NextFin News - Poland's "Locker King" billionaire is pushing Warsaw to take its fight with Meta Platforms to the European Union, turning a two-year battle over deepfake investment ads into a test of whether Europe's biggest social-media company can still hide behind the legal shield that protects its advertising business.
Rafal Brzoska, the founder and chief executive of parcel-locker operator InPost and one of Poland's wealthiest entrepreneurs, has spent much of 2026 in a widening confrontation with Meta over fraudulent advertisements that misuse his image. The dispute escalated in mid-August after a fresh AI-generated advertisement showed Brzoska in police handcuffs, his Instagram account was briefly suspended when he publicly criticized the company, and Poland's digital affairs minister called the episode "censorship in its darkest form." Now, with Meta's response to the government's demands in hand, Brzoska is urging Warsaw to escalate the case to Brussels.
The stakes extend well beyond one entrepreneur's reputation. A Polish court ruling in March stripped Meta of a key defense under the EU's Digital Services Act, and a state-level complaint to the European Commission would place the company's advertising model under scrutiny at the very regulator that wrote the rulebook. For investors, the question is no longer whether Meta can moderate scams faster - it is whether the company that sells, targets and optimizes paid advertising can continue to claim it is merely the neutral host of what advertisers buy.
The Dispute That Would Not Go Away
Brzoska's conflict with Meta dates to 2024, when fraudulent investment advertisements began proliferating across Facebook and Instagram using his likeness - and that of his wife, television presenter Omenaa Mensah. The mechanism was repetitive: deepfakes and fabricated stories urged users to transfer money to bogus investment platforms, exploiting the trust that comes with a recognizable face.
Poland's Personal Data Protection Office intervened in August 2024, ordering Meta Platforms Ireland to stop displaying advertisements in Poland that used Brzoska's personal data and image. The emergency measure ran for three months, the maximum period permitted. Meta challenged the order, but the Warsaw Administrative Court refused to suspend it, and by March 2025 the company withdrew its complaints and the proceedings were discontinued.
The civil case, however, produced the more consequential result. On 27 March 2026, the Warsaw Court of Appeal issued an interim ruling that rejected Meta's central legal argument: that it operates as a passive hosting provider and therefore cannot be held liable for advertising content. The court held that Meta cannot invoke Articles 6 and 7 of the Digital Services Act - the hosting exemptions - because its role in the advertising process is "conscious, active and directed at generating financial gain."
"The court confirmed that Meta Platforms bears responsibility for the content of the advertisements - because it is an active participant and facilitates their dissemination," said Maciej Slusarek, legal counsel to Brzoska and Mensah.
The ruling was partial - the injunction was upheld for Mensah but set aside for Brzoska, who the court found had framed his request too broadly. But the reasoning is what matters: the court focused not on the speed of removal but on the nature of Meta's role. The company provides targeting, distribution and campaign-optimization tools; it accepts payment; it decides how ads are delivered. In that chain, the court said, it is not a passive conduit.
Brzoska welcomed the decision on LinkedIn: "This is not the end of this fight. This is the moment when the model of impunity for big platforms begins to crack!"
The August Flashpoint
The dispute returned to public attention in mid-August, when another sponsored Facebook advertisement appeared using an AI-generated image of Brzoska in handcuffs, surrounded by police, with a fabricated claim that he had been detained. Brzoska said the image had circulated widely enough that his own children asked him about it.
On 17 August, he posted on X addressing Meta's Polish management by name: "If my minor kids are sending me these screenshots asking, 'What's going on, Dad?' ... then, in your place, I'd look for another job." He also named four Meta Poland and regional executives, accusing them of enabling what he called the company's "criminal activity" in Poland.
Shortly afterward, his Instagram account was temporarily restricted. Screenshots showed Instagram citing "unusual activity" and locking the account for protection. It was later restored, and there is no evidence the block was retaliation for his criticism. But the sequence - the fraudulent advertisement ran, the victim's account did not - became the political flashpoint.
Krzysztof Gawkowski, Poland's Digital Affairs Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, entered the fray on 18 August. "This is censorship in its darkest form," he said, accusing Meta of profiting from advertisements that use stolen identities while shifting responsibility onto anonymous advertisers. He framed the issue as broader than one businessman: "This is a matter of the safety of millions of Poles who can lose their savings through fraudulent advertisements, deepfakes and fake investments."
Gawkowski said his ministry was preparing new legislation to implement EU rules governing digital platforms and would demand that Meta explain how it is complying with the Digital Services Act and cracking down on fraudulent ads. On 26 August, Meta responded to the minister's letter; Brzoska thanked Gawkowski for the action.
Why This Is Structural, Not Cyclical
The surface reading of this story is cyclical: a new wave of scam ads appears, a politician reacts, the platform tightens enforcement, the volume ebbs. Scam-ad flows do move in cycles - they expand when detection lags and contract after enforcement pressure. On that reading, the Brzoska episode is a temporary flare-up that Meta can manage with better detection and faster takedowns.
That reading misses the mechanism. What has changed is not the volume of fraud but the legal status of the platform that distributes it. For two decades, the advertising-based internet was built on the premise that platforms are intermediaries - they host what others create and are liable only once they know and fail to act. The Warsaw Court of Appeal's March ruling attacks that premise at its foundation: if a platform is paid to place an ad, chooses who sees it, and optimizes its performance, it is an active participant in the transaction, not a passive host.
That is a structural shift, and it will not revert on its own. Three pieces of evidence support the call. First, the driver is legal and regulatory, not episodic: the Digital Services Act created the framework, and national courts are now interpreting it. Second, the history that protected platforms - the "safe harbor" doctrine inherited from early internet law - no longer applies to paid, targeted, algorithmically optimized advertising. Third, the driver does not self-correct: Meta cannot un-invent its targeting and optimization tools without destroying the economics of its ad business, so it cannot return to the old liability position by simply trying harder.
