Visual Manipulation in Health Scam Advertising on Meta: an Exploratory Analysis of Deepfake and Cheapfake Practices

Research across several countries has identified an escalating wave of scam advertising on social media, driven by persuasive disinformation strategies that exploit platform infrastructures to build audience trust and engagement (Alzghoul et al., 2024; Di Domenico et al., 2022). Concerns around this phenomenon have intensified with the spread of generative AI tools, which facilitate the production and circulation of deceptive content (Simon et al., 2023), particularly manipulated videos that imitate authoritative figures in order to project legitimacy (de Ruiter, 2021; Hynek et al., 2025). Notably, previous studies show that similar ads have been routinely disseminated in the country through the Meta advertising system (Santini et al, 2025), and a recent investigation in Brazil illustrates this trend, revealing online courses that teach how to produce health scam ads using deepfake techniques (Aleixo, 2025).