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Comment by barishnamazov | Hacker News Reader

The original source is from Reuters article [0].

It is profoundly ironic that Meta is apparently using cloaking techniques against regulators. Cloaking is a black-hat technique where you show one version of a landing page to the ad review bot (e.g., a blog about health) and a different version to the actual user (e.g., a diet pill scam).

Meta has spent years building AI to detect when affiliates cloak their links. Now, according to this report, Meta is essentially cloaking the ads themselves from journalists and regulators by likely filtering based on user profiling, IP ranges, or behavioral signals. They are using the sophisticated targeting tools intended for advertisers to target the "absence" of scrutiny.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-created-playbook...

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"First, they identified the top keywords and celebrity names that Japanese Ad Library users employed to find the fraud ads. Then they ran identical searches repeatedly, deleting ads that appeared fraudulent from the library and Meta’s platforms."

That doesn't sound like cloaking. They really are deleting the ads. They're just concentrating on the ads that the regulators are most likely to see based on what they usually search for.

> The scrubbing, Meta teams explained in documents regarding their efforts to reduce scam discoverability, sought to make problematic content “not findable” for “regulators, investigators and journalists.”

This seems to be the "smoking gun"... but it's unclear from the article what the source or context of the quotations are.

> “not findable” for “regulators, investigators and journalists.”

> but it's unclear from the article what the source or context of the quotations are.

Good point, this quote could just be painting their actions in the poorest possible light.

Needs verification on the normal user side of the experience. Like noted, unclear whether the ads are completely deleted, or just deleted from what regulators would return in search results.

Later part makes it sounds like the ads were at least deleted from the Japanese / Taiwan results areas completely, and then just redistributed to other geographic areas.

  "If an unverified advertiser is blocked from showing ads in Taiwan, for example, Meta will show those ads more frequently to users elsewhere, creating a whack-a-mole dynamic in which scam ads prohibited in one jurisdiction pop up in another."

However, still difficult to tell from the story what the experience of "normal" Japanese / Taiwan users is relative to what regulators view.

Notably, from a different article about fake accounts, and how much they cost, Japan's regulation seems to be working (at least somewhat). [1] Fake Accounts for Facebook Available (US, 157,401, @$0.13/account; Japan, 16, @$3.00/account, Dec 31st, 2025 data)

[1] https://cotsi.org/platforms?view=map&platform=fb

Not quite. The ads themselves aren't deleted but only not displayed for a subset of keywords. If the ads were deleted no keyword would be able to show these.

If there are multiple ads (and why would there not be multiple ads?), deleting the one advertised using keyword X does nothing to the one advertised using keyword Y.

So there's Dieselgate for Meta as there is Dieselgate for Honey

Both are American companies, not like VW, so not much will happen

What does this have to do with them being American? You do realize nothing much happened to VW in Europe, I hope.

VW executives went to prison:

https://qz.com/dieselgate-sentences-handed-down-1851782440

I do not yet know if there's wrongdoing here, but even if it was screaming bad, all US government enforcement bodies have been gutted and made completely subservient to the will of the president rather than their legislatively mandated mission, under a novel "unitary executive" philosophy.

Further, that unitary executive is completely corrupt, and has already been paid off by Meta. Ukraine is a model of clean government with proper anti-corruption investigations and teeth compared to the US.

Jail time [0] and billions of dollars in fines is “nothing much?”

0: https://apnews.com/article/volkswagen-germany-diesel-emissio...

Those billions are because of the USA. In the EU, it was merely a slap in the hand.

Annual revenue of VW at the time was 217B €. In the EU, they paid 1.5B €. So, 0.7% of their annual revenue for a scheme that went on for years.

Granted, in the US, they actually did persecute VW properly, and they ended up paying close to 30B $. A much proper sum.

As for the jail time, they arrested 2 from middle management in the EU. No member from the board or the CEO went to jail here.

Is that what we call justice now? Specially when we want to pretend we are superior to the USA in that regard?

The crime was committed in the USA.

You are expecting third party countries to begin litigation on crimes that happen outside of their borders - even if they're not even strictly illegal where they're headquartered?

That shit never happens, and if it would, you'd first have to start jailing lots of S&P CEOs for the companies crimes that are committed in other countries and never amount to anything, precisely for the same reason.

Like literally every company thats involved in any mining, drilling etc. They always don't adhere to local environmental regulations etc

> The crime was committed in the USA.

What? No, you are completely wrong. The crime was committed in many places. In the USA, but also in several EU countries (Germany included).

In fact, the numbers were more than 10x higher in the EU (since we use a lot more diesel cars) than what they were in the USA.

600 000 vehicles were affected in the USA, while 8.5 million vehicles were affected in the EU.

USA courts, effectively, issued a fine more than 200x higher per vehicle affected, than what we did in the EU.

No one that actually followed the news (and isn't German and therefore completely biased) will say with a straight face that EU justice system didn't favor VW due to established interests. The German government obviously manipulated the judicial system all over Europe to let the case go away.

It also says a lot, that it had to be the Americans bringing the case to light. A lot of people probably knew, but the control that the Germans had (and still have) over European economy and judicial systems didn't allow anyone inside the EU to speak up.

No justice was made over here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

The American Justice system. Many no longer trust in its willingness and ability to enforce the rule of law.

Not to mention Uber's little program to detect whether a rider was likely to be law/code enforcement in cities where there were restrictions on Uber operations.

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