On October 22, local time, the US state of Rhode Island filed a lawsuit against the US “Yuan” company in a state court, accusing the company of condoning widespread fraudulent advertisements on its social media Facebook, photo wall, and instant messaging app WhatsApp. The lawsuit was filed by the Rhode Island Attorney General accusing Meta of unlawfully profiting by participating in the creation of fraudulent advertisements. This is the first fraud-related lawsuit brought by a US state against Meta. Previously, Santa Clara County in California filed a similar lawsuit in May. The Rhode Island lawsuit cites internal Meta documents that were revealed last year. According to these documents, Meta shows users around 15 billion “high-risk” scam ads every day, and about 10% of its revenue in 2024 comes from fraudulent e-commerce, questionable health products, and other prohibited marketing activities. The lawsuit sought civil fines for every alleged violation of Rhode Island law by Meta, the return of losses to consumers, the recovery of their illegal gains, and an application for a court order for Meta to rectify fraudulent advertisements on the platform rather than profit from them. Meta said it would respond to the lawsuit, calling the lawsuit “baseless,” and indicated that the company regularly cooperated with law enforcement to crack down on fraudulent networks.

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