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Meta is banning people from advertising after running ads for Python and Pandas

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Re: Meta is banning people from advertising after running ads for Python and Pandas

#11

Post by entuno »

shiroiuma wrote: post #6

Wow, this is incredibly stupid (on Meta's part). Way to shoot yourself in the foot. Is it just me, or does it seem like Facebook/Meta has always been much dumber about how to actually run a business than other big tech companies? I think they just got where they are because they filled a void with Facebook and took advantage of network effects. Nothing they've ever done has really seemed all that "good" to me overall…

Have they shot themselves in the foot though? As long as the money they save from not employing people to manually review cases is less than the profit they're losing by OP (and others in this situation) not advertising on their platform then a few false positives is fine for them.

Sure, they might also get the odd bit of bad publicity somewhere like HN, but I imagine that most people here already have plenty of reasons to dislike them.

Re: Meta is banning people from advertising after running ads for Python and Pandas

#12

Post by kioleanu »

In opposition to what the author thinks, I do think that the appeal was viewed by a human (probably from an outsourced agency somewhere far away) who simply didn't have 1) the capacity to understand what the author is selling 2) time enough to read the appeal, research and understand the problem and 3) possibly sufficient control over the English language

Re: Meta is banning people from advertising after running ads for Python and Pandas

#14

Post by shiroiuma »

entuno wrote: post #11
shiroiuma wrote: post #6

Wow, this is incredibly stupid (on Meta's part). Way to shoot yourself in the foot. Is it just me, or does it seem like Facebook/Meta has always been much dumber about how to actually run a business than other big tech companies? I think they just got where they are because they filled a void with Facebook and took advantage of network effects. Nothing they've ever done has really seemed all that "good" to me overall…

Have they shot themselves in the foot though? As long as the money they save from not employing people to manually review cases is less than the profit they're losing by OP (and others in this situation) not advertising on their platform then a few false positives is fine for them. Sure, they might also get the odd bit of bad publicity somewhere like HN, but I imagine that most people here already have plenty of reas…

>Have they shot themselves in the foot though? As long as the money they save ... then a few false positives is fine for them.

Yeah, I've made this point before, just today in fact about a Netflix discussion (and I like to bring it up with Microsoft too when people complain about Windows...), and agree: it seems like these companies can get away with some horrifically stupid and customer-hostile behavior while remaining very profitable and dominant. Of course, unlike Netflix, Facebook isn't primarily funded by its users, but rather by advertisers (who are other businesses, not consumers), so I'm not sure if that's better or worse here; it might be worse for Meta. I guess time will tell: bad publicity like this isn't going to help them.

>but I imagine that most people here already have plenty of reasons to dislike them.

True, but again, most people here aren't customers of Facebook, they're just users.

Re: Meta is banning people from advertising after running ads for Python and Pandas

#15

Post by nobi »

I had the exact same thing happen to me, only I have never run any ads on Facebook. Got the ominous "you are suspended from running ads on Meta", which was very confusing since I've never run a single ad on any of their platforms, appealed out of curiosity and was met with the "you're banned forever" canned response. Crappy AI making stupid, arbitrary decisions.

Re: Meta is banning people from advertising after running ads for Python and Pandas

#17

Post by anonzzzies »

This feels the same like google blocking me from using adwords; it said we definitely violated something they didn't specify and were banned for life. We sold productivity desktop software b2b. Not porn or animal abuse or guns or whatever.

Re: Meta is banning people from advertising after running ads for Python and Pandas

#18

Post by mvdtnz »

Did I miss something in the article? His only evidence that he was banned because of python (supposedly a ban on dealing in live animals) is that some other guy on Linked In who also advertised for Python courses was also banned and he claimed, without evidence, that it was because of the live animal constraint? This is not very convincing evidence.

It definitely sounds like something has gone wrong, but OP is jumping to conclusions on pretty thin evidence. I'm also conscious we're only hearing one side of a story here. How many people have come to HN to complain about being banned from Stripe only for it to turn out they were running an illegal crypto casino or whatever.

Re: Meta is banning people from advertising after running ads for Python and Pandas

#19

Post by deredede »

> Meta won’t be seeing any of my money, whereas companies like Google, who seem to employ at least some humans in their advertising department — will

That is a convoluted way to say you'll do business with companies that accept your business. Google is known for fully automated bans on your full account, not just the advertising part.

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