Japan's National Police Agency, Financial Services Agency and five other cabinet-level agencies issued a formal joint demand to Google, Meta, LINEYahoo, TikTok and X to tighten defenses against deepfake and impersonation investment scam ads, marking the first time the seven bodies have acted together in this way. The agencies asked platforms to verify advertisers' identities before ad placement, provide visible disclosures showing who paid for ads and why users were targeted, and respond quickly to takedown requests from law enforcement, impersonated individuals and consumer authorities. The move comes after social media investment fraud in Japan rose to 9,538 cases in 2025, with losses reaching ¥127.4 billion, up 46.3% from a year earlier, according to National Police Agency data cited in the report. Combined losses from special fraud, romance scams and social-media investment scams climbed to a record ¥324.11 billion. Victims in social media investment fraud lost an average of ¥12.1 million per case, with most victims in their forties to sixties. The report links Japan's action to a January 2026 Reuters investigation into internal Meta documents. Those documents showed Meta staff tracked the keywords and celebrity names Japanese regulators used in the company's Ad Library and removed suspect ads from those search results to make problematic content harder for regulators, investigators and journalists to find. Meta disputed the characterization, saying ads removed from the Ad Library are also removed from the platform, and said user reports of scams fell 50% in the prior year. The same document cache indicated Meta believed it could implement universal advertiser verification globally in under six weeks, but estimated the effort would cost about $2 billion and could cut revenue by as much as 4.8%. Taiwan's 2023 verification rules for financial advertisers later produced a 96% drop in investment scam ads and a 94% fall in impersonation ads, according to Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs. Japan has asked the named platforms to file compliance reports with the Digital Agency by October 16, 2026, and implementation results by March 16, 2027. While the demand is framed as voluntary administrative action, the participation of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry points to possible tougher legal steps if the platforms fail to show meaningful progress.