Meta sued over scam ads

A consumer group has sued Meta, accusing the company of letting scam ads spread on Facebook and Instagram while collecting the ad money. (consumerfed.org) The Consumer Federation of America said it filed the proposed class action on April 21, 2026, in Superior Court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of itself and a proposed class of D.C. Facebook users. The complaint seeks damages, recovery of alleged illegal profits, and court orders to stop the practices. (consumerfed.org) The suit leans on Reuters reporting about Meta’s internal documents, which said the company estimated users were seeing 15 billion “higher risk” scam ads a day in 2024, worth an annualized $7 billion in revenue. Reuters also reported that Meta projected about 10% of 2024 revenue, or roughly $16 billion, would come from scam ads and banned-goods ads. (reuters.com) The legal claim is not that every bad ad slipped through by mistake. The complaint says Meta identified some advertisers as higher risk and charged them higher rates instead of blocking them outright. (consumerfed.org) That matters because Meta sells ads by promising reach and trust at massive scale: Facebook alone had 3.07 billion monthly active users as of December 2025, and advertising brought in nearly all of Meta’s $164.5 billion revenue in 2025. A lawsuit that says scam ads were a meaningful revenue stream cuts at the center of that business. (about.fb.com) The case also arrives after months of public pressure over scam ads, especially financial scams and celebrity-impersonation pitches that move targets into private chats or fake investment sites. In March 2026, Meta said it had started blocking financial-services ads that direct people to private messaging services, calling that a common scam tactic. (about.fb.com) Meta says the lawsuit gets its conduct wrong. In a statement to Reuters, the company said, “These allegations misrepresent the reality of our work and we will fight them,” while pointing to expanded advertiser verification and new anti-scam tools announced in March. (reuters.com, about.fb.com) Meta has also tried to show enforcement activity. On February 26, 2026, it said it had filed lawsuits against deceptive advertisers in Brazil and China and sent cease-and-desist letters to eight marketing consultants accused of helping advertisers evade its systems. (about.fb.com) The D.C. case is now set to test whether Meta’s public promises about safety were consumer protection claims with legal consequences, not just moderation goals. For Meta, the question is no longer only how many scam ads it removes, but what it knew while those ads were still being sold. (consumerfed.org, reuters.com)