The big picture: Apple is entering its fall product cycle with a foldable iPhone, a voice-aware smart display, and an updated Siri platform positioned as core parts of its artificial intelligence strategy. The launches will also provide the first major test for John Ternus, who becomes Apple’s new chief executive on September 1.

Ternus is regarded inside Apple as a leader who can move between broad product planning and the technical details of a device, a skill Tim Cook highlighted when he announced the succession. His test now is whether he can apply that hardware focus to a company facing more than product decisions: Apple is dealing with a memory shortage, pressure on App Store revenue, employee departures, and an AI effort that has yet to match rivals. How he handles those problems while Cook remains executive chairman will shape how quickly he can establish his own authority.

Ternus arrives from the hardware organization at a moment when Apple is trying to turn AI from a software catch-up effort into a broader device strategy. The company is preparing products designed to put AI into more settings: in the home, through a display that can identify speakers and adjust information accordingly; in wearable devices, through planned camera-equipped AirPods and smart glasses; and in product-development systems used internally by Apple’s engineering teams.

The foldable iPhone is expected to be among the most closely watched products in the coming rollout. It continues a multiyear redesign of Apple’s most important device, following last year’s thinner Air model and preceding a glass-focused iPhone planned for the product line’s 20th anniversary in 2027.

Ternus has argued to Wall Street analysts that the iPhone will remain central to customers’ lives and Apple’s product strategy, despite persistent industry speculation about whether phones could eventually be displaced by glasses or other AI hardware.

That position helps explain Apple’s more cautious approach to mixed reality. The Vision Pro has struggled commercially, and Ternus had concerns about whether its weight and price would allow it to become a mass-market product, according to people who discussed the matter with Bloomberg. Apple has recently cut jobs tied to Vision Pro work, particularly in gaming and immersive-video content, while also reducing roles across functions including security, audio engineering, Siri integration, testing, and the operating system that will be shared with future glasses.

The company still intends to introduce non-augmented-reality smart glasses, code-named N50, next year. But Ternus is open to scaling back Apple’s work in head-worn computing if the category does not gain traction. That could affect the longer-term prospects for an updated Vision Pro, code-named N224, which is slated for possible release as early as late 2028.

For Apple, the larger issue is AI. Its Apple Intelligence rollout has been uneven, and the company has reorganized leadership for both its AI work and Siri. After struggling to advance with internally developed technology alone, Apple began rebuilding the models behind Siri using Google’s Gemini technology. The decision unsettled members of Apple’s large language model group and contributed to departures, including the unit’s leader.

A fuller deployment of Siri AI is expected in September. Apple wants the system to compete more directly with ChatGPT and eventually create revenue opportunities, either through paid access or integrations with third-party apps. Before that can happen, Siri will have to overcome a reputation for unreliable performance and limited usefulness. Early reviews of the new AI version have been positive.

Ternus has also promoted AI as an engineering tool. Before leaving the chief hardware role, he introduced an internal platform intended to speed product development, improve testing, and strengthen device reliability. “We’re going to be able to solve even harder problems,” Ternus told employees during an all-hands meeting, describing AI as a way to apply lessons from previous products to devices still in development.

Some of the devices now on Apple’s roadmap depend on whether that software improves. The company has repeatedly delayed its camera-equipped AirPods and its flagship home display because of shortcomings in AI features.

Apple is also developing a home security product, a robotic-arm display, and a wearable camera pendant. Its planned AirPods cameras and home-security cameras would not produce conventional viewable video. Instead, they would send information to AI systems for environmental analysis, an approach intended to reduce privacy concerns.

That distinction matters for Apple, whose brand has long emphasized privacy. A growing number of AI devices depend on cameras, microphones, and sensors placed in homes or worn on the body. Apple will need to persuade customers that AI-powered awareness can be useful without becoming intrusive.

