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

lerner.co.il

41–50 of 514 posts

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

#41
> get this — Meta thought that he was dealing in live animals, which is forbidden.

> That’s right: I teach courses in Python and Pandas

Hah I suspected that was going to be the punchline, but waited for confirmation

It is believable. What is not so much is that they did a review with real people

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

#42
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 remain…

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

No, instead, they're the product.

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

#43
post #13

TLDR: A Meta ads reviewer or AI thought he was selling Pythons and Pandas when that's just the name of the programming language he teaches. Then made worse by Meta not having any real appeal process.

...and worse again by Meta deleting information like ban reasons after 180 days, making it impossible for them to verify anything after that date other than the account having a ban flag set in the database.

What a joke.

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

#44
AIs and other opaque processes making decisions are incredibly frustrating. I'm still wondering why my tea-of-the-month business [0] got turned down by Stripe when I incorporated an LLC (technically a Godo Kaisha, as it is incorporated in Japan).

It came as a surprise as it was perfectly fine by them for as long as it was a sole proprietorship. Which is why I strongly suspect the rejection came from an AI. At the time of rejection we were still using the Stripe account of the sole proprietorship, and surely a human would have noticed and blocked that account if it was actually running against Stripe ToS!?!

It doesn't make any sense to me. In any case, I know that financial regulations are stringent and payment providers are often required to leave us in the dark. But is it frustrating...

Now I'm stuck with PayPal for the time being. Unless they, too, decide that selling green tea is against their ToS.

By the way, does anyone know if it's ok to re-attempt to open an account with Stripe? Our offering has been evolving, so we might very well be within their ToS now?

[0] https://tomotcha.com

EDIT: wording

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

#45
Welcome to the future. Before too long this kind of bs will be an almost daily occurrence for most people who have to interact with businesses/institutions on the net. Highly automated inscrutable processes with hairtrigger banning logic and review paths that never lead to a human. Because the humans that survived the automation are too busy feeding the Algorithm to ever interact with the customers.

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

#46

My girlfriend also got banned from advertising on Meta for literally no reason. It’s been also a year since she last advertised her Facebook page (she’s a gerontologist). They are probably banning most smaller advertisers and sticking with the largest ones.

> Self-styled vigilantes attacked the home of a hospital paediatrician after apparently confusing her professional title with the word "paedophile"

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.s...

And now we have machines doing the same.

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

#47
The whole issue around not telling you what rule you broke "because then you might work around it" is total BS. It's like a company I complained to the other day because they didn't label one of the inputs on their password reset form because "it would help a hacker know what to type in it" (it was the password reset password they expected but you wouldn't know).

How much quicker would this be resolved if the first AI said, "your account has been blocked because we detected an advert related to live animals" to which you could appeal with your one sentence reason, "these are not animals, they are programming languages with the same names as animals" which would take a very cursory check and continue to bring in advertising revenue.

I think like another poster it is probably true that if you were spending a lot, you would have been given more time to argue your case. For someone who brings in $10 a month, it's not worth their time.

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

#48
post #11

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?

Shooting them self in the foot implies instant effect. A better idiom would probably be something like "they are cutting the branch they are sitting on".

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

#49
post #18

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 jumpin…

True, I don't know for sure that I was banned for Python. But it's the only information that I have so far, since Meta isn't telling me anything. And the other person confirmed that he had this problem multiple times.

And it's true, you're only seeing one side of the story here. But I promise, I can't think of anything nefarious I've done that would get me banned. Well, aside from my crypto casino run by drug-smoking, underpaid children engaging in the illegal ivory trade, that is.

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

#50
post #47

The whole issue around not telling you what rule you broke "because then you might work around it" is total BS. It's like a company I complained to the other day because they didn't label one of the inputs on their password reset form because "it would help a hacker know what to type in it" (it was the password reset password they expected but you wouldn't know). How much quicker would this be resolved if the first A…

Yeah exactly. Imagine if our laws worked like that. Complete dystopia.
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