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Facebook is bombarding rightwing users with combat gear ads. See for yourself

theguardian.com

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Re: Facebook is bombarding rightwing users with combat gear ads. See for yourself

#91

Post by herbst »

dlbucci wrote: post #39
tnt128 wrote: post #35

First of all, fb ad policy explicitly doesn’t allow selling fire arms. https://m.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/weapo... If you are selling related stuff(belts, holster, vest, gun case etc), be prepared to have your fb ad account banned often(as the algo will likely (mis)-categorize you into selling weapons). Advertisers in this space generally are very good at 1) cloaking, 2) renting or purchasing ad a…

Maybe they could address the whole "there is a way to circumventing the system" thing? I mean, they own the system, so they should probably be responsible for any circumvention.

Pretty sure its unskilled low paid labor humans clicking yes or no for fb ads. You would not believe what things i managed to get trough. My account was only later deleted because i was advertising self made cotton masks. Which for some reason raised red flag suddenly

Re: Facebook is bombarding rightwing users with combat gear ads. See for yourself

#92

Post by herbst »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #37
jmalicki wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you say the same for, say washing machines? You: I just bought a washing machine on Amazon Amazon: "Here are some ads for more washing machines, in case you're an enthusiastic collector!"

Perhaps the ads cannot discriminate between those that merely looked at washing machines, and those that actually bought one.

Many shops specifically send sales data to analtics or fb to optimize their ad audience. So more often than not they know

Re: Facebook is bombarding rightwing users with combat gear ads. See for yourself

#93

Post by herbst »

temp667 wrote: post #23

Why does facebook do this rather than let third party advertisers advertise? I thought they got most of their money from third party advertisers, not selling their own products. Note - gun sales are very strong in the US. Antifa / BLM / Armed protestors.

Not sure what antifa in the us is like, but are they really actually armed?

Ours for sure arent.

Re: Facebook is bombarding rightwing users with combat gear ads. See for yourself

#94

Post by ksec »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #13

I'm not completely sure this is just political people. Up until recently I only got ads for kickstarter doodads and airtable, but then it suddenly switched to gun stuff. I don't browse any firearm or political communities, haven't bought stuff, don't watch firearm youtube videos, haven't even been window shopping. There were 5 million new gun owners last year. I think the ad networks just view it as a highly probable…

Surely it is someone decided to run ads against certain profile that fits? But I know Facebook will always get the blame for it.

Re: Facebook is bombarding rightwing users with combat gear ads. See for yourself

#95

Post by CompanionCuuube »

rootusrootus wrote: post #42
bobthepanda wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably what's more likely is that with a democrat president, gun companies are pouring money into ads to really juice up already high sales. (generally speaking, people rush to buy guns whenever the specter of gun control comes up, because they think that'll be the last chance they get.)

> people rush to buy guns whenever the specter of gun control comes up And it's mostly in their head. The right was fired up for eight long years driving up the price of guns and ammo while Obama was president, meanwhile he never made even a token effort at gun control.

> he never made even a token effort at gun control.

That's not actually true, there are incidents like the ammo import ban to automatically prohibiting elderly people receiving financial assistance.

The fact that the gun control you were expecting didn't happen doesn't mean that none did.

Re: Facebook is bombarding rightwing users with combat gear ads. See for yourself

#97

Post by filoleg »

gnu8 wrote: post #67
filoleg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Facebook controls the juxtaposition of ads with content, and with each other. This can reinforce the power of the individual ads, or attenuate it. In this case, it's pretty clearly creating a "caravan" of ads because that's more effective than letting each stand alone. Oh, totally agreed on this one. FB fully controls the layout and where ads are displayed. When I said that FB doesn't control things, I meant that th…

So what is the argument here? Facebook should manipulate their advertising marketplace to prevent this? You can buy ads to sell your gun supplies and body armor but when it comes to targeting the ads, you can't choose the demographic groups that are buying this stuff up like it is going out of style? I think Facebook is awful, but this how their business works. I can't see them going out of their way to not serve the…

Oh, I think you misunderstood, I am fully in agreement with you here, I wasn't proposing a change. I was just answering to a comment to clarify an earlier point.

The specifics I mentioned are not something that I am proposing as a target for a change, because, as you said, this is how their ad business works, and it seems pretty fair.

Re: Facebook is bombarding rightwing users with combat gear ads. See for yourself

#98

Post by davmar »

Ancapistani wrote: post #83
davmar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googled which weapons cops have out of curiousity and the AR-15 isn't in the top 10 according to this list: https://www.criminaljusticedegreehub.com/popular-guns-for-la...

Most of those are pistols, which is a separate part of kit. The end of that list shows the M4 carbine - which is an AR-15. In popular vernacular, an “M4” is a shortened version of the “M16”, which is the military version of the “AR-15”. Armalite originated the design and Colt licensed it. There’s a bit more to it than that, but that’s the high points.

Oh. Interesting. Thanks for the clarification

Re: Facebook is bombarding rightwing users with combat gear ads. See for yourself

#99

Post by temp667 »

herbst wrote: post #93
temp667 wrote: post #23

Why does facebook do this rather than let third party advertisers advertise? I thought they got most of their money from third party advertisers, not selling their own products. Note - gun sales are very strong in the US. Antifa / BLM / Armed protestors.

Not sure what antifa in the us is like, but are they really actually armed? Ours for sure arent.

I think what's been seen is after videos of the protests and buildings burning etc there is a crush of non-protestors running to get guns.

Locally there may be also a sense that at least in some jurisdictions policing has decreased and/or crime has increased - ie, you are more on your own now - faith in govt is maybe a bit diminished.

And now of course some of the right wing protestors are showing up heavily armed - but I think they always bought guns because they often seem like gun nuts.

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