Ternus inherits other challenges that extend beyond product design. Apple is confronting a continuing memory shortage and higher component costs, areas in which Cook built much of his reputation. Ternus is expected to lean on Chief Operating Officer Sabih Khan, finance chief Kevan Parekh, procurement teams, and operations leadership to manage supply constraints and limit disruption.

Services also face pressure from weaker game purchases, regulatory changes to App Store fees and the European Union’s requirement that Apple permit independent app stores. Meanwhile, Apple has lost hardware talent to competitors offering higher compensation and opportunities to develop new products from the ground up. Hundreds of former Apple employees now work in OpenAI’s hardware division, which Apple has accused in a lawsuit of taking trade secrets.

Cook, who led Apple from 2011, will remain executive chairman and plans to continue handling relationships with the Trump administration and the Chinese government. He told employees, “there can only be one CEO at a time.” Even so, his continued presence will make Apple’s transition gradual rather than abrupt.

PC memory prices remain seriously high, making even a straightforward 32GB DDR5 upgrade far more expensive than it would have been just a year ago.

Sadly, I don’t have a time machine, so there’s nothing I can do about that, but there are still decent discounts to be had. I’ve found one on a 32GB (2 x 16GB) kit of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 RAM for $490 (was $605) at Newegg when you use code SSF73323.

It’s already got a small discount, but the code knocks even more off the list price.

Intel XMP 3.0 support also makes getting the advertised performance relatively straightforward on a compatible motherboard. Corsair uses a low-profile aluminum heat spreader, so the modules should also play nicely with larger CPU coolers.

There’s no RGB lighting, which could actually be a plus if you prefer a clean build without turning your PC into a miniature nightclub.

For more savings, we’ve picked out this week’s best RAM deals.

Should you buy it?

This is a decent deal for someone building or upgrading now, but if you’re not in any rush, it’s worth waiting for memory prices to come back down. You should also check your motherboard and CPU compatibility before ordering. This particular kit supports Intel XMP 3.0 rather than being marketed as an AMD EXPO kit.

from the but-kids-can’t-witness-violence! dept

Earlier this year, one of the smartest internet rights people around, Heather Burns, suggested the “Darnella Test” regarding any kind of “kid safety” rule online. It’s named after Darnella Frazier. You might not recognize her name, but you’ve seen her work. She was the 17-year-old who was walking to the corner shop when she happened to see Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, in the process of murdering him. She got out her phone and filmed it, enabling the world to see that the initial statement from the Minneapolis police — the one headlined “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction” — was bullshit.

She won a Pulitzer Prize for the video.

But she was a teen. On social media. So Burns came up with the Darnella test, to explore whether any particular internet regulation would have prevented Darnella from documenting the murder of George Floyd:

For any young person who is just going to be walking along the street for a snack and ends up witnessing something that nobody should ever see because it should not be happening. For that young person whose only recourse, at that moment in time, is to document and report.

And as that future Darnella pulls out their phone to document the event:

1. Would they be allowed to have that phone, at all, under xyz regulation?
2. Would they be allowed to have that social media account, at all, under xyz regulation?
3. Would they be allowed to upload video, or livestream content, under xyz regulation?
4. Would the video, because of their age-verified account information, be instantly flagged and/or taken down for violent content?
5. Would the video, as urgent journalistic content in the public interest, be suppressed and censored based not on the content within it but on the age of the person who filmed it?

That’s your Darnella test. Run through it as if your life depends on it. Because it just might.

Thankfully, unlike the various outright bans of social media for teens, the newly announced Meta settlement with most state AGs does not actually ban kids from social media. But that doesn’t mean it passes the Darnella test. At the very least, the settlement will make it much harder for the next Darnella to document and distribute things that need to be documented and distributed.

Let’s start by running the settlement’s terms through the Darnella Test, question by question, to see what a future Darnella would actually be able to do. Especially since the goal of the settlement is that it become the industry norm across all of social media.

The first question doesn’t really apply here, since it has nothing to do with kids having phones directly, so that passes the Darnella test.

