Cuban: Facebook knowingly runs AI deepfake scam ads; docs say $16B fraud revenue

nervai

Can we do YouTube next? Every YouTube ad these days is deception and fraud. We've completely normalised big tech pushing straight up scams on the population.

adrr

Remove section 230 fixes this problem. Every other business is responsible for what happens at their place of business/publications/sites. Social media sites follow the same rules as everyone else.

scosman

The ad Yahoo puts in this article is amazingly ironic > Jeff Bezos backs a platform that lets anyone invest in rental homes for as little as $100 — 6 ways to build wealth like a landlord without actually being one

jhloa2

The amount of times I’ve reported obvious scam ads on instagram just to receive a “we found this to not be in violation of our terms” is so disheartening.

7373737373

Same on Google and Youtube. The CEOs and controlling shareholders should be sent straight to jail. Deliberate profiteering from crime!

anenefan

Yes they were doing the same is Australia ... I wouldn't know if they're still doing it here since one of the favourite scams used an Australian who took them to court. [1] [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-11/andrew-forrest-meta-s...

jedmeyers

I know Snap might not be that popular here, but what is your experience with Snap ads? Same amount of scam or more?

peterbecich

These companies were profitable on higher quality ads in earlier years. Does this drop in quality indicate the ad well has run dry, so to speak? Or the demands for revenue are greater, necessitating a drop in standards?

dpkirchner

I have a terrible idea: an ad blocker that only blocks AI generated ads. It submits the ad image/copy to Gemini and if it is not a fake product the ad is displayed. I'm confident that Gemini would do a pretty good job at identifying these scams and that the extension would demonstrate how easy it would be for Google to do it themselves. If they and their employees cared. I could LLM this up but eh. It won't actually convince Googlers to do the right thing so it'll just stay a terrible idea.

nkrisc

Make advertisers liable for the ads they run. Force them to vet ads or simply not run ads. If Meta is accepting so many ads they can’t review them then too bad for them. Hire more people or accept fewer ads. Ideally this will result in a complete obliteration of the ad industry with only a small number of high quality ads surviving.

golden-face

Initially reading the title my mind thought "Cuban...Cuban defector/intelligence agent?! Oh wow I wonder what they have to reveal?" It's Mark Cuban. Still worth reading tho. But I found my own personal reaction fascinating because I am not sure I would have clicked through if the title included the full "Mark Cuban".

0x4e

The irony behind this article serving AI slop ads that are likely malicious.

hsuduebc2

No amount of hate this fucking company gets will ever be enough.

laweijfmvo

What are they supposed to do, not run AI deepfake scam ads?

Incipient

Meta has to invest more money into screening advertising so they ban more ads and therefore make less money. Unless there is a genuine financial (or legal) impact, they have no incentive. Companies in the US still use a huge array of known harmful ingredients because they work better and are cheaper. Blame the government for lack of regulation, that's what they're there for.

sneak

eBay is also knowingly complicit in enabling completely fraudulent sellers, by policy, at scale. It improves their bottom line, so everyone there is disincentivized to fix it.

siliconc0w

It's pretty crazy this is tolerated by society, I know several older people scammed using Metas products. And that isn't even counting the Instagram ads my wife falls for.

walrus01

As reported on by CBC news and others: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/vietnam-canadians-fake-ai-9.7... https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2151393/more-fake-cb... https://mediatechdemocracy.com/en/publications/ai-scam-platf... general search: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=cbc+news+... It seems quite obvious that Facebook knows and doesn't care, because it's revenue.

OsrsNeedsf2P

I worked in a team that was only tangently related to this. There are hundreds of people at Meta who knew this was going on.

etchalon

Meta has no moral compass and does not care whom they harm.