Meta Challenges Instrat Report on Fraudulent Ads in Poland

Meta has formally rejected a recent report by the Instrat Foundation alleging widespread deceptive advertising on its platforms in Poland, dismissing the findings as methodologically flawed and legally motivated. Published earlier this week, the foundation’s study was commissioned by a law firm representing a plaintiff currently litigating against Meta. The company argues the document misrepresents its advertising governance frameworks and artificially inflates the scale of fraudulent activity. Central to Meta’s rebuttal is a detailed critique of the report’s research design. The company states the study incorrectly equates all policy-driven ad removals with fraud, ignoring broader enforcement categories such as intellectual property violations, restricted products, and format compliance. Meta further notes that the analysis relies on data collected from a single iOS device configured to deliberately attract specific ad types, rendering the sample unrepresentative of typical user experiences across Poland. Additionally, the company highlights that the report extrapolates findings from only three isolated observation days to project annual figures, despite significant day-to-day data variance. Meta maintains that the revenue projections derived from these assumptions are mathematically unsound and lack statistical rigor. In response to the allegations, Meta outlined its current anti-fraud infrastructure deployed in Poland. The platform recently rolled out an upgraded artificial intelligence system specifically targeting impersonation attempts, which has increased detection rates by 50 percent compared to previous iterations. Financial advertisers targeting Polish users now face mandatory identity verification, aligning with Meta’s global objective to source the vast majority of advertising revenue from verified partners by 2026. Furthermore, the company introduced a dedicated fraud protection center on Facebook and Instagram, integrating an AI assistant that helps users reconstruct and report suspicious interactions, including delayed fraud reports where original ad links are no longer accessible. Meta emphasizes that its automated detection systems operate proactively. The company reports that over the referenced annual period, more than 137,000 fraudulent advertisements were removed from Polish feeds, with over 88 percent blocked before user reports were filed. Correspondingly, the user report rate for deceptive ads in the region fell by 83 percent over the same timeframe. Meta frames the Instrat Foundation’s conclusions as part of a coordinated legal strategy rather than an independent audit, asserting that the findings undermine the operational efforts of its trust and safety teams. The company reaffirmed that combating sophisticated, AI-driven advertising fraud remains a continuous priority, with sustained investments in detection algorithms, advertiser verification, and user empowerment tools designed to preserve platform integrity across European markets.