You could argue that the second question regarding whether or not the next Darnella would have a social media account also passes, since nothing in the settlement officially bars teens from having an account. But it certainly could impact them indirectly. The age assurance requirements make signing up more of a hassle, so the next Darnella might not bother creating an account at all. And if she does, that verification is precisely what marks her account as a teen account — which is what triggers everything that follows.

We can lump the next three questions together, because they’re all about the content itself. And here is where it seems clear that the settlement agreement fails the Darnella test. The “age-appropriate content restrictions” and the “content restrictions” for teen users would almost certainly create real problems for a teenager documenting a murder like George Floyd’s. A video of a police officer kneeling on a man’s neck until he stops moving is graphic violence by any classifier’s reckoning — and the entire point of a verified teen account is that graphic violence doesn’t stay on it.

And on that last item in the test — whether or not “urgent journalistic content in the public interest” would be suppressed — there are serious problems, even if the video somehow slipped past the content restrictions. The settlement imposes a default two-hour daily time limit on teen accounts — which means the answer might depend on how much time the next Darnella had already burned scrolling before she happened to walk past a murder in progress. Considering that George Floyd was murdered in the evening (around 8:30pm) there’s a good chance a teen user would have already used up their allotted time.

Yes, it’s possible that the next Darnella might have more time due to a parent or guardian bypassing the two hour restriction, but we don’t know that ahead of time. And a teenager watching a man die on the pavement in front of her does not have time to go find a parent and ask them to unlock the app.

Also, crime — and other things worth documenting — doesn’t happen only during your waking hours. The settlement includes “night mode” restrictions that say that teens will not be able to post content between midnight and 6am. If Darnella happened to witness Floyd’s murder past midnight, she might be out of luck. Or, at least, the police would have extra hours to lock in their false narrative.

And this is the problem with so much of the discourse regarding child safety online. It starts from the position that the internet is inherently unsafe for kids, and that the only remaining question is how thoroughly to block them from it.

But reality is more complicated than that. A kid with a phone and a social media account might also be the only thing standing between the official story and the actual truth. A teenager may be the one livestreaming a school shooting from a locked classroom. Or be a bystander filming ICE violating the rights of people across America. They might be the person documenting police violently attacking protestors.

Yet, under a framework built around “protecting teens from the dangerous internet,” such things will face multiple hurdles. A verified minor uploading graphic, unmoderated content in real time will violate all sorts of rules.

Run the actual Darnella video of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd against the “industry wide” standard Meta just paid $17 billion to create. It doesn’t pass. It’s graphic violence, filmed by a verified teen account late in the evening, perhaps after she’s used up all her allotted time. If it were after midnight she’d be barred entirely from posting. The next Darnella video might not exist. But at least 52 Attorneys General get to pretend they “protected kids.”

Filed Under: age verification, darnella frazier, george floyd, kid safety, social media

Companies: meta

If you’ve heard the high-pitched whine or buzz from an electronic device when a current-carrying inductor is vibrating, you’ll know how unpleasant it can be. It’s common in all kinds of equipment, but it’s become a particular annoyance of late in hardware like PC power supplies, GPUs, and cooling pumps. There is plenty of hearsay on the web about which parts whine and which don’t, and [Lowell Wood] wants to get to the bottom of it. 

To track the issue, [Lowell] has put together the Coil Whine Database. It accepts user reports on hardware, regarding the level at which coil whine is present. A score of 0 is given to a part that is inaudible in a quiet room, with higher scores representing higher sound levels. A part scored at 2 is audible working at a desk with the computer under load; a part scored at 4 is audible even when the machine or device is at idle.

For now, the database is largely empty—[Lowell] has just opened submissions, adding a report on their own ROG Astral RTX 5080 card for good measure. If you want to submit a report on a unit, either silent or noisy, that’s simple enough—just fill in the coil whine report form. Over time, submissions will hopefully grow, and it will be easier to get a good idea of what equipment whines and what is likely to operate silently out of the box.

