There Poland has formally requested from the European Commission the application of one administrative fine of 250 million euros towards Half. Poland accuses the multinational of not having adopted adequate countermeasures against the proliferation of fraudulent advertisements on Facebook and Instagram.
The request, Reuters reports, was formalized in a letter addressed to the European Commissioner for Digital Henna Virkkunen by the Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs, Krzysztof Gawkowski. The legal and political initiative is part of the Digital Services Act (DSA)aiming to contest the violation of six specific articles, including those relating to risk assessment and mitigation, advertiser transparency and mechanisms for reporting illegal content.
The basis of the request are the tests conducted by CERT Polskathe national cybersecurity incident response team. On a sample of 122 advertisements reported as clearly fraudulent, 106 (equal to 86.8%) remained active on the platform without any intervention. Only 10 adverts were removed, while in the remaining six cases no response was received from the moderation systems.
During a press conference, Minister Gawkowski said: “We have concrete evidence that the platform does not act in the best interests of usersbut rather in its own economic interest, which allows it to monetize misleading advertising“. The representative of the Polish government added: “The time in which we could simply say ‘improve yourselves’ is over; they reply that they are improving, but citizens still don’t perceive it. Now is the time for sanctions“.
The case also recalls the judicial precedent of April 2026, when the Warsaw Court of Appeal established Meta’s direct liability for hosted advertising content, following a lawsuit brought by Polish billionaire Rafal Brzoska for image cloning.
For its part, the Menlo Park company reiterated its commitment to fighting computer fraud. A spokesperson stressed: “Fraudsters are persistent criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics. This is why we continue to invest heavily in technology and partnerships, with industry and law enforcement, to find, remove and ultimately stop fraudsters,” recalling eliminating over 159 million scam listings globally in the last year.
The European Commission confirmed receipt of the request, recalling that it had already launched a specific investigation into Meta regarding fraud management and that it requested information from other large technology platforms in September 2025. Meanwhile, Codacons has also called for similar interventions in Italy by Agcom and the Commission itself, highlighting how the phenomenon represents an emergency extended to all European consumers and particularly sensitive for the protection of minors.
