Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is failing to stop some con artists who repeatedly buy ads on the platforms to target seniors with scams, according to a new report.
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The report is due to be released on Tuesday by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an advocacy and research organization that investigates social media apps. The organization provided an advance copy to NBC News.
The center found that scam ads targeting seniors are widespread on Facebook. Over the past year, ads from 30 of the most active scam accounts generated an estimated 215 million ad impressions on the platform, according to the report. Seventy-three percent of those impressions came from users over 65, the report says.
Many of the ads lean on fake images or videos of celebrities, including President Donald Trump, former President Joe Biden, television host Oprah Winfrey, entertainer Steve Harvey, actor Brad Pitt and cartoon character Bart Simpson, according to the report and copies of the ads reviewed by NBC News in Meta’s public ad library.
The ads share a common goal: persuading the viewer to click a link to a website or call a phone number. “Don’t be an idiot. Claim it now,” an ad highlighted in the report said, promoting $3,600 in free groceries, rent and gas through Medicare. But after they click through, victims don’t see the riches they’re promised. Instead, their personal data is collected, or they’re steered into worse Medicare programs, the report says.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate said Meta should be catching more scam ads than it does for violating its terms of service.
“Meta is more than an unwitting participant. The company allows ads to reappear on its platform after being removed, even when they are nearly identical,” Imran Ahmed, the center’s CEO, said in a statement.
Meta said Monday it was looking at the report’s findings.
“Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection on our platforms and across the internet,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement.
“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,” he said. “We removed over 159 million scam ads last year alone — 92% of which we took down before anyone reported them — launched new tools to protect people, and partnered with law enforcement around the globe to disrupt these criminals.”
Meta has faced criticism for years for not cracking down harder on ads that violate its written policies, including ads for weight loss drugs, for AI nudification apps and for illegal opioids. Last month, an investigation by Reset Tech, a research organization, documented deceptive health ads targeting people in Europe.
Meta faces multiple class action complaints over the spread of scam ads. In a case pending in federal court in Oakland, California, three Facebook users allege that the company profits from online swindles at the expense of users. Meta has countered in the suit that Facebook is “provided ‘as is,’ and we make no guarantees that [it] always will be safe, secure, or error-free,” referring to a disclaimer in Meta’s terms.
The Consumer Federation of America last month filed a class action complaint against Meta, alleging that it downplays the problem of online scams and exaggerates to users the steps it takes to crack down on scams. Meta hasn’t yet filed a response to the lawsuit, and a hearing is scheduled for July. On Monday, California’s Santa Clara County filed a lawsuit making similar claims against Meta, Reuters reported.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate said it found about $12.4 million worth of ads run by Medicare-related scammers in the past year, and about $14.3 million overall, but it also said the numbers were underestimates because they are based only on ads listed in Meta’s public ad library. That library shows ads that run on Facebook, Instagram or other Meta platforms having to do with “social issues, elections or politics,” which isn’t most ads. (The Meta ad library reports spending totals in a range; the Center for Countering Digital Hate used the midpoint of each range in its calculations.)
Meta internally projected in 2024 that it would earn about 10% of its annual revenue from running ads for scams and banned goods, Reuters reported last year, citing internal company documents. Meta said at the time that the figure was “rough and overly-inclusive” and that the true number was lower. Stone said Monday that the figure is “much lower” but didn’t give an exact number.
In its report, the Center for Countering Digital Hate found Meta approving scam ads even for advertisers who had records of breaking its advertising standards. An account with the name Golden Help For All had 1,335 policy violations and was allowed to continue running ads, the report says.
The Facebook page for Golden Help For All is no longer available. An email sent to an address associated with the page bounced back.
Sometimes, Meta will remove an ad for violating its rules but then not take action against others with similar or identical content, according to the report. In one case in which 86 different ads used an identical video, researchers said, Meta rejected 48 versions but allowed 38 to run.
Meta didn’t answer questions about specific advertisers.
The spread of scams on Facebook is a burden not only for seniors but also for their families, said Marissa Garcia, who lives with her 79-year-old grandmother in Las Vegas. Garcia said she has had to intervene when her grandmother believed something she saw on Facebook, including once when her grandmother got on the phone with someone who asked for her Medicare beneficiary number and other personal details.
“It’s frankly disgusting that they’re allowing this to keep happening,” she said.
“Hosting these kinds of scams on Facebook lends credibility for seniors,” she added. “One of the things my grandmother said to me was ‘If this was a scam, why would it be on Facebook?’”
Even when Meta does remove an ad for violating its terms, it sometimes doesn’t do so right away, according to the report and records in the Meta ad library.
In December, a Facebook page using the name Walton Cook bought an ad with a fake video of Trump appearing to promote free “grocery allowance cards.” The ad also linked to a website, and the website address included the words “Medicare” and “benefits” — giving an appearance of authenticity. Meta eventually removed the ad for “Unacceptable Business Practices,” according to a record in its public ad library, but not before the ad had generated 200,000 to 250,000 impressions on Facebook and Instagram. The advertiser spent $10,000 to $15,000 on the buy, according to the ad library. The ad was active for about 21 hours.
About 63% of the people who viewed the ad were age 65 and older, according to Meta’s metrics, with the top locations of viewers listed as Texas, Florida and North Carolina.
“One reason that scammers might find it particularly attractive to advertise on Meta’s platforms is that it enables them to target seniors,” the report says.
The Facebook page for Walton Cook, which is still active, didn’t respond to a direct message requesting comment. Its “about” section includes a brief statement: “Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.”
In 2024, after victims of scam ads tried to sue Meta, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Meta was partly protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the 1996 law that shields platforms from liability for user-generated content. But the court allowed the lawsuit to proceed on the theory that Meta may have breached its own terms of service by allowing scam ads to spread. The case is pending before the appeals court again.
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