Temu has largely stopped funding a network of fake influencer accounts on Meta’s platforms in the days after a Fortune investigation exposed the practice.

Online Risk Labs (ORL), a Czech-based research group that examined Temu’s partnership ad spending on Instagram and Facebook over a 16-month period ending in April 2026, found the retailer had spent nearly $1 billion, a figure ORL separately specified as $962 million, targeting users across the UK and all 27 EU countries. Meta’s partnership ads program lets creators tag brands in sponsored content, which brands can then pay to boost, with creators earning a cut of the ad spend; Meta has said the program is on pace for a $10 billion annual run rate across Facebook and Instagram.

Of the 100 accounts most heavily featured in Temu’s partnership ads, ORL determined 73 were probably fake, citing nonsensical names, accounts based in China, Russia, Bangladesh and Iran, and frequent name changes. Those 100 accounts ran more than 1.4 million partnership ad campaigns, achieving a cumulative reach of almost 17 billion, according to ORL.

Fortune published its findings on August 31, when Temu was running 4,900 separate partnership campaigns daily. By September 4, 90 of the 100 accounts showed zero Temu advertising, and 54 had dropped partnership ads almost immediately after the story ran. Temu’s overall partnership ad volume nearly halved in the aftermath, though ORL said the retailer maintained its spending with legitimate creators: weekly ads across all of Temu’s pages fell only modestly, from 166,523 in the week of August 17 to 147,013 in the week of September 7, while partnership ads specifically dropped from 115,114 to 64,008 over the same span.

The largest account in ORL’s sample, “Ya Lili,” ran content in 278,000 Temu campaigns, about 225 a day, across an Instagram following of 183,000 and a Facebook following of 129,000. The account had posted multiple times daily before Fortune’s story ran; only five of its ads remained active by September 4, which ORL said were likely remnants of previously scheduled buys, and it had not posted since September 7. Partnership ads ceased almost entirely in Ireland, Cyprus, Austria, Denmark, Latvia and Slovenia, jurisdictions ORL noted carry strict misleading-advertising penalties, including criminal liability in several cases.

The pullback follows a formal complaint Poland’s government filed with the European Commission on August 27, seeking a €250 million fine against Meta over its handling of fraudulent ads. Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said Poland’s cybersecurity team flagged 122 fraudulent ads to Meta, of which the company removed only 10. Gawkowski is pushing for a coordinated EU response and plans to raise the issue at the upcoming G20 summit.

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