What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - How Meta Profits Off Fraud
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 November 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
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Summary
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, doesn’t (just) have a scam problem—with 10 percent of its revenue coming from scam ads, and a third of all successful scams in America using a Meta platform at some point, it’s more an interdependence with scammers.
Guest: Jeff Horwitz, tech reporter for Reuters.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | While all the whews of Whoville were at McDonald's eating, the Grinch from his lair started plotting and scheming. |
| 0:06.0 | Girkin flavored fries and odd socks will send them crackers. So try the Grinch's new meal and head down to Macers. |
| 0:16.0 | Until 4th of Jan from 11am, price and participation may vary while stocks last grinched for adults. |
| 0:20.0 | Here's the truth about AI. |
| 0:22.2 | AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into. |
| 0:25.8 | ServiceNow puts AI to work for people across your business, |
| 0:29.7 | removing friction and frustration for your employees, |
| 0:32.8 | supercharging productivity for your developers, |
| 0:35.8 | providing intelligent tools for your service agents |
| 0:38.1 | to make customers happier, all built into a single platform you can use right now. |
| 0:43.4 | That's why the world works with ServiceNow. |
| 0:46.6 | Visit ServiceNow.com slash UK slash AI for people. |
| 1:05.4 | If you open up Facebook or Instagram and search for, let's say, Elon Musk, the odds are pretty good that you're going to be served some questionable ads. |
| 1:14.8 | In which Elon is, you know, offering investment tips or, you know, giving away Tesla is in a raffle or, you know, |
| 1:18.8 | wants to, like, talk to you person, talk to his fans one-on-one. |
| 1:22.3 | That's Jeff Horwitz, a tech reporter for Reuters. |
| 1:28.5 | And depending on your level of Internet savvy, you might click on one of those ads. |
| 1:33.6 | In which case, meta systems will serve you more fraudulent ads because you've basically kind of flagged yourself as a bit of a dummy. |
| 1:38.3 | Apologies. |
| 1:39.3 | But you can see where this is going. |
| 1:42.1 | That's kind of how the system does work, right? |
| 1:44.3 | It's like, oh, who's a good market for scam ads? |
... |
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