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Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

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Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#31

Post by elbrian »

dymk wrote: post #25
elbrian wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your anecdotal experience is completely irrelevant to the statement that you made.

Thank you, captain obvious, and it's actually not. If the system was doing poorly, we'd be able to directly observe it. Do you have evidence that their political ad detection does poorly?

I don't have any evidence, because I don't use Facebook. Furthermore, I never made any claims to provide evidence for.

Do you have evidence or source for the claim you made? Or are you just here to call people silly names and pass anecdotes off as fact?

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#32

Post by ada1981 »

dymk wrote: post #22
aaya wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it succeed 99% of the time?

It's close to it. I can't remember ever seeing an ad in my newsfeed that was incorrectly labeled with a political affiliation disclaimer. Have you?

From what my results indicate, they stop the ads from running. So you wouldn't see ads that were incorrectly labeled, you WOULDN'T see ads that should be running but were incorrectly flagged as needing a political affiliation label.

And from the looks of the Yoga ads, there are hundreds that have been flagged/paused as needing to disclose they are political (when they actually aren't.)

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#33

Post by gatherhunterer »

krisroadruck wrote: post #21

I wish they would just launch a friggin paid option. No ads, no data collection (for selling, I understand they need some to literally make the site function). I happily pay youtube for an adfree experience and wouldn't balk at doing the same for facebook.

Your data is the most valuable thing you have to offer and you give it up for free. Why would they install a barrier to people giving away the the most monetized asset in their business sector?

Why would they let you avoid seeing ads? A user who doesn’t look at ads to drive the value of user data is worse than a non-user; at least a non-user doesn’t cost them any overhead.

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#34

Post by danpalmer »

envy2 wrote: post #14
danpalmer wrote: post #12

This is missing the ads from the company I work for. We do a lot of Facebook advertising. Is it US only? Edit: The link is to political only ads, although this filtering is not exposed in the UI, and when searching for the company I work for I find similarly named companies that are definitely not political. When editing the URL back to " https://www.facebook.com/ads/library" , and searching, it works, although the s…

You have to change the country in the top right.

This did not work. It appears to return the same results as when set to the US. It is saving the country preference though.

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#35

Post by [deleted] »

dymk wrote: post #19
ada1981 wrote: post #16

Apparently yoga studios running ads are often blocked for being "political" or of "national importance". Oh dear, facebook, oh dear. https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...

Cherry-picked examples of an incredibly complex system failing (when it succeeds 99% of the time) aren't particularly compelling arguments against the system.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#36

Post by simlevesque »

envy2 wrote: post #14
danpalmer wrote: post #12

This is missing the ads from the company I work for. We do a lot of Facebook advertising. Is it US only? Edit: The link is to political only ads, although this filtering is not exposed in the UI, and when searching for the company I work for I find similarly named companies that are definitely not political. When editing the URL back to " https://www.facebook.com/ads/library" , and searching, it works, although the s…

You have to change the country in the top right.

Do you know why Canada is not present ?

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#37

Post by jahewson »

ada1981 wrote: post #16

Apparently yoga studios running ads are often blocked for being "political" or of "national importance". Oh dear, facebook, oh dear. https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...

Most likely these are unsophisticated advertisers who mis-labelled their own ads?

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#38

Post by bduerst »

ada1981 wrote: post #16

Apparently yoga studios running ads are often blocked for being "political" or of "national importance". Oh dear, facebook, oh dear. https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...

You're misreading it.

The flag is "Related to politics or issues of importance", not "national importance". Even then it could just be of importance in that targeted country.

Facebook is using this as a flag for sensitive content to viewers, for everything from Happy Holidays to Yoga, which has a philosophical and religious history beyond stretching-in-different-poses. For example, this watch ad with Santa Claus gets flagged the same way: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...

I am not saying these are correct classifications, but if you managed a billion-person social network, then it makes sense to cater your ads to as many people's viewpoints as possible.

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#40

Post by bduerst »

ada1981 wrote: post #26
dymk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cherry-picked examples of an incredibly complex system failing (when it succeeds 99% of the time) aren't particularly compelling arguments against the system.

I found it odd that the first thing I searched for returned dozens of different ads that were all flagged for being political when they clearly aren't.

The flag is "Related to politics or issues of importance", meaning it's a broad classifier for sensitive issues, not just political ones.
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