As scam ads and fake promotions continue to spread across social media, two of Meta’s former senior executives say they’ve seen enough - and they’re building something to fight back.

Rob Leathern and Rob Goldman, both veterans of Meta’s advertising division, have launched a new nonprofit organization called the Integrity Institute for Online Advertising (IIOA). Their goal: to bring transparency and accountability to a digital ad ecosystem they helped create, but now barely recognize.

The pair say the industry’s failure to address scam advertising — from fake crypto giveaways to deepfake investment pitches — has turned social platforms into “a danger zone for consumers.”

“We built the infrastructure that allowed anyone to target anyone, instantly,” Leathern told Wired. “Now we need to build the infrastructure that keeps people safe from it.”

The Scam Ad Epidemic

Across Meta, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and YouTube, fraudulent ads have exploded in scale — driven by AI-generated content, identity spoofing, and lax ad verification systems.

These scams often impersonate celebrities or legitimate brands to lure users into phishing sites, subscription traps, or crypto frauds. The explosion of generative AI tools has only made them more convincing — and harder to trace.

A 2025 report from CyberSafe Research found that scam-related ads now account for over 12% of paid ad impressions globally, with financial losses exceeding $12 billion annually.

“The platforms know what’s happening,” said Goldman, Meta’s former VP of Ads. “But their incentive is engagement and revenue, not trust. The result is a system optimized for deception.”

What the IIOA Plans to Do

The Integrity Institute for Online Advertising will act as a watchdog and public resource, offering real-time tracking of deceptive ad networks and publishing transparency reports naming bad actors and complicit platforms.

Its core mission is to:

• Audit ad transparency APIs and hold platforms accountable for what they remove or allow.

• Collaborate with consumer protection agencies in the U.S. and EU.

• Provide open data to researchers and journalists tracking digital deception.

Leathern and Goldman say they’ve already secured funding from a mix of philanthropic foundations and civic tech investors, with early backing from the Knight Foundation and Mozilla Open Source Support Fund.

The institute’s first tool — launching in early 2026 — will aggregate flagged ad data across major platforms to visualize the spread of fraudulent promotions in real time.

“We want to make deception measurable,” Goldman said. “If users can see the scale of scams, maybe regulators will too.”

From Inside Meta to Reforming It

Both men know how the system works — and how it broke.

Leathern, who previously led Meta’s ad integrity division, resigned in 2020 after clashing with executives over transparency in political advertising. Goldman, once one of the company’s most public-facing ad strategists, left in 2019 following disputes about brand safety policies.

They say the experience convinced them that platform self-regulation is a myth.

“At Meta, we always said we’d fix it from the inside,” Leathern said. “But the truth is, the incentives are misaligned. Safety doesn’t scale when fraud makes money.”

A System Without Oversight

Social media platforms collectively generate hundreds of billions in ad revenue each year, but only a fraction of those ads undergo human review. The rest are algorithmically filtered, often using opaque criteria that favor profitability over protection.

The result is a gray market of programmatic advertising, where scammers can buy space next to legitimate brands with minimal verification. Experts warn this not only undermines user safety, but erodes trust in the entire digital economy.

“The ad layer is now the weakest link in internet trust,” said Dr. Gillian Tett, professor of digital economics at Columbia University. “When users can’t tell real from fake, the cost isn’t just monetary — it’s systemic.”

The Bigger Picture

The rise of scam ads coincides with a broader collapse of content authenticity online. AI-driven fakes, deepfake videos, and synthetic influencers have blurred the line between genuine content and fabricated manipulation.

Regulators in the European Union have already begun investigating major platforms under the Digital Services Act (DSA), demanding proof that companies are taking “systemic risks to users” seriously. The U.S., by contrast, remains in the early stages of digital ad oversight.

That’s where Leathern and Goldman believe their institute fits in — as a bridge between transparency and accountability.

“We’re not trying to destroy ad tech,” Goldman said. “We’re trying to save it before the public loses all trust in it.”

The Takeaway

As social media platforms struggle to contain an epidemic of scam advertising, two of Meta’s former architects are stepping out of Silicon Valley’s shadow to fix what they helped build.

Their nonprofit may not end the problem overnight, but it signals a new era — one where transparency becomes a public good, not a platform privilege.

If they succeed, the IIOA could redefine how online advertising is policed — and perhaps, finally, make the internet a little less dangerous to believe in.