This past summer, countless Facebook users saw an ad featuring a doctored video of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. In the video, she seemingly announced a $5,000 government relief check, directing viewers to what appeared to be an official site but was actually an advertiser named Get Covered Today.
Other similar advertisements used fabricated videos of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, promising non-existent government rebates. In one instance, the impersonated Ms. Warren declared, ‘This is not a gimmick,’ making the deception even more brazen.
But a gimmick it most certainly was.
Despite these blatant deceptions, the very company behind these ads, and many others just like them, ranked among Facebook’s most prominent political advertisers. This alarming discovery comes from an analysis conducted by the Tech Transparency Project, a non-profit dedicated to holding major tech firms accountable.
A video from a scam Facebook ad shows White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt falsely claiming Americans could receive a $5,000 relief check through an official-looking government site.
These problematic advertisements represent a highly profitable stream for Facebook, suggesting that the platform might be intentionally overlooking a deluge of low-quality, misleading, spammy, and even outright fraudulent content, according to researchers and critics alike.
Katie A. Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, stated bluntly, ‘Meta is very aware of these types of scams. They just didn’t care.’
A recent report revealed that 63 advertisers, representing about one-fifth of Facebook’s top 300 political and social advertisers, have engaged in deceptive or fraudulent practices.
Over the last seven years, these groups collectively purchased nearly 150,000 ads, spending close to $49 million, as revealed by data from Facebook’s ad library.
All 63 of these advertisers had previous ads removed for violating Facebook’s policies, indicating that their deceptive tactics were well-known. While Meta did suspend some accounts, more than half were still actively posting new ads this week. This analysis strongly suggests that even after taking action, Facebook continues to profit from advertisers who exploit its users through scams.
Senator Warren, commenting on her own deepfake impersonation, remarked, ‘The only thing worse than these deepfake A.I. videos being used to scam Americans is the fact that Meta makes tens of millions of dollars off those scam ads.’
She emphasized the urgent need for ‘serious guardrails in place to protect consumers online.’
Meta’s platform, Facebook, has strict policies against ‘identified deceptive or misleading practices, including scams to take money from people or access personal information.’ It also explicitly bans impersonations. While the video of Ms. Leavitt was eventually removed, not all similar deceptive content met the same fate.
In response, Meta asserted that it ‘vigorously’ enforces its rules and plans to ‘invest in building new technical defenses’ to combat what it describes as a widespread industry problem. The company stated, ‘Scammers are relentless and constantly evolve their tactics to try to evade detection.’
Facebook has a long history of grappling with criticism surrounding its political advertising. Following the Russian influence operation in the 2016 presidential election, the platform implemented restrictions. It even temporarily banned political ads altogether after President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Now, with governments globally reporting a significant surge in online fraud, Meta faces renewed pressure to act.
Just last week, Singapore’s government issued an ultimatum to Meta: crack down on scam ads and impersonating content by the end of the month or face a escalating fine, starting at $770,000 daily.
In the U.S., Meta’s legal defense last year—claiming it ‘does not owe a duty to users’ to tackle fraudulent content—seems to be losing ground.
A federal court in California recently denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Facebook of negligence and breach of contract for allegedly facilitating advertiser fraud.
Judge Jeffrey S. White of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California stated in his ruling: ‘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.’
Last year, Meta’s platforms, including Instagram and WhatsApp, generated $160 billion in ad revenue. The political ads examined in this analysis, however, represent only a tiny portion of that staggering total.
An image shows that Meta’s Facebook platform explicitly forbids advertising that uses “identified deceptive or misleading practices, including scams to take money from people or access personal information.” Credit: Jason Henry for The New York Times.
To ensure transparency following the 2016 Russian influence operation, Meta archives political ads for seven years. However, ads in other categories are not preserved, making it significantly more difficult for researchers to fully assess the prevalence of scams beyond the political sphere.
Facebook mandates specific requirements for political advertisers, such as being registered U.S. companies. Yet, experts point out that the largely automated ad submission and approval process frequently allows dishonest actors to bypass these safeguards.
