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

55 points randycupertino 1 hour ago 18 comments

nervai 1 hour ago | parent

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.

dboreham 6 minutes ago | parent

TBF the USA is a country that normalizes scamming and deceptive practices since...1776.

adrr 57 minutes ago | parent

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.

csnover 50 minutes ago | parent

Hello, please see [0].

[0] https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...

georgemcbay 42 minutes ago | parent

Paid advertisements should be exempt from Section 230.

If you're earning almost 200 billion dollars a year directly from the posting of a certain type of content, you can afford basic moderation to avoid obvious scams and fraud.

Terr_ 17 minutes ago | parent

You beat me to it.

I think the key part worth emphasizing is that sites with zero moderation don't need Section 230. Section 230 is what gives you the option to start some moderation without suddenly becoming liable for everything that passes your best-effort filter.

So abolishing Section 230 means erasing most of that moderate middle, leaving us with either pure-chaos sites, sites which make you sign a painful legal contract before you can comment, or sites that block all comments and only let you "like" things.

scosman 54 minutes ago | parent

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

gottorf 40 minutes ago | parent

You could buy a share of VNQ for $96.23 as of market close today, and I'm sure Jeff Bezos at least has some exposure to it, so I guess it's factually true? Heh.

triceratops 20 minutes ago | parent

> I'm sure Jeff Bezos at least has some exposure to it

Right, through his 401k

jhloa2 50 minutes ago | parent

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.

tclancy 36 minutes ago | parent

Hey pal I really can turn your garden hose into a pressure washer better than anything on the market.

Need a flashlight for jacking deer? Just got to click now.

8ytecoder 2 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

7373737373 37 minutes ago | parent

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

anenefan 30 minutes ago | parent

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 15 minutes ago | parent

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

peterbecich 11 minutes ago | parent

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?

mirashii 5 minutes ago | parent

Are we sure they were higher quality? They estimated in 2024 that 10% of their revenue was from fraudulent ads or ads that should be banned based on their own rules.

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...

This is nothing new, profiting off of fraud and abuse has been the name of the game for all the big advertisers from the beginning.

dpkirchner 6 minutes ago | parent

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.