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Meta made scam ads harder to find instead of removing them

Meta made scam ads harder to find instead of removing them

wtcactus

Comments (90)

  • transcriptase
    I suspect there are either employees or contractors getting a cut because even getting a legitimate ad that doesn’t break any rules through review can be an exercise in frustration.I once spent days getting rejection after rejection for ads for a Christmas light show event at a vineyard (not winery, it was a dry event), on the grounds that I was apparently selling alcohol.Meanwhile I get ads for black market cigarettes, shrooms, roids, cannabis, and anything else you can imagine.
  • neoCrimeLabs
    Adding to this frustration is a 25yr registered 501(c)3 non-profit I volunteer for that holds an annual art festival. The festival proceeds go to funding educational materials. They've had an active facebook page for at least 15 years, with thousands of followers from around the world.When the non-profit tried to advertise the art festival on Facebook. Facebook not only denied them, but when the non-profit asked for a review of the denial they were warned if they asked again their entire facebook page would be flagged and deleted.Facebook is large enough I cannot imagine their reasoning. They very likely have several conflicting streams of logic depending on teams involved. One thing I think is reasonable is that money is a motivational factor for Facebook.Put simply, organizations who come in immediately spending money on advertising are more likely to be fast tracked. Organizations who don't spent a lot of money are more likely to be shut down. ("you've been a freeloader all this time who will likely not pay sustainably after this one-time payment. We're focusing on sustainable paying customers, goodbye")Addition: Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a literal metric of "money/time" ratio. The more money you spend in less time likely improves your chances of being fast-tracked, thus biasing new accounts who immediately spend on advertising over existing ones who sparsely pay.
  • lax0
    Not to distract from Meta but I’m surprised Google doesn’t also get heat for this. A number of phishing sites win >30% of the auction on my company’s brand keywords and I see it on many others as well, especially in CPG and e-commerce. I’ve yet to have any luck getting Google to ban the advertisers.
  • jackhuman
    I deleted my facebook. Its the only thing I can do it seems and I advice everyone to do the same. Screw this platform. Facebook’s scams have caused the elders in my family so much pain and me so much stress dealing with it, its not worth it. A monopolistic cancer on society.
  • TuringNYC
    Not sure why this only seems to happen with IG ads, but I've noticed twice already that i'll purchase something on IG for a fixed price, and it will automatically enroll me into a monthly subscription plan without any chance to cancel it. Further, the subscription can then not be cancelled without email interaction -- no web-based cancellation.The checkout screen had no mention of a subscription or any cost of a subscription, so not even sure how this is legal.It has not gotten to the point where I dont make any purchase via IG. I'll independently search for the product and purchase it (usually less expensively via Amazon.com).Not sure how this is good for IG, because the attribution is then not matched on the purchase. Further, not sure how this is even good for the merchant, since I'll inevitably have to do a chargeback.
  • akagusu
    My first question in 2026. Why does such company is allowed to exist and harm society?
  • barishnamazov
    The original source is from Reuters article [0].It is profoundly ironic that Meta is apparently using cloaking techniques against regulators. Cloaking is a black-hat technique where you show one version of a landing page to the ad review bot (e.g., a blog about health) and a different version to the actual user (e.g., a diet pill scam).Meta has spent years building AI to detect when affiliates cloak their links. Now, according to this report, Meta is essentially cloaking the ads themselves from journalists and regulators by likely filtering based on user profiling, IP ranges, or behavioral signals. They are using the sophisticated targeting tools intended for advertisers to target the "absence" of scrutiny.[0] https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-created-playbook...
  • alsetmusic
  • pkphilip
    How much more scammy and illegal behavior must we tolerate from Meta before anyone thinks of putting that Zuck behind bars?
  • vgeek
    Gavin Belson would never suggest scrubbing negative mentions of Hooli from the internet.
  • throwaway85825
    No one will go to jail. The fee will cost less than they profited. Crime is defective legal, there's just a toll.
  • DivingForGold
    3 or 4 years ago I tried Google Adwords to see if I could gain new customers. I admit I had a niche business, it was already successful, but I had read prior about certain tech companies overcharging - - or not cancelling services after you requested, so I opted to use only pre-paid credit cards bought at my local drug store. I chose $200 limit per card. That lasted for about 1.5 to 2 years, several times Google emailed me that my card expired or ran out of $$, and I needed to correct the error. That's when I bought another pre-paid card for a limit of $200 and funded my acct again. I never noticed any uptick in customers contacting me from my websites.Eventually Google shut down the ability to use pre-paid credit cards (it came back an error when I attempted to enter the new card no) and that's when I closed my account. Their response was too obvious evidence <Goggle in conspiracy with the ad click bots> desired the ability to scam my account and one day I would check my email and get a $5,000 bill.There is a rather obvious "conflict of interest" when you have to dispute a charge with your credit card provider knowing that the credit card co is fully aware they only make their "cut" if the charge goes through.
  • jqpabc123
    Easy solution: Don't patronize Meta.
  • commandersaki
    I posted in the other thread but in case that no longer has traction I will repeat my question here:I'm still wondering what the Scam Prevention Framework enacted in Australia will do to mitigate this kind of stuff.https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/cth/conso... (Part IVF)
  • ChrisArchitect
  • zaphar
    The original reuters article quotes Meta as claiming that making them harder to find by removing them from the system. This article doesn't offer any evidence to suggest that Meta is lying. This is lazy and poor reporting as far as I'm concerned.