Under the Radar: Vast Networks of Fake Accounts Raise Questions About Meta's Compliance with the EU's New Digital Rulebook
Uncovered an ad network of at least 242,000 fake Facebook pages, alongside a second ecosystem of more than 340,000 pages, pushing Russian propaganda and scams across 32+ EU countries; despite prior warnings from September 2022, Meta had failed to act, making this one of the earliest and most-cited DSA compliance challenges to Meta.
Executive summary
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One of Reset Tech's most-cited investigations, 'Under the Radar' mapped an advertising network built on at least 242,000 fake Facebook pages, plus a second ecosystem of more than 340,000 pages, used to push Russian propaganda and scams across more than 32 EU countries.
Reset Tech noted that the underlying activity had been flagged publicly since September 2022 (by DFRLab and EU DisinfoLab), yet Meta had still not dismantled the network by the time of writing. The report landed just as the DSA's obligations for very large platforms were taking effect.
It became an early benchmark case for testing Meta's DSA compliance, arguing that the persistence of such vast, known fake-page networks was incompatible with the systemic-risk and advertising-transparency duties the regulation imposes.
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