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... Japanese regulators last year were upset by a flood of ads for obvious scams on Facebook and Instagram. The scams ranged from fraudulent investment schemes to fake celebrity product endorsements created by artificial intelligence.

Meta, owner of the two social media platforms, feared Japan would soon force it to verify the identity of all its advertisers, internal documents reviewed by Reuters show. The step would likely reduce fraud but also cost the company revenue.

To head off that threat, Meta launched an enforcement blitz to reduce the volume of offending ads. But it also sought to make problematic ads less "discoverable" for Japanese regulators, the documents show.

The documents are part of an internal cache of materials from the past four years in which Meta employees assessed the fast-growing level of fraudulent advertising across its platforms worldwide.

Drawn from multiple sources and authored by employees in departments including finance, legal, public policy and safety, the documents also reveal ways that Meta, to protect billions of dollars in ad revenue, has resisted efforts by governments to crack down. ...