Meta accused of inflating ad revenues and bypassing Apple's privacy rules
20/08/2025 | Financial Times
An ex-Meta employee has alleged in an employment tribunal that the technology company significantly inflated an advertising metric and secretly bypassed Apple's privacy rules to boost revenues. Samujjal Purkayastha, a former Meta product manager, claims the company misled advertisers by using gross sales figures for its "Shops Ads" on Facebook and Instagram, a practice he says inflated performance by 17% to 19%. This approach contrasted with how Meta calculated other ad types and how competitors like Google operated.
Purkayastha also alleges that Meta secretly linked user data to track online activity without consent, circumventing Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework. He was reportedly laid off after raising these concerns internally and is now suing for unfair dismissal. Meta, in its defence, stated that it had no interest in retaliating against Purkayastha and considered the issues "routine commercial matters" with no wrongdoing. The case is expected to go to a full hearing in the coming year.
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