The numbers are staggering and they keep getting worse. The Federal Trade Commission estimated that social media scams cost Americans nearly $200 billion in losses in 2024, as reported by an AP/FRONTLINE investigation. That figure represents a hemorrhage of trust in the very platforms where MENA creators build their audiences. When a user loses money to a scam that arrived via WhatsApp or Instagram, they do not blame the scammer alone. They blame the platform that delivered the message. And that blame spreads to every creator who lives on that platform.
Meta signed the Industry Accord Against Online Scams and Fraud at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime Global Fraud Summit in Vienna on March 16, 2026, alongside Adobe, Amazon, Google, and eight other industry partners. Nathaniel Gleicher, Global Head of Counter Fraud at Meta, said scammers are growing more sophisticated and exploit gaps between companies and platforms, which is why tackling global online fraud demands a united, collective response. Meta reported that it removed over 159 million scam ads in the previous year, 92% of which were taken down before anyone reported them, and also took down 10.9 million accounts on Facebook and Instagram associated with criminal scam centers.
These are not small efforts. They are also not enough.
The AP/FRONTLINE investigation found that American-made AI models — chiefly ChatGPT and Gemini — have been used to build specialized software allowing scammers to work across dozens of languages. The investigation reported that scammers used software platforms called Kongtian Intelligent Customer Acquisition (KT) and Global Social Traffic Navigation (007TG), which incorporated OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini to generate automated replies, power role-play chatbots, and embed real-time translation in over 100 languages. The same AI tools that creators use to draft captions and generate thumbnails are being weaponized to defraud the same audiences. The technology stack is shared. The trust deficit is not.
For a MENA creator, the implication is direct. Your audience on WhatsApp, Instagram, or Facebook is being targeted by scammers who speak their language, literally and figuratively. Every successful scam erodes the credibility of the ecosystem you depend on. Platform moderation, however aggressive, cannot fully repair a trust deficit that is being engineered at scale by the same AI infrastructure that powers the platforms themselves.
Gulf Tech Sovereignty: A New Risk for Platform-Dependent Creators
The trust problem is compounded by a geopolitical one. Saudi Arabia’s NHC Innovation signed three strategic partnership agreements with Huawei, Lenovo, and ByteDance in Shenzhen, China, as part of an official visit to China by Minister of Municipalities and Housing Majed bin Abdullah Al-Hogail. NHC Innovation CEO Rayan bin Abdullah Al-Aql said the agreements underscore NHC Innovation’s commitment to forging strategic partnerships with global technology leaders to accelerate the development of smart solutions and bring in international expertise in AI, data science, and smart cities.
ByteDance owns TikTok. Huawei builds telecommunications infrastructure. Lenovo manufactures devices. These are not marginal players. They are the backbone of a deliberate pivot away from US-centric technology ecosystems. When a Gulf government signs strategic partnerships with Chinese tech firms, it signals that the future of digital infrastructure in the region may not run on American platforms alone.
For a creator who has built a following exclusively on Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook, this creates a structural vulnerability. If Saudi Arabia’s smart city initiatives run on Huawei infrastructure and ByteDance’s AI, what happens to the creator whose audience lives on Meta’s platforms? Reach restrictions, algorithm changes, or outright access limitations are not hypothetical. They are the logical outcome of a tech landscape fragmenting along geopolitical lines. The creator who owns their audience across multiple platforms — or better yet, off-platform entirely — is insulated from this fragmentation. The creator who does not is exposed.
Resilience Lessons from Gulf Debt Markets
The region has already demonstrated how to weather shocks. Fitch Ratings reported that investment-grade bond and sukuk spreads in the Gulf Cooperation Council returned to levels seen before the US-Iran conflict as easing geopolitical tensions reduced risk premiums. The yield spread between the S&P GCC Sukuk Index and the S&P US Treasury Bond Index narrowed to 67 basis points on June 15, 2026, down from around 100 basis points on March 23, 2026, and close to its pre-conflict level of 70 basis points on February 27, 2026.
The principle is diversification. Gulf debt markets recovered because they were not concentrated in a single issuer or currency. The same logic applies to a creator’s revenue streams. A creator who relies entirely on YouTube ad revenue is as exposed as a portfolio that holds only one bond. A creator who combines brand deals, a paid newsletter, a membership community, and platform revenue is diversified in the same way a sukuk portfolio is diversified.
The financial analogy is not abstract. It is a regionally validated strategy for weathering shocks. If Gulf investment spreads can recover from a geopolitical conflict in a matter of months, a creator’s income can recover from a platform algorithm change or a trust crisis — provided the creator has built the same kind of diversified foundation.
The creator who owns their audience across multiple platforms is insulated from fragmentation. The creator who does not is exposed.
Building Beyond the Platform
The practical steps are not mysterious. An email list is the most platform-agnostic asset a creator can own. It does not depend on an algorithm. It does not disappear when a platform changes its terms. It follows the creator wherever they go. A paid newsletter at a modest subscriber base can become a meaningful, platform-independent revenue line. Direct brand deals negotiated outside of platform marketplace tools bypass algorithm dependency entirely. A creator who can pitch a brand directly, with audience data drawn from their own analytics rather than a platform dashboard, commands a different kind of bargaining power.
Open-source alternatives to proprietary tools are another layer of insulation. The same geopolitical forces that push Gulf governments toward Chinese tech partners also create space for decentralized, open-source infrastructure. A creator who understands how to use a self-hosted website, a decentralized social protocol, or a non-proprietary analytics tool is building on ground that no single government or corporation can pull out from under them.
The available reporting does not specify which tools are gaining traction in the MENA creator economy. But the strategic imperative is clear from the evidence that does exist. The same platforms that host creator audiences are being weaponized by scammers using US-made AI. The same governments that fund creator initiatives are signing strategic tech partnerships with Chinese firms. The trust is eroding from two directions at once.
The creator who builds beyond the platform is not being paranoid. They are being realistic about the structural forces shaping the environment they work in. The audience that follows the creator, not the platform, is the only audience that cannot be taken away.