The database aims to present a guide to what parts whine, and how much, noting that any given population of devices tends to vary. To that end, any given device won’t be reported on publicly until it receives at least 5 reports. To counter bias, reports of silent parts will be weighted higher, since it’s unlikely that people happy with their quiet hardware will be rushing to research this issue or report it to a database. Relevant files to the project are available on GitHub for the curious.

This database could be a great boon to the brigade of PC builders out there who like their machines to be as silent as possible. If that sort of thing appeals to you, it’s probably time you started researching passive cooling as well…

Most people have never held an Amprobe AT-7000-EUR, and even fewer would guess a cable tracer can cost about $2,700. Electricians use this kit when a cable disappears into drywall, a ceiling, a floor, or a crowded panel and a cheap tone probe is not enough. One half of the kit is a transmitter you clip onto a circuit. That box injects a tracing signal, 6.25 kHz on live wires or 32.768 kHz on dead ones, in high, low, or clamp mode. The other half is a receiver with a color screen, a tip sensor, and a Smart Sensor array that shows where the wire runs and which way it is going, often to about two inches, and can pick the correct breaker instead of a handful of false hits.

Tom bought the pair for work at roughly £2000 ($2700). After months of sitting in storage, the transmitter simply went dark for no apparent reason. The transmitter went dead, which means the batteries, buttons, and display did not even twitch. However, the receiver opted to reactivate, which is at least some aid in locating the problem. Fluke’s service team quoted £70 for an initial quote and another £600 to even try a repair. When the fees were factored in, it was off to the “YouTube Heroes for Hire” op Buy it Fix it.

Sale

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• Small but Mighty – The DJI Mic Mini lavalier microphone transmitter is small and ultralight, weighing only 10 g, [1] making it comfortable to wear…
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Five small screws later, the transmitter board was on the bench. A 10.2 volt bench supply showed the normal voltages popping up: 5V, 3.3V, and 1.2V, all present and accurate. A thermal camera scanned for hotspots but found nothing unusual. An oscilloscope showed a clear 23.9989 MHz clock signal from the 24 MHz crystal as well. Even the backlight seemed to work well after the ribbon was reseated. So it appeared that the hardware issue was not with the power supply.

Only after connecting the serial pins to a computer at a baud rate of 115200 did the true tale become obvious. Boot logs appeared before abruptly terminating with a NAND boot failure. Both machines run some ancient Linux 2.6 firmware from a 128 MB NAND chip housed within a TSOP-48 box. At startup, the system on a chip reads that chip, checks the boot image, and refuses to continue if it discovers a problem. This is exactly what the dead transmitter was doing.

After blowing hot air into the NAND chip, a programmer read it. We could see the data was there, but a hex view looked like a nightmare, with a large empty patch and random bit flips. In the erroneous areas, E1 was where E should be, O where 01 should be, and C9 where C1 should be, among other things. A wild goose hunt through Google’s Gemini chatbot took up half of the day in theory on how ECC works, and I didn’t get anywhere or get the unit up and running, but the smart play was simpler.

The receiver was also ripped apart, and it had the same CPU, RAM, and, most critically, flash IC. So some wires were attached to the serial header, and a fast run of U-Boot with the programmer’s bit-flip settings adjusted slightly resulted in a clean NAND image. The next thing he knew, he had the files side by side, and it was obvious what had gone wrong: only a few cells in the transmitter’s bootloader had faded out after years of inactivity. Using a hex editor, clone the sound healthy bootloader bytes from the receiver into the rotten transmitter bootloader, creating a hybrid image that was then written back into the original chip.

That got him all the way there, and the resoldering should have done the work, but one weak solder joint on the flash pin meant it wouldn’t boot up. After a brief fix up, the transmitter rebooted into its normal Linux 2.6 interface. So a live test was performed, and when the receiver approached the transmitter on the cable, the signal climbed up as it should. The kit was back up and running for daily operations. Those leaky NAND cells are still in there, so a fresh flash IC is the lasting insurance policy. A professional tracer that official service priced like a small appliance came back because two identical boards shared a bootloader, and a handful of forgotten bits were put back where they belonged.
[Source]

from the smoothing-the-extremism-pipeline dept

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In April 2026, a federal grand jury returned indictments charging the Southern Poverty Law Center with wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The indictment alleges the SPLC, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, secretly funneled more than US$3 million in donated funds to people associated with violent extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations.

