Meta's $16 billion scam economy: what leaked docs reveal about tech company self-regulation | 80,000 Hours

An overarching question that matters for governance of artificial intelligence is how much we can trust technology companies to do the right thing in cases where it becomes seriously costly for them to do so. Well, some internal documents leaked from Meta (the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) are a really important piece of evidence in this debate -- and one that, in my opinion, far too few people have heard anything about. These documents, which were leaked to Reuters by a frustrated staff member, show that Meta itself estimated that 10% of all its revenue was coming from running ads for scams and goods that they themselves had banned: around $16 billion a year. That's 10% of all revenue coming quite often from, fundamentally, enabling crimes.