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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

#61
post #19
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.

>when it succeeds 99% of the time

source?

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#62
post #25
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?

That's not how statistics, or debate, works

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#63
post #56
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“This ad ran without a disclaimer. After the ad started running, we determined that the ad was related to politics and issues of national importance and required the label. The ad was taken down.”

>issues of national importance Basically anything that hits this list and is targeting within those nations: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/214754279118974?helpr...

Seems like a pretty arbitrary rule set. I'd love to see some examples of ads that don't have anything related to any of those topics. It seems like it would be pretty easy to argue that any ad is related to at least one of those bullets

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#65
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The beauty of UX. Or lack of it.

Things like this always remind me of this awesome talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KVyFio8gw4 The example starting at 9:45 especially relates.

FYI, there is a neat trick for deep linking directly to timestamps on youtube, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KVyFio8gw4&t=9m45s

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#66
post #45

This has been available for a while from all company's pages, but it's cool to see it in searchable format. EDIT: Ah, only political ads are searchable, but all ads are findable by looking up a company page. Just like before, so there's not much actually new here.

Was there previously a way to do these searches without a company page, or without a Facebook account at all? If not, I would consider this a big change!

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#67
post #25
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?

Anecdotally someone may have evidence of poor performance. Assigning a specific number to its statistical probability based on that anecdotal evidence is where the problem lies.

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#68
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there any feedback on the reason or mechanism for blocking?

I got blocked too. Got the following message: Blocked from Searching or Viewing the Ad Archive You have been temporarily blocked from searching or viewing the Ad Archive due to too many requests. Please try again later.

Is it really an "archive" if you can't download the contents at a reasonable rate? (Eg: I wouldn't expect gigabit speeds, but if you're willing to go slow and steady a 500k/1meg a second that should be doable)

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#69

Neat. You can use this find out what Lyft pays drivers as a signup bonus in different cities. https://i.imgur.com/pqwQzZg.jpg

It must be possible to do a/b tests on FB?

Maybe they don't show the variations but just a random one?

Re: Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads

#70
post #42

Trump has spent around $11M on ads just on Facebook. If you go into the ad details you'll see how he targets different genders, age groups according to states: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...

I think it's even more interesting to see the Democrat side:

  * O'Rourke $8.4M
  * Harris $1.6M
  * Warren $1.3M
  * Booker $800K
  * Sanders $685K
  * Klobuchar $365K
  * Yang $120K
  * Buttigieg $10.5K
Why is everybody else spending so much less than O'Rourke? Does his campaign actually have that much more money compared to the other campaigns?
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