The Luxembourg Consumers’ Union (ULC) is taking a stand against the tech giants. The association is one of 29 European organisations that lodged a complaint on Thursday 21 May with the European Commission and the relevant national authorities against Meta, TikTok and Google for their failure to curb the proliferation of fraudulent adverts linked to financial scams.

Coordinated by the European Consumer Organisation (Beuc), the initiative directly targets the obligations imposed by the Digital Services Act (DSA), the major European regulation designed to hold digital platforms to account. The organisations are focusing on moderation mechanisms that are considered largely ineffective in tackling fake financial investments, promises of miraculous returns and scams disseminated in the form of sponsored content.

Alerts that have been ignored or rejected

The figures cited by Beuc highlight the scale of the problem. Between December 2025 and March 2026, nearly 900 adverts suspected of breaching European law were reported across 13 countries. However, only 27% of these were removed by the platforms following the reports. More than half of the reports were reportedly ignored or rejected. The result: hundreds of fraudulent adverts remain active and continue to reach more than 200 million European consumers every month.

For consumer organisations, the verdict is harsh: not only do platforms react too slowly, they also fail to proactively detect fraudulent content. “Meta, TikTok and Google not only fail to proactively remove fraudulent adverts, but also do very little when they are alerted to these scams,” says Agustín Reyna, director general of Beuc.

The matter could soon take on a more serious regulatory dimension. Organisations are now calling for formal investigations by the European Commission and national digital coordinators. They are also calling for financial penalties to be imposed in the event of persistent non-compliance.