Prosecutors allege that the SPLC secretly paid members of those groups to act as confidential informants without telling donors. Eight informants received the money between 2014 and 2023, according to U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The SPLC has denied the charges and seeks their dismissal, with lawyers for the group adding that the charges constitute “vindictive prosecution.” The SPLC’s interim president, Bryan Fair, has stated that the informant program “saved lives” and reflected decades of dangerous civil rights work.

Critics of the prosecution at Lawfare, a media site focused on the U.S. legal system, argued that the indictment is among “the most cynical criminal cases ever brought by the Department of Justice.” They noted that the SPLC had no legal duty to disclose the confidential nature of its informant program to donors.

Within hours of the Justice Department’s indictment, I found that white supremacist influencers on Telegram, Gab and other social platforms were celebrating the arraignment. They portrayed the charges as proof that journalists and civil rights groups documenting extremist movements could no longer be trusted.

The indictment became a rallying point to discredit not only the SPLC but the wider body of research on hate groups and political extremism. I believe that these narratives will be used to help justify increasingly radical and, in some cases, violent responses.

Ideological ammunition

Some conservative advocacy groups and right-wing media outlets – including Moms for Liberty and the Daily Signal – immediately stripped the indictment of its legal context. In online posts, they recast it as established proof that the SPLC had been deliberately creating extremist activity rather than investigating it.

A Telegram search I conducted on May 6 identified 22 posts mentioning the SPLC across at least six white nationalist channels. Most appeared within 72 hours of the indictment. The posts did not engage in sustained discussion. They repeated a small set of claims.

The Super Sincere Alpha GOONMAXXING Aryan Sigma Patriot channel wrote: “The SPLC is a hate group.”

Other channels cited the indictment as proof that the SPLC had been paying sources to manufacture the very extremism it claimed to fight. In the White Lives Matter Official Telegram channel, users were urged to “become an activist for your race” while referencing the SPLC as an opposing force.

The similarity across channels and social media is notable. The same framing appeared repeatedly within a short time window. This suggests rapid circulation of a shared narrative across networks rather than independent commentary.

The neo-Nazi, neo-fascist layer

Comments on the Southern Poverty Law Center indictment by members of the Commander George Lincoln Rockwell channel – named for the founder of the American Nazi Party – demonstrate how antisemitic conspiracy theories work, not as explicit rhetoric but as a broader narrative.

Internet discussions portrayed the SPLC as a politically motivated or illegitimate actor. Posts in Patriot Front Updates, for example, circulated allegations of fraud and money laundering while criticizing the SPLC and its efforts to identify and challenge white nationalist activity.

I found that this criticism of the SPLC also became connected to a broader antisemitic conspiracy narrative – one that portrays the organization as operating on behalf of purported Jewish interests rather than simply as an advocacy organization with political and ideological commitments.

These narratives circulated alongside the “great replacement theory,” which falsely claims that shadowy elites are encouraging immigration and demographic change to replace the white population and diminish its political and cultural influence. It’s a conspiracy theory that the SPLC and others have documented as central to contemporary white nationalism.

In this logic, the indictment is not an isolated fraud case – it is evidence that a coordinated network of institutions has been systematically suppressing white identity.

Victimhood as recruitment

Scholars of white nationalism have long identified victimhood narratives as central to that movement’s appeal. By portraying white people as under attack or unfairly displaced, these narratives transform social change into a story of persecution and provide a powerful justification for political mobilization.

My research on white nationalism shows how contemporary extremist movements rely less on formal membership and more on decentralized digital spaces. It is there that narratives, grievances and identities are continuously reinforced.

In these environments, major news events like the SPLC indictment become opportunities.

