Meta's Failing Ad Moderation: Health Scams Targeting EU Users
By Paul Bouchaud, Salvatore Romano, Raziye Buse Çetin, Marc Faddoul, Karla Pajares Sangay and Jinyu Liu
Identified 46,000+ ads promoting unapproved drugs and deceptive health claims, reaching EU users 292M+ times, violating Meta's own standards and potentially several DSA provisions.
About this research
This online publication draws on network analysis, an ad-library audit, API/data analysis and an OSINT investigation.
- Publication
- Archived online publication
- Research approach
- network analysis, ad-library audit, API/data analysis and OSINT investigation
- Geographic focus
- Regional or multinational
- Reported study scale
- 46,000 ads
- Research materials
- Public-source data is described in the publication
Publication details prepared by Social Media Transparency from the original source.
Executive summary
AI-generatedThis summary was generated by AI from the original report to make it easier to scan and cite. It is not a substitute for the source. Read the original above.
AI Forensics analyzed roughly 450 million advertisements drawn from Meta's Ad Library API since August 2023, using pattern-matching to detect near-identical text republished across many different advertiser pages, then applying semantic analysis to isolate clusters of health-related content likely to be fraudulent.
The analysis identified more than 46,000 ads promoting unapproved drugs or making deceptive health claims, which collectively reached EU users over 292 million times. The investigation also found structural weaknesses enabling the scams: Meta's advertiser "beneficiary" and "payer" disclosure fields are self-reported and unverified, advertisers can display a URL that differs from the actual landing page, and some advertiser accounts impersonated celebrities or medical professionals without detection. Many flagged campaigns violated more than a dozen of Meta's own advertising and community standards, and activity was found to be ongoing into 2025.
The report concludes that these gaps reflect a failure to implement adequate risk-mitigation measures required under the Digital Services Act's Article 34, rather than isolated moderation errors.
Think this summary is wrong? Contact us.