Meta accused of earning 760 million PLN from scam ads in Poland

A report by the Instrat Foundation has sparked a significant controversy regarding Meta's advertising practices in Poland. The report estimates that fraudulent advertisements, including those utilizing deepfakes of celebrities and politicians, may have generated up to 760 million PLN in revenue for Meta in a single year. This figure represents approximately 37 percent of Meta's reported revenue in the Polish market, a significantly higher proportion than the 10 percent global average cited by the company.

Rafał Brzoska, CEO of InPost, has become a prominent critic of the tech giant, accusing Meta of failing to effectively filter scam content and describing its oversight as a “fiction.” Brzoska highlighted that these fraudulent mechanisms could be exploited to spread large-scale disinformation and panic.

The issue has reached the Polish Parliament, with a session of the Digitalization Committee scheduled to address the matter. However, representatives from Meta's Polish branch have declined to attend the hearing. Meta has dismissed the findings of the Instrat report, labeling it “fiction created to order” and disputing the accuracy of the revenue estimates.