Why this pattern repeats

Extremist movements have long used mainstream controversies as recruitment opportunities.

Participants often interpret external events through narratives of threat, injustice and persecution. In doing so, they transform moments of controversy into evidence that their worldview is correct.

In the 1990s, for instance, the deadly standoffs between federal officers and the Branch Davidians religious sect near Waco, Texas, and survivalist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, became foundational persecution narratives for militia and Christian Identity movements. These groups saw the sieges as proof that the federal government was hunting gun owners and religious dissenters.

In online extremist communities, these events can become powerful tools for reinforcing group identity and attracting individuals who are searching for explanations or belonging.

With a real-world legal event like the SPLC indictment, extremists can point to government action as evidence that their worldview is being validated. The result is a narrative that appears responsive to current events, even when the connection is shallow or distorted.

Redirected domestic terrorism policy

Legal scholars have noted that the Justice Department indictment fits within the Trump administration’s broader pattern of redirecting domestic terrorism policy away from white supremacist groups.

The Trump White House’s 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy does not mention violent far-right groups as a domestic terrorism threat at all.

That context matters for understanding how the SPLC case landed in extremist spaces: not as an isolated fraud allegation but as institutional permission. The indictment has become a symbol before the evidence has been weighed.

In today’s fragmented digital media environment, symbols travel faster than facts, especially when they confirm what a radicalized audience already wants to believe. I believe the real danger is not that white supremacists believe the SPLC is guilty. It is that the controversy, whatever its legal outcome, has already done its work.

Art Jipson is Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton

Filed Under: advocacy, extremism, fascism, hate groups, white supremacists

Companies: splc

Skynet has missed another appointment. Depending on which Terminator timeline you prefer, the murderous artificial intelligence should have become self-aware in 1997, 2004, 2011, 2017, or perhaps last Tuesday. Each date has passed without a nuclear exchange. The machines have mostly occupied themselves by flattering users, mangling fingers in photos, and confidently inventing facts for gullible people to believe.

That has not stopped Silicon Valley from treating artificial general intelligence as both an imminent miracle and an approaching monster. AGI supposedly marks the moment a machine can match human intelligence across a broad range of tasks, though nobody can agree on which tasks, which humans, or what counts as intelligence.

Facepalm: Graphics card scams on Amazon are far from new, but one customer has encountered what appears to be a new method of trying to trick victims – one that some people could fall for. It involves sending a cheap “present” to the buyer and a promise that the GPU is on its way. The scammer also sends a pamphlet that supposedly explains the process and includes a fake Amazon email to cancel the order.

Reddit user BransonArsen wrote that they bought an MSI Gaming RTX 5080 16G SUPRIM Liquid SOC edition from Amazon for nearly $1,400. They later explained that the seller was a third party with a Chinese name, which even they admit was a warning sign. The lower-case “msi” in the product description is a bit of a giveaway, too.

Those suspicions proved warranted when a delivery arrived at BransonArsen’s door a few days later. While we’ve seen many GPU scams involving something other than the graphics card being sent in the original packaging, including putty, rice, and older cards in diguise, it wasn’t even an RTX 5080 box that turned up.

This won’t get many fps

What arrived at the door was a plain Amazon box, inside of which was a cheap but correctly packaged vacuum mug.

Rather than just sending something totally different, this was all part of the scam. The box also included a pamphlet claiming the mug was a “complimentary gift.” The graphics card would be arriving separately, in about seven working days, because Amazon “collects orders and places a bulk order with this seller every Monday,” making the delivery longer but helping keep the price lower – this particular card is usually $2,000.

The leaflet, which appears to contain AI-generated images, adds that if the buyer wants a tracking number or has any questions, they can email the definitely-not-fake [email protected] customer service address. It also advises anyone wishing to cancel their order and receive a full refund to contact this address – but don’t worry, they can keep the mug.

Unfortunately, that mug might end up costing $1,400. It seems the idea here is for the victim to repeatedly email the fake address while the scammers keep stringing them along until the return window expires, leaving them with a very expensive piece of crap as a reminder to be wary of suspicious Amazon sellers.