Intriguingly, some advertisers scrutinized by the Tech Transparency Project listed contact information in countries like the Philippines, Bangladesh, Vietnam, or Britain – details that should have automatically disqualified them from running U.S. political ads.
Iesha White, director of intelligence for Check My Ads, an advocacy group (unaffiliated with the Tech Transparency Project’s analysis) that monitors the digital ad industry, criticized the lack of oversight: ‘You can be anybody. There are no rigorous checks.’
According to White, Meta essentially relies on a crowdsourced enforcement model, waiting for users or researchers to flag fraudulent content. ‘It should be identified before the ads ever run,’ she argued.
Many of these ads appear to specifically target older and conservative demographics, frequently capitalizing on politically charged events as they unfold.
For instance, on September 21, the day of Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, an ad surfaced, prompting users to vote on whether they could forgive his assassin, echoing his wife Erika’s public statement. The ad offered a ‘We Are Charlie Kirk’ hat for free, only requiring 99 cents for shipping.
This image highlights how many of the analyzed ads quickly react to politically charged events, such as the one posted on the day of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s memorial.
However, that ‘free’ hat came with a hidden catch: a mandatory, more expensive monthly membership to a merchandise supplier called ‘End the Wokeness.’ By simply paying for shipping, users were automatically enrolled in a recurring subscription.
The Federal Trade Commission has previously issued warnings to consumers about websites employing similar tactics to auto-enroll them in unwanted subscriptions.
The company behind ‘End the Wokeness,’ identified as Sculpin Media, lists page administrators in both the Philippines and the United States. Describing itself as a clothing store and media company, its operations are housed in a modest office located within a low-slung brick warehouse in Staten Island, situated near the former Fresh Kills landfill.
A co-owner of the company, who expressed surprise at being located by a reporter, confirmed placing the ads. He declined to speak on the record, citing staff concerns about potential political violence.
The office contained boxes of red baseball caps emblazoned with ‘MAGA 2028.’ The ‘End the Wokeness’ website predominantly features Trump- and MAGA-themed merchandise, including a ‘Patriot Pumpkin Carving Kit’ featuring Mr. Trump’s mug shot. Their Facebook page is rife with user complaints regarding the subscription model and requests for refunds.
Another image shows that ‘End the Wokeness,’ an advertiser penalized by Facebook for policy violations, also markets Trump and MAGA-themed novelty items.
The Federal Trade Commission reported a staggering fourfold increase in scams targeting older Americans between 2020 and last year, with fraudsters impersonating government officials or legitimate businesses.
Online frauds, particularly on social media, now significantly outnumber those conducted via text or phone. The proliferation of accessible AI tools has undoubtedly fueled this surge, simplifying the creation and dissemination of deceptive advertisements.
Responding to the deepfake of himself, Mr. Sanders commented, ‘This is part of a much larger issue: A.I. is advancing rapidly, but the laws and protections we have in place for everyday Americans are dangerously outdated.’
The ad featuring Ms. Leavitt originated from one of four advertisers associated with a group called RFY News Group. Attempts to reach them at the listed contact number went unanswered.
Both Ms. Leavitt and the White House declined to comment on the deceptive videos.
While Meta suspended two of the four linked advertiser accounts in August, they had been active for weeks. The remaining two accounts were reportedly removed this week, following sustained inquiry by the Tech Transparency Project, which has been monitoring RFY News Group for over a year.
Researchers argue that Meta could, and should, do more to curb such ads and enhance transparency in its policy enforcement. Instead, the company has scaled back its political content moderation efforts and downsized its platform safety teams.
Rob Leathern, a former Meta employee who helped establish the ad library and now leads Hawkview Labs (a firm supporting online trust and safety startups), observed, ‘The pendulum has swung toward more short-term revenue considerations versus the long-term health of the platform and the ecosystem. Perhaps at some point it has to swing the other way.’
Reporting for this article was also contributed by Eli Tan from San Francisco and Mark Bonamo from New York.