Meta ran and hosted “dozens of paid ads” that featured AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM), according to a new report from Wired. The now removed ads reportedly reached thousands of accounts, and ran across Facebook, Threads, Messenger and Instagram.
Engadget has asked Meta to comment on Wired’s report. We’ll update this article if it responds.
The ads, which featured images of children with sexually suggestive text and other offensive content, were discovered by researchers with the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) in Meta’s ad library. The first-party tool catalogues and indexes the ads that are running across the company’s platforms, and is a way of getting an overview of where ads are placed and who they target. All of the ads discovered by TTP were posted between November 2025 and August 2026, and several linked out to “nudify” or undressing apps.
“These ads made no effort to mask the images or hide what they were promoting,” TTP Director Katie Paul told Wired. “It’s important to point out that this isn’t content posted by third parties on Facebook or Instagram, these are ads that were reviewed, approved, and allowed to run by Meta, never encountering interference while the company collected the ad dollars.”
Meta’s advertising standards specifically forbid ads that “contain content that sexually exploits or endangers children,” and notes that the company reports any offensive material it finds to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Ads with sexually explicit adult content are similarly banned from Meta’s ad system. The company catches offenders by reviewing each ad before it’s published, but as Wired notes, it relies on “automated tools” as part of the process, which may have been how the more than 50 ads TTP discovered made it through.
“Sexual exploitation is horrific, and we work aggressively to keep it off our platform,” Meta said in a statement to Wired. “The majority of these ads had minimal reach and many were disabled before WIRED shared them. Many of these ads also predate new AI technology we launched recently to better detect and block violating ads at upload — and we’re constantly improving these systems. From removing over 36 million pieces of child sexual exploitation content last year to taking legal action against nudify app developers, we will continue to relentlessly fight this abuse.”
This collection of CSAM-related ads is only the latest advertising issue Meta has had to deal with in the last few months. The BBC reported in July that Instagram ran ads advertising child sexual abuse material in India. In April 2026, the Consumer Federation of America also sued Meta for failing to deal with scam ads on its platforms, which are similarly forbidden by the company’s ad standards.
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