Rhode Island sued Meta in state court, becoming the first US state to accuse the company of knowingly profiting from scam ads worth billions on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp while telling users it was protecting them. The complaint from Attorney General Peter Neronha alleges Meta’s AI ad tools helped scammers build and fine-tune their ads, and that Meta sometimes charged advertisers it suspected of fraud higher rates instead of banning them. The suit leans on internal Meta documents Reuters reported last year, which estimated that about 10% of Meta’s 2024 revenue came from scam and banned ads. Meta called the suit unfounded, saying it took down over 159 million scam ads in the past year and accusing the state of hiring an outside law firm rather than working with it.
