Meta Platforms Inc. faces allegations from a whistleblower accusing the company of artificially inflating the performance metrics of its ecommerce advertising. According to reports by Adweek and confirmed by the Financial Times, Meta allegedly boosted return on ad spend by counting shipping fees as revenue, subsidizing bids in ad auctions, and applying undisclosed discounts to advertisers. These practices purportedly aimed to convince advertisers that Meta's ad services were outperforming competitors. Additionally, the whistleblower claims Meta circumvented Apple's App Tracking Transparency privacy measures on iPhones, raising concerns about compliance with user privacy expectations. The controversy follows reports that Meta fired an employee who flagged these issues. Apple has responded to related accusations about executive conduct but has not directly addressed the ad metric claims. The allegations suggest a pattern of behavior by Meta involving misrepresentation of ad performance and privacy circumvention over the past decade.