Samujjal Purkayastha, a former Meta employee, has filed a lawsuit against the technology company in a UK court, accusing it of manipulating advertising metrics related to Shops Ads to present falsely improved performance. Purkayastha joined Meta in 2020 (when the company was still called Facebook) as a product manager on Facebook's Applied Artificial Intelligence Research team. He later joined the Shops Ads team in 2022 until his dismissal on February 19, 2025. What the complaint says On August 20, Purkayastha filed the lawsuit against Meta with the Central Employment Court in London. The document alleges that Meta inflated the return on ad spend (ROAS) metrics for Shops Ads, its advertising tool that allows advertisers to promote their products on Facebook and Instagram. Specifically, the former Meta employee claims that during internal reviews conducted in early 2024, the company's data scientists discovered that the ROAS for Shops Ads had been inflated by 17% to 19%. This imbalance was due to Meta including shipping costs and taxes as part of sales, manipulating the figures to give the false impression that its results were better than those of competitors such as Apple or Google. Purkayastha claims that he had already become aware of this maneuver by mid-2022. Furthermore, the former Meta employee states that he raised his concerns about these events in multiple meetings with the company's senior management. His lawsuit includes a request for injunctive relief to reinstate his former position at the company. According to the complaint, this manipulation did not occur in other Meta advertising products. This also gave advertisers a false sense that Shops Ads campaigns were performing better than traditional ads. In the document, Purkayastha states: "In addition to the ROAS performance metric being overestimated by nearly a fifth, this meant that rather than exceeding our primary goal, the Shops Ads team actually fell short once the number was reduced to account for artificial inflation." Alleged Action Against Apple's Privacy Barriers Furthermore, this alleged manipulation was also part of Meta's broader strategy to improve the performance of its ads, in response to the privacy updates Apple implemented in 2021 through its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature. Meta executives were looking for new revenue streams that were "resistant" to these privacy measures. Shop Ads were presented as the ideal solution, as they kept tracking and transactions within Meta's own apps (Instagram and Facebook). To make this new product appear more successful, Meta allegedly subsidized Shop Ads bids, sometimes by up to 100%, to ensure they were shown more frequently to users. This not only increased visibility but also reinforced the illusion of good performance and a high conversion rate. In addition to bid manipulation, the complaint also alleges that Meta engaged in poor practices related to data tracking. Purkayastha alleges that the company implemented a mechanism called AEM2 that, unlike its previous version, linked activity within Meta's apps to browsing and purchases on third-party sites using personal identifiers such as emails or phone numbers. Purkayastha believes that AEM2 could have circumvented Apple's privacy restrictions, thereby recovering much of the data lost after its changes. How the Case Is Progressing For now, a judge at London's Central Employment Court has rejected Purkayastha's request for interim measures to reinstate her position. A full hearing on the case is expected next year. Regarding Meta, a company spokesperson stated that "allegations related to the integrity of our advertising practices are unfounded, and we have full confidence in our performance review processes."