A Czech research group spent 16 months monitoring what it estimates was up to $962 million in Meta partnership ads placed under Temu’s account across the United Kingdom and 27 EU countries. When those findings went public, the accounts at the center of the suspected network went quiet within days. Neither Temu nor Meta has offered any public explanation in response to Fortune’s requests for comment.
The research, conducted by Online Risk Labs and reported by Fortune on August 31, 2026, raises serious questions about automated creator-advertising systems. It suggests those systems can reportedly process enormous sums before anyone formally verifies whether the accounts behind them represent real people. Did Meta’s systems fail to detect high-volume activity across accounts that showed the warning signs ORL identified?
The Scale of the Suspected Network
ORL’s analysis of the 100 most-advertised creator accounts found that nearly three-quarters showed signs the group assessed as likely inauthentic.
Online Risk Labs examined the 100 creator accounts most heavily used in Temu’s Meta partnership advertising. Approximately 73 showed patterns the group assessed as likely inauthentic, including nonsensical usernames, frequent account-name changes, and apparent geographic locations in China, Russia, Bangladesh, or Iran. Those 100 accounts collectively participated in more than 1.4 million partnership ads. They generated nearly 17 billion cumulative impressions across the study period ending April 2026, a figure representing total advertising exposure, not 17 billion distinct individuals.
Temu’s broader creator network reportedly contains at least 12,000 accounts, meaning ORL’s sample covered only the most heavily advertised fraction. The findings should not be generalized to every creator relationship the company maintains.
Ya Lilly and the Fast Disappearing Act
The account ORL flagged as the most heavily used vanished from active advertising within days of Fortune’s investigation.
The largest account in ORL’s analysis operated under the name “Ya Lilly,” using the Instagram handle @findgadgetswithme and a Facebook page called “Must good.” The accounts carried 183,000 Instagram followers and 129,000 on Facebook. According to ORL, approximately 278,000 Temu ad campaigns were tied to Ya Lilly’s content during the study period, roughly 225 per day.
Then Fortune published its investigation on August 31, 2026. By September 4, only five Temu ads associated with Ya Lilly remained visible on Meta’s platforms, which ORL assessed as likely remnants of pre-scheduled buys. The account stopped posting entirely by September 7, according to ORL’s monitoring. The research identifies these accounts as likely inauthentic but does not establish who created or controlled them, or whether Temu knowingly authorized their use.
After the Story Ran
Temu’s partnership advertising volume on Meta nearly halved in the weeks following Fortune’s report, according to ORL’s measurements.
Partnership ads across Temu’s Meta pages fell from 115,114 in the week of August 17 to 64,008 in the week of September 7. Overall weekly ads dropped from 166,523 to 147,013 across the same period. By September 4, 90 accounts showed no Temu advertising, and 54 of the top 100 stopped using partnership ads almost immediately after the investigation published.
ORL noted that Temu’s advertising budget appeared to continue flowing to accounts the group categorized as legitimate creators. Other explanations for the broader decline remain possible, including routine campaign expiration, account enforcement actions by Meta, regional compliance decisions, or internal shifts in Temu’s advertising strategy.
The Regulatory Overhang
Partnership advertising reportedly ceased almost entirely in six EU jurisdictions after the investigation, though no enforcement action has been confirmed.
Following the investigation, partnership advertising ceased almost entirely in Ireland, Cyprus, Austria, Denmark, Latvia, and Slovenia, according to ORL. Fortune noted that several of those jurisdictions carry strict rules against misleading advertising, with penalties that can include criminal convictions and revenue-based fines, though the available reporting does not provide jurisdiction-specific legal sources. No regulatory violation has been established, and no confirmed enforcement action has been reported in any of those countries.
The central unanswered questions remain serious. Did Temu knowingly fund accounts that were not real creators? Did Meta’s systems fail to detect high-volume activity across accounts that showed the warning signs ORL identified? Neither company responded to Fortune’s requests for comment, leaving both questions unresolved.
Meta disclosed earlier in 2026 that partnership ads were on pace for a $10 billion annual run rate across Facebook and Instagram. At that scale, the capacity for unverified accounts to reportedly absorb hundreds of millions in ad spend is not a question about one advertiser. It is a structural question about what platform accountability looks like when money moves at this volume.
