Federal and state actions question a bigtech firm’s revenue from fraudulent advertising, protections for minors, and end‑to‑end encryption assurances on WhatsApp.
US authorities are scrutinizing Meta Platforms after a series of allegations that the firm has profited from fraudulent advertising, failed to protect children online, and misrepresented the privacy and safety of its services, including WhatsApp.
The investigations and related lawsuits span federal agencies, state attorneys general, and private litigants, raising questions about Meta’s business practices, data‑handling claims, and internal research on user harm.
The litany of legal charges include:
- A Reuters investigation, drawing on internal Meta documents, reported that the firm had projected about 10% of its 2024 revenue — roughly US$16bn — would come from ads for scams, illegal gambling, and other banned goods. The documents also suggested Meta’s systems allowed billions of scam ads to appear daily, intervening only when algorithms were at least 95% certain an advertiser was fraudulent, a threshold critics say allows large volumes of harmful content slip through.
In response, the US Virgin Islands’ attorney general filed a lawsuit accusing Meta of deliberately profiting from scam ads and failing to keep its platforms safe for children, while two US senators have urged the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to open enforcement probes. - Separately, Meta is facing a civil trial in New Mexico over claims it enabled online sexual exploitation of minors. State prosecutors say an undercover operation created decoy accounts for users under 14, documented a stream of sexual solicitations and explicit content, and found that Meta prioritized profit‑driven engagement over child safety when notified of the activity.
The firm has denied the allegations, arguing that lawsuits nationwide oversimplify teen mental‑health issues, and pointing to added safety tools such as content filters and profile‑information prompts for young users. - At the federal level, the US Justice Department’s civil rights division has an ongoing case alleging Meta’s housing‑related advertising practices discriminate against protected groups, while antitrust regulators continue to challenge the company’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp as anti‑competitive.
Meanwhile, court filings in youth‑mental‑health litigation accuse Meta of burying internal research that showed its platforms could harm teenagers’ well‑being and of telling Congress it could not measure such effects despite possessing causal evidence.
On the privacy front, US law‑enforcement agencies are investigating whistleblower claims that Meta employees can access supposedly end‑to‑end‑encrypted WhatsApp messages, contrary to the company’s public assurances. A related lawsuit alleges Meta and WhatsApp can effectively read users’ private chats, while Meta has dismissed the allegations as baseless and reiterated its commitment to encryption and user privacy.
