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

lerner.co.il

251–260 of 514 posts

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

#251
post #214

90% of these posts are just sob stories because they fucked up and he fucked up at least with "waiting a year". Makes absolutely no sense to me.

Yeah, it's totally my fault that I didn't jump right away to find out why I had been banned from an advertising platform, when I'm running a one-person business and hadn't been advertising for several years.

1 year.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1984 they don't have laws, only crimes, so whatever you do, you have to guess if it is illegal and will be punished or not. It is on purpose to keep the population in constant fear

Em, this is a private company. I see what you mean, but this hardly points to some dystopia.

That's cute. With sufficient size and influence over your life, a private company is a form of government.

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

#253
post #138
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And some of these companies pride themselves as AI technology pioneers. Yet it seems their automated systems in this case are simply doing keyword matching. Mind-boggling!

Another sad anecdote: A bank in Finland suspended an account for a text in free-form message field of a bank transfer. The message was for a vet visit of a dog named Ira. When you say "Ira's payment" in Finnish, you add suffix -n, so the text field said Iran, which of course must indicate money transfer to a sanctioned country. It is comforting to know that the bank system catches all the illegal activity that the sa…

Fun fact: one of the biggest banks in France has a branche on “Avenue de Cuba” in some city in South America (maybe Buenos Aires but I can’t quite remember because it was about 10 years ago I found this out). They get bank transfers to and from that branch blocked from time to time for “sanctions busting” because people just string match on the name “Cuba”.

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

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1984 they don't have laws, only crimes, so whatever you do, you have to guess if it is illegal and will be punished or not. It is on purpose to keep the population in constant fear

Em, this is a private company. I see what you mean, but this hardly points to some dystopia.

sure, ok... but in some places it functions as a public utility

further, there was a principle of roman law that forbids this... then again the USA is not following those principles (civil law) but common law which means you can disregard what I say

you seem like you haven't actually read the referenced book, but only heard about it

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

#255
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another sad anecdote: A bank in Finland suspended an account for a text in free-form message field of a bank transfer. The message was for a vet visit of a dog named Ira. When you say "Ira's payment" in Finnish, you add suffix -n, so the text field said Iran, which of course must indicate money transfer to a sanctioned country. It is comforting to know that the bank system catches all the illegal activity that the sa…

IRA is also a possibly shady acronym in some parts of the world.

Likewise ISIS: https://isismagazine.org.uk/

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

#256
post #138
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And some of these companies pride themselves as AI technology pioneers. Yet it seems their automated systems in this case are simply doing keyword matching. Mind-boggling!

Another sad anecdote: A bank in Finland suspended an account for a text in free-form message field of a bank transfer. The message was for a vet visit of a dog named Ira. When you say "Ira's payment" in Finnish, you add suffix -n, so the text field said Iran, which of course must indicate money transfer to a sanctioned country. It is comforting to know that the bank system catches all the illegal activity that the sa…

At least you got an explanation, I had my Vivid account blocked without one, the only interaction was by chatbot, the only response I got was can't disclose the reason because of compliance issues. For extra fun trying to get the funds on the account back I had to go to an online form, which didn't have the fields I was told to fill in, and again was met by no response. Eventually had to go through EU dispute settlement to get a human response and an email link to an app for digital identity validation, eventually I at least got my funds transferred to my main bank. Why the account was blocked remains a mystery, I only used it for online payments and never even contested, refunded or failed one.

Anyway, it's utterly bizarre to me that banks can get a license to run their business with what seems only a marketing and it-team with virtually no recourse for the customer, it was a WTF moment for me and I hope to never get in such a dystopian situation for something I really rely on, be it banking or (utility) services. (and I got a slightly better understanding how it must feel like for the victims of the Dutch childcare benefits scandal (https://www.politico.eu/article/dutch-scandal-serves-as-a-wa...))

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

#257
post #239
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't the point, no need for literature references when you can enjoy that kind of life today when living in less fortunate regions.

Draconian IT laws mean that in many countries you could be persecuted for threatening national security as a blanket rule with indefinitely the long harassment called investigation.

They are already in place in such countries, plenty of people suffer through them daily.

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

#258
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah! How dare they, referencing literature.

Referencing 1984, Brave New World and that quote about freedom of speech that Voltaire never actually said make up the holy trinity of pseudo-intellectual posturing on the internet.

Yeah it was Voltaire's biographer who was describing what she thought was Voltaire's thinking at the time. Still a good quote though regardless of source.

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

#259
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another sad anecdote: A bank in Finland suspended an account for a text in free-form message field of a bank transfer. The message was for a vet visit of a dog named Ira. When you say "Ira's payment" in Finnish, you add suffix -n, so the text field said Iran, which of course must indicate money transfer to a sanctioned country. It is comforting to know that the bank system catches all the illegal activity that the sa…

Fun fact: one of the biggest banks in France has a branche on “Avenue de Cuba” in some city in South America (maybe Buenos Aires but I can’t quite remember because it was about 10 years ago I found this out). They get bank transfers to and from that branch blocked from time to time for “sanctions busting” because people just string match on the name “Cuba”.

Got the exact same with a bank located rue de Téhéran :p

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

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1984 they don't have laws, only crimes, so whatever you do, you have to guess if it is illegal and will be punished or not. It is on purpose to keep the population in constant fear

Fear isn't the point here. It's just normal corporate ass covering. If you don't know, you can't complain coherently.

Having been part of conversations with a corporate legal team about making clear policies available to explain these types of decisions, I’m sad to say it’s this and they sort of have a point.

One of the problems is if you make a specific policy available and for whatever reason you can be shown not to follow that policy (like say you’re being an intelligent human being and exercising discretion) and someone is harmed they can potentially have a cause of action. So lawyers will often bias towards making the process as opaque as possible as a defence against litigation. Someone can’t claim to have been harmed by relying on a policy that says you will take a particular action if you never commit to doing that.

It’s one of the ways a culture of civil litigation makes things worse for people by creating perverse incentives.

Secondly you can see from the whole SEO industry that people will actively try to game and evade any system you put in place and by making things crystal clear you are giving much clearer guidelines to people who are trying to do that.

None of which is intended to let Facebook off the hook. There are better ways of doing this that don’t involve banning people for life without explaining (clearly) but I at least do understand how we got to this ridiculous state of affairs.

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