larger issue: AI is advancing rapidly, but the laws and protections we have in place for everyday Americans are dangerously outdated.”

The ad featuring Leavitt was posted by one of four advertisers linked to a company calling itself RFY News Group. No one responded to a message left at a number listed in the ad library as a contact.

Neither Leavitt nor the White House responded to a request for comment about the deceptive videos.

Meta suspended the accounts of two of the four advertisers involved in August, though they had been advertising for weeks by that point. Two others appeared to have been removed this week after inquiries about the Tech Transparency Project’s research, which has tracked the RFY News Group for more than a year.

Researchers say Meta could do more to limit ads such as these and to be more transparent about enforcing its rules. Instead, it has reduced its efforts to moderate political content and cut the number of staff working on platform safety.

“The pendulum has swung toward more short-term revenue considerations versus the long-term health of the platform and the ecosystem,” said Rob Leathern, a former Meta employee who helped create the ad library and is now head of Hawkview Labs, a company that helps startups working in online trust and safety. “Perhaps, at some point, it has to swing the other way.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Steven Lee Myers

Photographs by: Jason Henry

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