Meta Made Millions From Ads That Spread Disinformation

Senator Orin Hatch wanted to know how Facebook made money. The meme is "Senator, we run ads."

Meta made at least $30.3 million in ad revenue from networks it removed from its own platforms for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior over the course of a year. Meta doesn't return ad money if a network is taken down, according to the head of security communications.

Meta absorbed 17 percent of the money in the global ad market and made $114 billion from advertising, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Some of the money came from ads bought by networks that violated Meta's policies.

The global advertising industry is estimated to be between $400 billion and $700 billion. Nobody knows the size of the industry. Nobody knows what's going on inside.

The context in which ads appear on social media is what makes them legitimate. The internet is where we connect with our friends and family. A place on the internet where we share our most intimate emotions about what's happening in our lives. It is our preferred location for connecting.

In the last four years, Meta has released periodic reports identifying networks of fake accounts and pages that aim to deceive users and, in many cases, push propaganda in ways that are designed to look organic and change public opinion. Governments, independent groups, or public relations and marketing companies can run these networks.

The company started addressing coordinated social harm last year, where networks used real accounts as part of their information operations. The changes were announced by Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy at Meta.

The change shows how specific the company's criteria is, which means that Meta may not have documented some networks that used other tactics at all. Information operations can sometimes use real accounts, or be run on behalf of a political action committee, making it harder to categorize their behavior as authentic.

Sarah Kay Wiley is a researcher at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. It's not easy to spot it on Facebook.

Russia accounted for most of the ads that were removed from the networks. Most of the campaigns targeting Mexico were connected to domestic actors. The public earnings documents of Meta do not show how much the company earns by country.

More than $22 million of the $30.3 million was spent by just seven networks, the largest of which was a $9.5 million campaign for the right-wing, anti-China media group.