Disinformation Can Kill: Scam Ads, Fraud, and Health Disinformation on Meta Platforms

This report is one of the partial results of the project “Impacts of the Digital Disinformation Industry on the Health of the Brazilian Population”, developed by NetLab UFRJ with support from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).

The main objective of the project is to provide inputs for understanding the ecosystem of fraudulent health advertising, in order to inform public debate and guide strategies to confront health disinformation in Brazil. In this study, we analyze how Meta’s platforms facilitate the promotion of ads containing disinformation and fraud against consumers.

Between April and May 2025, we collected nearly 170,000 ads containing health-related terms that were displayed on Meta’s platforms. We then manually analyzed a sample of 6,579 ads, seeking to identify the characteristics, narratives, and patterns present in these campaigns. At this stage, we identified 4,997 fraudulent health-related ads (76% of the analyzed sample). Based on this analysis, we will train an artificial intelligence (AI)–based classifier to detect ads, which will analyze all ads collected throughout the project.

Our results point to the existence of a fraud market that benefits from the lack of diligence by social media platforms in enforcing health advertising regulations in Brazil, generating profit, disseminating false and misleading content, and exploiting user vulnerabilities. This ecosystem exposes users to a form of disinformation that causes severe harm to health, induces consumers to engage in harmful behaviors, and can result in financial losses and psychological damage, worsening of illnesses, and erosion of users’ trust in health institutions. Therefore, by allowing large-scale circulation of fraud and the persistence of many of these contents for long periods, Meta demonstrates systemic failures that compromise the safety and integrity of its users.

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NetLab UFRJ - Desinformação pode matar.pdf

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DATA ACESS

If you would like to access the database for this report, please send an email to netlab@eco.ufrj.br identifying yourself, explaining why you are interested in the data and how it will be used. NetLab will evaluate your request and get in touch.

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WARNING

This report is an independent production of NetLab UFRJ. All decisions regarding this work were made exclusively by the researchers of the laboratory. The funders of NetLab UFRJ have no influence on the laboratory's research agenda and did not participate in any stage of the production of this report.

Information on NetLab UFRJ's funding sources is available here.