Meta removed dozens of advertisements for apps that presented themselves as pornography but actually functioned as banking malware, after the Indian government issued an advisory.

Reuters then found at least 39 more of the ads still running and reported on Monday that Meta removed those as well after being asked about them.

The sequence is what makes the story notable. A government warning led to some of the advertisements being removed, while a reporter’s email prompted Meta to take down the rest.

Advertising makes this different from ordinary malware distribution. An app listed in a store still has to be discovered and installed by a user, whereas a paid advertisement is actively delivered to people selected by an advertising system because they are considered likely to engage with it.

The apps themselves were capable of accessing information on users’ phones, capturing one-time passwords and banking PINs, and transferring money from accounts without the owner’s knowledge.

Pornography is also an effective lure for this type of malware for reasons that have little to do with the technology itself. Someone who installs an app they would rather keep private may be less likely to report it immediately, particularly if they are embarrassed about how they encountered it.

One-time passwords create another vulnerability because they are now part of the security process used by many banking services.

Malware that can read those codes directly from a device can undermine the second factor that is supposed to protect an account if a password has already been compromised.

Meta did not respond to Reuters’ questions. The company removed the flagged advertisements without commenting on the findings, following a pattern that has become familiar in cases involving problematic advertising on its platforms.

India has good reason to be concerned about the issue. The country recorded close to $2.4 billion in losses from cyber fraud during 2025, while mobile banking has become the main way many people access financial services, particularly among newer account holders.

India is also Meta’s largest market by users, making gaps in its advertising enforcement more significant than they might be elsewhere. Hundreds of millions of accounts are potentially exposed to whatever the platform’s advertising review systems manage to identify and whatever they miss.

The advertising system is what turns this into a platform problem rather than simply a criminal one.

These apps were not being distributed through obscure forums or private networks; they were being promoted through a paid advertising system that Meta operates, moderates, and ultimately makes money from.

Internal projections reported last year also put the issue in financial terms. Meta estimated that scam and banned-goods advertising could account for roughly 10% of its 2024 revenue, or about $16 billion.

That figure changes the context around every subsequent enforcement announcement. Removing an advertisement after someone flags it is part of the cost of operating the platform, while the advertisement itself generated revenue for the same company responsible for deciding whether it should be there.

The regulatory response is now moving in a similar direction across several major markets, although governments are using different tools. India has relied on advisories and direct requests to the company, European authorities are pursuing fines, and US plaintiffs have been taking their claims to court.

India has been escalating its scrutiny for months. It has summoned Meta over Instagram advertising promoting child sexual abuse material and separately ordered the company to remove those advertisements.

European regulators have been raising similar concerns through different mechanisms. Poland has asked the European Commission to fine Meta €250 million over scam advertising, while banks in the UK have said that a large majority of the payment fraud they encounter originates on Meta’s platforms.

Meta has been developing countermeasures at the same time, including new scam-detection systems across WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook.

The same company operates both the advertising auction and the systems intended to detect abusive content within it, which makes repeated failures harder to separate from the incentives built into the platform.

The common issue across these cases is less about whether Meta intends to distribute scams and more about how reliably it detects them. Nobody is suggesting that Meta wants banking malware in its advertising system.

The criticism is that the system continues to accept those advertisements, while government agencies, banks, and journalists sometimes identify them before Meta does.

Scale is a legitimate part of the explanation. Millions of advertisements enter Meta’s systems every day, and no moderation process can be expected to identify every fraudulent campaign immediately.

That does not, however, explain why the additional 39 advertisements remained active after the company had already received a government warning about the same type of threat.

The 39 advertisements Reuters found were still running after the government advisory had been issued.

They were removed after a journalist contacted Meta about them, leaving a fairly straightforward question about the effectiveness of the platform’s own detection systems: how much harmful advertising is being caught internally, and how much is being discovered by everyone else?