Why Facebook Won’t Remove Miracle Cure Ads
Because the business model is working exactly as intended.
Facebook recently showed me an ad for a device that claims to reverse Type 2 diabetes using a copper patch applied to the wrist.
Then one for a supplement that dissolves kidney stones while you sleep.
Then one for a shoulder massager endorsed by a doctor who does not appear to exist.
Then a spinal stenosis cure that has been on sale “tonight only” for the past several months.
I know about these products because I have been writing about them.
I know about them because Facebook keeps showing them to me.
I know about them because Facebook’s advertising system approved them, targeted them at people likely to be suffering from the relevant condition, and served them at scale to people who were frightened, in pain, and looking for help.
This is not an accident.
This is the product.
The Mission
“Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”
That was one of Facebook’s favourite public lines. It appeared in annual reports, investor presentations, and the kind of carefully worded statements that get read out at parliamentary hearings by people who have been coached to look concerned without accidentally admitting anything useful.
It does not appear to be the mission of the ad approval system.
The ad approval system has a different question.
Will this ad generate clicks?
If the answer is yes, the ad runs.
The mission statement is aspirational.
The algorithm is operational.
These are not the same document, and only one of them runs the platform.
The Technology
Facebook possesses sophisticated content moderation tools.
Artificial intelligence.
Human reviewers.
Automated flagging systems.
Entire departments dedicated to Trust and Safety.
These tools are real.
They are also selectively applied.
Hate speech is removed, eventually.
Misinformation is labelled, sometimes.
An ad claiming that a herbal patch dissolves kidney stones while you sleep can still be approved and shown to people looking for medical help.
The reason is not simply technical limitation.
It is financial incentive.
Hate speech generates outrage. Outrage generates bad press. Bad press affects the share price.
The kidney stone patch generates revenue.
Revenue affects the share price in the other direction.
The system understands this distinction perfectly.
It has been designed to understand it.
The Claims
“Most violating content is removed before users report it.”
The statistic is always precise.
The methodology is always less clear.
What counts as violating content is defined by the platform.
What counts as removal is defined by the platform.
What counts as success is also defined by the platform.
The number may be real.
Its meaning is negotiable.
“We are committed to fighting misinformation.”
The commitment is stated regularly. The enforcement is inconsistent daily.
Political misinformation is visible, noisy, and embarrassing.
Health misinformation is profitable, targetable, and often hidden in the advertising system, where it can be shown directly to the people most likely to respond.
The distinction is not ethical.
It is financial.
“We protect our community.”
The community is protected from some things.
It is not reliably protected from an ad claiming that dissolving a tablet under your tongue each morning will eliminate visceral fat without diet or exercise.
That ad is not a failure of the system.
That ad is the system working.
The Enforcement Loop
An ad is submitted.
It claims that a weight loss patch worn on the wrist for eight hours dissolves vast amounts of excess body weight in a few weeks.
This claim violates the Advertising Policies.
The Advertising Policies prohibit claims that are false, misleading, or medically unsubstantiated.
The ad is approved.
A user reports it.
Facebook reviews it.
Facebook finds no violation.
The user reports it again.
Facebook finds no violation again.
After enough reports, the ad may eventually be removed.
The advertiser creates a new ad.
New brand name.
New logo.
New video with different background music.
Same patch.
Same claim.
The new ad is approved.
This is not a bug.
It is the feature.
The reporting system exists to give users the impression of recourse.
The approval system exists to give advertisers a reliable pipeline.
Both are functioning exactly as designed.
I have reported ads on Facebook.
Most people who use the platform regularly have reported ads on Facebook.
The experience is consistent: you report, Facebook reviews, Facebook finds no violation, the ad continues running, and eventually you stop reporting because nothing changes and you have other things to do.
That attrition is also part of the design.
The Economics
Meta’s revenue is not a side issue here.
Advertising is the machine.
Reuters reported, based on internal Meta documents, that the company had projected roughly 10 percent of its 2024 revenue, about $16 billion, would come from ads for scams and banned goods.
The same reporting said Meta earned about $7 billion annually from ads it considered high-risk for scams, and that users were exposed to an estimated 15 billion higher-risk scam ads every day.
Meta disputed the way the documents were interpreted, saying the estimates were rough and overly broad.
Even with that caveat, the direction of travel is not difficult to understand.
Weight loss supplements.
Miracle cures.
Financial opportunity schemes.
Crypto investments.
Affiliate marketing funnels.
Wellness devices that claim to decompress the vagus nerve, reset your core muscles, restore blood flow to suffocating shoulder tissues, or reverse chronic disease by attaching something vaguely metallic to your body.
These are not strange little accidents at the edge of the system.
They are part of the advertising sludge the system has learned to monetise.
Removing them properly would require defining misleading claims in a way that actually excluded misleading claims.
That definition would cost money.
The current definition does not cost money.
It is the product of careful legal, technical, and financial calculation.
And it is working
The Meta-Irony
Facebook claims to build community.
The community is the product.
Facebook claims to fight misinformation.
Misinformation generates engagement.
Engagement generates revenue.
Facebook claims to protect users.
The users are sold to the people they need protecting from.
This is not a contradiction.
It is the business model.
The mission statement exists to be quoted at hearings.
The algorithm exists to generate revenue.
The Community Standards document exists so that someone has something to point to when asked whether standards exist.
An ad promising impossible weight loss can be approved.
A public statement can say the platform is committed to safety.
Both of these things can be true simultaneously.
That is the trick.
What This Site Is About
The ads I have been writing about, the spinal stenosis cure, the fictional Italian orthopaedic surgeon, the copper patch, the vagus nerve collar, the face-lifting tape, and the rest, none of them would reach you without a platform willing to approve them, target them, and serve them to the people most likely to be vulnerable to them.
Facebook is not the only such platform.
But it is the largest, the most sophisticated, and the most practised at presenting this arrangement as something other than what it is.
The products I write about here are symptoms.
Facebook is the condition.
The patch is not the grift.
The pill is not the grift.
The platform that approves the ad, targets it at people likely to be interested in weight loss, pain relief, diabetes, kidney stones, or chronic illness, serves it at scale, and takes the money is the grift.
Understanding that distinction is the starting point for everything else on this site.
The Alternative
Report the ads by all means.
Reporting may remove a specific ad.
It may make you feel as if you have done something useful.
Occasionally, you may even have done something useful.
But reporting will not change the system, because the system is not broken.
The exit, as always, is free.
It has always been free.
Almost nobody takes it.
Author’s Note
Paul is 71, writes from the Italian Alps, and has been scrolling Facebook for material for longer than is good for any man’s blood pressure. He is not a medical professional, a tech journalist, or a platform policy expert.
He is, however, persistent.
The copper patch was not purchased for review.
The money was spent on espresso and sunflower hearts for his birdfeeder.
The birds, as always, delivered.
First Published on JustRodents.com