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Catalin Cimpanu
Catalin Cimpanu
@campuscodi@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

Dear f***ing lord!

Nearly one every three Meta ads showed in the EU and UK over 23 days pointed to online scams

This should be the easiest layup for govt agencies in the history of enforcements

https://www.gendigital.com/blog/insights/research/scam-ad-machine-meta

The Scam Ad Machine

Nearly one in three Meta ads found to point to a scam, phishing or malware
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The Penguin of Evil
The Penguin of Evil
@etchedpixels@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi The UK is forever bleating about parity between internet on existing media, but existing media actually have to check their adverts properly.

Time every advert displayed via an advertising agency in the UK had to be human signed off, with exemptions for own websites and the like.

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Kevin Russell
Kevin Russell
@kevinrns@mstdn.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi

Ban Meta in Europe.

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aspragg
aspragg
@aspragg@ohai.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi And some websites still ask you to turn off your #adblocker !

Nuh-uh. The internet advertising industry dug its own damn grave on this one. I'm going to continue to black-hole all adverts from my browser until such time as the ad providers get sucked into an actual black hole, thankyouverymuch.

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Johns
Johns
@Johns_priv@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi Ei @EUCommission , don't you think you should have someone look at this?

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Sergey Silaev
Sergey Silaev
@sesav@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi This has truly stunned me. Meta's financial statements reveal that its advertising division maintains outstanding performance. Meta's annual revenue in 2025 reached approximately $201 billion, with advertising contributing around $196 billion, a rise from roughly $160 billion in 2024.

As stated in the post, if 1/3 of ad revenue is fraudulent, this implies that scammers are allocating substantial funds to advertising because it is effective for their illicit activities. My goodness.

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disorderlyf
disorderlyf
@disorderlyf@todon.eu  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi Only one in three?

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SIEM Shady
SIEM Shady
@CDubbs@infosec.exchange  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi I have long felt advertising standards for broadcast television need to be applied to online platforms. The same issue with scams and stolen likenesses, fake endorsements, etc on Youtube.

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Per Jakobsen
Per Jakobsen
@perjakobsen@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi

Leave FaceBook and Meta thaenkin

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Matv1
Matv1
@matv1@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi
Conclusion: Companies like this basically are responsibly for screwing up our internet beyond repair. Mark Z has been at the absolute firefront of that.

Having established that, though.. People still using his stuff today can no longer say they don't know. So they are aiding and abetting.

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Rev. caffinepwrd ☕
Rev. caffinepwrd ☕
@caffinepwrd@infosec.exchange  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi It's almost as if profit motive is incongruent to public good.

I hate what we've done to the world.

Meme that reads, but the free market knows best
Meme that reads, but the free market knows best
Meme that reads, but the free market knows best
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fancysandwiches
fancysandwiches
@fancysandwiches@neuromatch.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi They've already factored in the cost of government enforcement. I don't have the exact numbers, but they calculated that at most they'd lose something like 10% of the revenue from the scam ads due to enforcement, so it was worth it to keep allowing them.

I'm not saying that governments shouldn't crack down on this, but I don't think we can expect enforcement to make a difference until laws are changed that make the enforcement actually meaningful, until then they'll keep exposing their users to scams, and they'll keep profiting, while paying a small enforcement tax.

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Bioinformático cabreado
Bioinformático cabreado
@LostTransposon@neopaquita.es  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi Griftonomics

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Allan Chow
Allan Chow
@grumpasaurus@infosec.exchange  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi so as a company advertising on it i should be able to claim that Facebook is intentionally inflating the marketplace impacting my Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)!

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Kim Possible :kimoji_fire:
Kim Possible :kimoji_fire:
@kimlockhartga@beige.party  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi When I was on FB, I tried reporting the scam ads, but they got their coin and didn't care. It's appalling.

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sebbe://
sebbe://
@royalrex@mastodon.online  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

@campuscodi indeed horrific. Meta even admits that 10% of its global revenue comes from fraud and scam ads.

A small correction, they write: " 14.5 million ads running on Meta platforms across the EU and UK, representing more than 10.7 billion impressions. Nearly one in three of those ads (30.99%) pointed to a scam, phishing or malware link. In total, scam ads generated more than 300 million impressions"

So one in three ads CREATED was classified as scam. But "only" 2.8% of ads SHOWN was scam.

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