Scambook
How Meta helps Medicare scammers target seniors
"Don't be an idiot. Claim it now,” says a Facebook ad featuring a deepfake of Oprah Winfrey. The ad promises an allowance card to cover food, rent, and gas, but the amount is overstated. Scammers created the ad to mislead and deceive seniors.
Meta earned $14.3 million from ads like this. Meanwhile, scammers could’ve taken personal information from older Americans or pushed them into worse-off healthcare plans.
These deceptive practices violate several of Meta’s policies—from offering misleading perks to impersonating government agencies and using deepfakes of politicians and celebrities for false endorsements.
In 2025, Americans reported losing more than $2 billion to scams that began on social media. More was lost on Facebook than on any other platform, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Meta has the tools to stop this, but instead, the company prioritizes profit. Congress must step up and protect American citizens.
About
Key findings
- Medicare scammers received 215 million impressions on their ads in the last year, nearly six times as many as all previous years on record. CCDH identified them by analysing over 90,000 ads from Meta’s Ad Library.
- Meta earned a total of $14.3 million in revenue from the scammers’ ads.
- Most Medicare scam ads target seniors, with 73% of impressions coming from users aged over 65.
- The most targeted states are the ones with large Medicare-eligible populations: Texas and Florida.
- Meta is too slow to remove scam ads. By the time the company removed ads posted by the scammers, they had already generated 72 million impressions and earned Meta $3.7 million.
Demand Meta stop profiting from scams ads and protect users.
The real-life consequences of Meta’s failure to stop Medicare scams
Nearly 68 million American seniors and people with disabilities were enrolled in Medicare in 2024. They depend on this federal health insurance program to avoid paying exorbitant amounts for medical care.
By failing to act on Medicare scams, Meta is letting seniors fall prey to bad actors.
The Senate Finance Committee has warned that misleading marketing of Medicare plans has “harmed seniors and left them confused and in doubt about Medicare’s guarantee of high-quality health care.”
For many American seniors, clicking on a scam ad on Facebook can lead to the disruption of important health treatments and serious financial losses. A couple of small actions can significantly lower their quality of life. In some instances, those choices can even become matters of life or death.
The solution
Meta was involved in one-third of all successful scams in the US. Rather than banning advertisers suspected of fraud, the company reportedly charges them higher ad rates.
Seniors have tried to hold Meta accountable in court, but the company is protected by Section 230 — the 1996 law that shield Big Tech from liability.
Thirty years ago, this legislation protected small companies venturing into the developing online world. Now, Section 230 allows trillion-dollar giants like Meta to avoid responsibility when harming vulnerable citizens.
It’s time Congress reform Section 230. In the meantime, states must pass laws that address platform design, material contributions to fraud, and platforms’ responses to reports of deceptive advertising.