By New Straits Times
META, the tech titan from Silicon Valley, is once again courting controversy. Only this time for allegedly making money out of advertising linked to scams and other illegal activities.
A recent Reuters report quoting internal documents alleged that Meta earned 10 per cent of its revenue— estimated to be US$16 billion — from these illegal activities.
If the figures turn out to be accurate, Meta could have made US$250 million from illegal ads in Malaysia, Communications Minister Datuk Fahmi Fadhli said following the disclosure by the international news agency.
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has sprung into action because these activities are illegal in Malaysia.
Putrajaya isn't the only one putting Meta under the microscope. As the news agency's report gains global attention, other countries are expected to follow suit.
But Meta isn't known to be forthcoming in such matters as its response to the Reuters report shows.
Meta has denied the allegations, saying that the figures were taken out of context. One wonders what exactly was the context of the figures.
MCMC is investigating the allegations and is likely to summon Meta soon.
The commission said it had ordered the tech titan to remove more than 200,000 scam and illegal gambling ads this year — far exceeding the figures recorded by other platforms.
Between Jan 1 and Nov 4, MCMC issued 157,208 takedown requests involving online gambling promotions and another 44,922 requests related to scam ads flagged on Meta platforms.
By comparison during the same period, MCMC issued 45,448 requests to YouTube, 3,956 to TikTok, 296 to Telegram and 11 to X.
According to the commission, the disparity underscores Meta's failure to curb illegal and harmful ads, despite multiple warnings and engagements with regulators.
For a company that earns hundreds of billions in revenue every year, takedowns shouldn't be hard to do. It shouldn't take more than a minute or two, but the reality is Meta takes between 30 and 45 minutes to process a request, even one with high-risk content.
One would have thought a tech titan would have mastered the technology of takedowns by now.
Reuters' disclosure also reveals the real reason why the scam ads are not automatically banned. Meta "only bans advertisers if its automated systems predict the marketers are at least 95 per cent certain to be committing fraud".
That sets an exceptionally high threshold for banning. Whatever happened to reasonable suspicion, a test used by most criminal legal systems around the world.
For sure, US$16 billion is big money, but is it worth losing reputation over it? Certainly not. Meta will do well to give Warren Buffett's words a deep think: "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.
If you think about that, you'll do things differently. " Meta certainly needs to think about that.