Here's what went down: Japanese regulators pushed Meta hard to crack down on fraudulent advertisements running across its platforms. The company's response? They removed the scam ads alright — but simultaneously made it trickier for watchdogs to actually track them down through the Ad Library.

A Reuters investigation uncovered this contradiction. While Meta appeared responsive to Japan's pressure on the surface, the real story was more complex. By deleting these ads outright instead of keeping archived records accessible to regulators, the platform essentially limited transparency tools that authorities rely on for oversight.

This move highlights a growing tension in the Web3 and crypto space: platforms balancing between regulatory compliance and maintaining the transparency mechanisms that regulators and the public need to verify their actions. When enforcement agencies can't see a clear audit trail of what happened to flagged content, it becomes harder to verify whether platforms are genuinely committed to cleaning house or just making problems disappear from view.

The Ad Library was designed to give regulators and researchers visibility into political and sensitive advertising. But if platforms can simply delete records rather than maintaining searchable archives, that transparency tool loses its bite.