According to Wired, former Meta executives Rob Leathern and Rob Goldman are launching CollectiveMetrics.org, a nonprofit aimed at fighting deceptive digital ads through data and transparency. Leathern previously led Meta’s business integrity unit and was the public face of their scam ad efforts from 2016 to 2020, while Goldman served as Meta’s vice president of ads. The move comes as the Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimates victims lost at least $1 trillion to scams last year, with 23% of people reporting they’ve lost money to scams. Their 2025 report also found that over a third of people who reported scams saw “no action taken by the platform.” The former Meta staffers say ad scam technology has “stagnated the last five years” despite criminals increasingly using deepfakes and AI.
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Why this matters now
Here’s the thing: scam ads aren’t just annoying – they’re a trillion-dollar problem that’s getting worse faster than platforms can keep up. Leathern watched this unfold from the inside and now from the outside, and he’s basically saying the platforms have dropped the ball. When the guy who used to be in charge of fighting this stuff at Meta says “we don’t really know how bad it’s gotten,” that should worry everyone.
And let’s be real – the incentives here are completely messed up. Platforms make money from ads, even the scammy ones. There’s no real consequence for them when users get ripped off. So why would they invest serious resources into fighting something that’s making them money? It’s like asking a casino to crack down on winning gamblers.
The data problem
What’s really interesting about CollectiveMetrics.org is their focus on objective measurement. Leathern pointed out that “we don’t have objective ways of knowing” the scale of the problem. That’s by design – platforms have every reason to keep this data opaque. If everyone could see exactly how many scam ads are running and how much money they’re generating for the platforms, there would be hell to pay.
The Global Anti-Scam Alliance research shows just how pervasive this has become. Their 2025 report found that nearly a quarter of people have lost money to scams. Think about that – we’re not talking about people who saw a suspicious ad, we’re talking about people who actually got financially burned. And more than a third of reporters saw no action taken. That’s a massive failure of accountability.
What comes next
So can two former insiders actually make a difference? Maybe. They understand how these systems work from the inside, and they’re not trying to build another detection tool – they’re trying to create the equivalent of Nielsen ratings for scam ads. If they can actually measure prevalence and track trends objectively, that becomes ammunition for regulators, journalists, and advocacy groups.
But let’s be honest – they’re going up against some of the most powerful companies in the world with virtually unlimited legal budgets. Meta and Google aren’t exactly eager to have independent watchdogs peering into their advertising black boxes. This is going to be a brutal fight, and the scammers are only getting more sophisticated with AI and deepfakes.
The real question is whether platforms will see this as a threat or an opportunity. If they’re smart, they’ll recognize that cleaning up their ad ecosystems is better for business long-term. But given how much money is flowing through these systems right now, I’m not holding my breath.
