Meta, a social media giant, has for years ignored malicious ads that lead to malware and scams on its platforms. But now, the company has begun removing ads from lawyers seeking clients harmed by social media.

According to Axios, Meta began removing advertisements on Thursday, just two weeks after the company, along with Alphabet’s Google, was found negligent in a landmark California case about social media addiction.

Indeed, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google negligent for designing social media platforms that are harmful to young people, delivering a $6 million verdict.

The lawsuit centered on a 20-year-old woman, identified in court as Kaley, who said she became addicted to YouTube and Instagram at a young age. The plaintiffs successfully focused on platform design rather than harmful content.

The jury found that Google and Meta failed to warn users about their dangers. As a legal test case, the California lawsuit is likely to shape thousands more, experts say.

That’s certainly the hope of hundreds of harm lawyers across the United States who are now seeking new plaintiffs in order to bring new class action lawsuits and cheekily placing ads on social media platforms, including Meta’s.

Meta is trying to stop the wave, though. As per Axios reporting, more than a dozen such ads – some of which came from large law firms like Morgan & Morgan and Sokolove Law – were hurriedly deactivated on Thursday alone.

Most ads ran on Facebook and Instagram, but some also appeared on Threads, Messenger, and Meta’s Audience Network, which distributes advertisements to third-party sites.

For instance, one ad read: “Anxiety. Depression. Withdrawal. Self-harm. These aren’t just teenage phases – they’re symptoms linked to social media addiction in children. Platforms knew this and kept targeting kids anyway.”

“We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful,”

Meta spokesperson.

In all fairness, Meta seems to be relying on its terms of service. They say: “We also can remove or restrict access to content, features, services, or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate misuse of our services or adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Meta.”

Meta’s spokesperson also told Axios: “We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful.”

This is, of course, quite rich for a company that has at least very recently been earning a fortune from fraudulent ads. In late 2025, Reuters reported that Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods.

According to the news agency, Meta has failed at least three consecutive years to identify and stop ads that exposed Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users to fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos, and the sale of banned goods.

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