Meta’s Saudi Scam Campaign Meets Scrutiny Over Ads

Meta has launched Shayek, an online-scam awareness campaign with Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Media Regulation, putting users and a government regulator beside the platform’s own systems as the company asks people to spot and report fraud. The campaign offers culturally relevant content, local voices and safety tools. Meta’s advertising record, meanwhile, remains under scrutiny.

A pause, and a report

Fares Akkad, Meta’s regional director for the Middle East and Africa, told Arab News that the campaign rests on a simple habit: “pause and check before you click, share or send.” He said scammers exploit trust, familiarity and urgency, and that comfort with technology doesn’t guarantee someone will recognize a scam.

The company says it will assess whether people see and engage with Shayek’s content, pause to examine suspicious material and report scams more often. “Reporting is a useful signal,” Akkad said. He called the longer-term test whether fewer people get caught. In this setup, users are asked not only to protect themselves but to help flag the activity circulating on Meta’s platforms.

The need is substantial, according to figures cited in the report. Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report found that users in phishing simulations took a median of 21 seconds to click a malicious link after opening an email, then another 28 seconds to enter their details. Kaspersky said 31 percent of messaging scams globally involve brand impersonation, with technology, financial services and parcel delivery among the sectors most often targeted.

Tools, claims and ad revenue

Meta says its protections include two-factor authentication, Security Checkup and monitoring reports about suspicious messages, advertisements and accounts. Its app-specific features include WhatsApp warnings about screen-sharing with unknown contacts, Facebook alerts for suspicious friend requests and Instagram notices about suspected impersonation. The company is also testing AI systems to identify violations and disrupt scams.

Meta said early tests caught and mitigated about 5,000 scam attempts a day that existing review teams had missed. It said the systems helped reduce reports involving the most impersonated celebrities by more than 80 percent. In broader testing, Meta said AI systems for detecting fake websites reduced views of scam advertisements and other serious violations by 7 percent.

But the campaign’s safety message lands alongside questions about what appears on the platform in the first place. Internal documents reported by Reuters indicated Meta projected that about 10 percent of its 2024 revenue—roughly $16 billion—would come from advertisements for scams, illegal gambling and banned goods. Meta said that estimate was broad, included suspicious rather than confirmed fraudulent ads, and disputed allegations that it knowingly profited from fraudulent advertising.

The company said it removed more than 159 million scam advertisements in 2025, 92 percent before users reported them, and removed 10.9 million Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to criminal scam centers. Those figures describe enforcement after scam content reached the platform’s systems; the company’s own revenue projection puts the advertising business in the same conversation.

Coordination without public control

Meta joined Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and other industry partners in March to sign the Industry Accord Against Online Scams and Fraud. The voluntary commitment calls for sharing threat intelligence, coordinating defenses and working with law enforcement against cross-border fraud networks. The Shayek partnership adds Gmedia and everyday users to that model of cooperation, while Meta retains control of its platforms and the tools it deploys.

A separate report by Vector AI said AI scams surged by 1,210 percent in 2025, compared with 195 percent growth in traditional fraud, and projected losses could reach $40 billion by 2027. Meta said it has seen a significant rise in AI-enabled scams, including deepfake videos, voice cloning and personalized phishing. “This work is never finished,” Akkad said. The campaign asks people to learn the warning signs; the scale of the problem, and the company’s own unresolved advertising scrutiny, remain part of the same account.