The distinction matters because it changes what investors should watch. A cyclical problem is solved by spending more on moderation. A structural problem is solved - or not - by changing the business model, and it carries litigation, regulatory and repricing risk that compounds over years rather than quarters.
The Scale of the Problem Meta Cannot Wish Away
The fraud volume is large enough that no amount of public relations resolves it. A Juniper Research study sponsored by Revolut estimated that European internet users were served 993 billion social-media ad impressions in 2025, with roughly one in ten linked to scams - revenue from fraudulent advertisements of about £3.8 billion ($5.1 billion). Separately, Revolut's consumer-security report found that the average user now encounters 190 scam advertisements a month, a figure projected to rise to 250 by 2030 if current trends persist.
Meta-owned platforms remain the single largest source of authorized-push-payment fraud, accounting for 44% of reported scam cases. Facebook alone is the origin of more than 21% of all cases, with WhatsApp contributing a further 17%. Telegram has grown fastest of all, now accounting for more than 20% of authorized fraud origination - level with Facebook and up more than 30% in its share of cases from a year earlier.
These numbers explain why Brzoska's case has traction in Warsaw. When a platform ecosystem is the destination for nearly half of all scam cases, and when a single user sees roughly 190 scam messages a month, the argument that fraud is the work of a few anonymous bad actors becomes harder to sustain. The system itself is the channel, and the system is monetized.
The Second-Order Risk: A Polish Ruling With EU Reach
The first-order consequence of the Warsaw ruling is narrow: Meta lost one defense in one case in one country. The second-order consequence is what keeps strategists awake. The Digital Services Act is a single rulebook, but it is enforced by national Digital Services Coordinators and the European Commission. A national court's interpretation of the DSA's hosting exemptions does not formally bind Brussels - but it creates a template that other coordinators can cite, and that the Commission can adopt.
The pile-on has already begun. On 21 May 2026, BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation, together with 29 member groups from 27 countries, filed complaints with the European Commission and national authorities against Meta, TikTok and Google for failing to address the proliferation of financial fraudulent ads as the DSA requires. The groups asked the Commission to investigate and, in case of continued non-compliance, to impose fines. In April, the Commission issued preliminary findings that both Meta and TikTok had failed to fulfil their obligations to provide adequate access to public data for researchers.
If Poland now files a state-level complaint over the Brzoska matter, Meta faces a familiar pattern: one national action becomes a reference point for others, and the Commission faces pressure to open its own proceeding. The company's exposure is no longer a Polish nuisance; it is a Europe-wide regulatory trajectory.
The Counter-Thesis: Platforms Cannot Pre-Screen Everything
The strongest case against Brzoska's position is not Meta's; it is the one about scale and free expression. Scammers re-register accounts constantly, alter creative material and redistribute it faster than any review system can catch. Requiring platforms to pre-approve paid advertising would impose costs that only the largest players can bear, disadvantaging small and medium-sized advertisers, and would push moderation toward over-removal of legitimate content. Meta's own response to the Polish minister reflected this: fraud harms its business and undermines trust in its advertising ecosystem, but publicly naming and attacking its employees threatens their safety and does not solve the problem.
There is also a simpler explanation for the August sequence: Instagram's block of Brzoska's account cited "unusual activity" and was later reversed, with no evidence it was retaliation. Automated systems make mistakes; a mistake is not censorship.
Meta also points to the scale of its own enforcement. The company said it removed more than 159 million scam advertisements in the past year, the vast majority before any user reported them. On that measure, the platform is not indifferent - it is fighting a volume war against adversaries who adapt by the hour.
These points are real but incomplete. They address detection capacity, not liability. The Warsaw court did not fault Meta for moving slowly; it faulted the company for claiming it was not responsible at all. A platform can accept that scammers are hard to catch and still be held accountable for the systems it built to sell and amplify paid content. The counter-thesis answers the wrong question.
What Comes Next, and What Would Prove It Wrong
The forward path splits by time horizon. In the short term, the dispute is political and reputational: Warsaw has a letter from Meta, Brzoska has a platform, and the next move is whether Poland files a formal complaint with the European Commission. In the medium term, the question is whether national Digital Services Coordinators and the Commission treat the Warsaw reasoning as a template - which would multiply Meta's regulatory surface across the EU. In the long term, the structural question is whether the "active participant" theory of platform liability becomes the European norm for paid advertising, forcing a redesign of how ad targeting and optimization are sold.
Scenarios, not a single line. The base case is that Poland files a complaint and the Commission opens a dialogue, extracting incremental commitments from Meta on scam-ad detection and advertiser verification without an immediate fine. The upside case for Brzoska is that the Commission opens a formal non-compliance proceeding citing the Warsaw reasoning, which would put Meta's ad model under direct EU-level scrutiny. The downside case is that the matter dissipates after Meta's response letter and voluntary measures, leaving the Polish ruling as an isolated national precedent.
The falsifying signal is specific: if the European Commission or Poland's Digital Services Coordinator opens a formal DSA proceeding against Meta over financial-scam advertising within 90 days, the structural-liability thesis is confirmed. If national authorities close the matter after Meta's response with no further action, the dispute reverts to a cyclical enforcement story, and the "model of impunity" begins to look more like a national anomaly than a European turning point.
The Bottom Line
Brzoska is not the first person to have his face stolen for a scam ad, and he will not be the last. What makes this moment different is that a court has already said the platform that sold the ad shares responsibility for it - and a government is now being asked to carry that finding to the regulator that wrote the rule. The "Locker King" may have started this fight over his own image. He is ending it over Meta's business model.
Explore more exclusive insights at nextfin.ai.
