If your local shopping centre allowed one of its retailers to defraud you and then profited from the transaction, that would be a matter for the Garda. Yet the same is not true of the powerful technology companies which now facilitate so much of the world’s commerce and which, it emerges, are making substantial sums from enabling fraud against their own users.
Research commissioned by Revolut estimates that social media platforms earned ¤32 million from serving scam advertisements to Irish users in 2025. Across Europe, the figure rises to a staggering ¤4.4 billion. Irish users are being shown an average of 164 fraudulent advertisements per month, with total views of such ads reaching six billion annually. Those who fall victim to these scams lose an average of nearly ¤1,500, significantly higher than in most other European countries. The Central Bank has told the Oireachtas that 80 per cent of payment fraud now originates on social media.
The Revolut report suggests optimistically that platforms should invest in better detection systems to protect their long-term reputational value. This rather misses the point. These companies operate effective monopolies in their respective markets. Users feel they cannot meaningfully abandon Facebook, Instagram or TikTok without significant social cost. The platforms know this, and it is precisely why they can afford to treat their users with such contempt. There is no competitive pressure compelling them to act.
Nor does the current regulatory framework provide adequate redress. The Digital Services Act imposes due diligence obligations but lacks meaningful enforcement teeth. Platforms remain shielded by intermediary liability protections designed for an earlier, more innocent era of the internet.
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What is required is legislation that treats revenue derived from fraudulent ads as what it plainly is: proceeds of crime. Such revenues should be subject to confiscation, with exemplary financial penalties. Until the economics of fraud change, the fraud economy will continue to thrive.
