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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

#481

Post by TrapLord_Rhodo »

gosub100 wrote: post #456
londons_explore wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AIs and other opaque processes making decisions are incredibly frustrating. Simply better messaging would fix most of this. One approach is to be upfront and say: Our automated AI systems have decided that it probably isn't in our best interests to do business with you. We can't elaborate on why, because that would give clues to spammers to help evade our detection of them. However, if you are willing to pay us $15…

> pay us $15, then some business-school asshat will say "wait! I have the most disruptive idea! let's tweak the algo to get 10% more rejections because analytics show 5% of rejectees result in a conversion!" As he proceeds to get a bonus for momentarily boosting revenue while permanently enshittifying the product.

as sad as it is... I'd still prefer this.

You'd think in 2023 we'd have figured out this whole identity thing by now. Crypto has some unique ideas, but they don't really get all the way there. Things just aren't "mandated", or ubiquitous enough.

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

#482

Post by qingcharles »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #429
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #76

I'm banned for life from all Facebook properties (except for WhatsApp) because of my surname. They believe it's fake (or too controversial) and a copy of my passport hasn't changed their minds. I used to have a Facebook account ~13 years ago before their real name policy came into force, but I closed it because I found it awkward to refuse or accept so many contact requests by people from my distant past. Now unfortu…

In my experience, once you close your facebook account, good luck re-opening one. The only way I was able to do it was getting hired by Meta (then facebook) because they required me to have one in order to on-board.

I wonder if this also works for Google? It might be the only way to get my Google account back.

Let me go see what jobs they're hiring for...

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

#483

Post by fragmede »

Fischgericht wrote: post #319
hn8305823 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what "type" of IP address were you using when you created the account? Residential, mobile, work/office, or data center?

Own, I'm a RIPE member. Clean subnet, never been on any blacklist whatsoever.

But that means you've also got no rep as a neutral IP either.

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

#484

Post by qingcharles »

rexreed wrote: post #156

Lesson learned: don't click on that Appeal button. That's the human confirmation they're looking for in the otherwise 100% automated system with no human in the loop.

YES! Do not click on any appeal buttons on Meta properties. It is a known trap.

Read my post here that goes into detail about it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37254898

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

#485

Post by qingcharles »

browningstreet wrote: post #384

When I created a new Instagram account for a project I'm working on, it instantly locked my account and said it was restricted. It takes you to a page where you can submit a form asking for a review, and when you submit that forms it errors out. Sigh.

Don't submit the form. It's a known trap to permaban you:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37254898

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

#486

Post by qingcharles »

redog wrote: post #281
kunley wrote: post #203

I wonder if anyone is recognizing that the fail here is in removing a human element in the support and instead relying on a far inferior technology to handle cases it can't handle. In other words, the problem is that suddenly a machine is not only making laws but also executing them. But we as a society did not agree to hand our laws to the machine. Luckily, the area where these laws apply, is very narrow atm - it is…

The article states that the evidence was removed as well. A human wouldn't have had anything to review no wonder they got rid of him.

My gf last year had a Tumblr account that was banned for unknown reasons. I finally got hold of someone in the C-Suite to look at it and they said they couldn't do anything because when you get banned they delete all the data that caused the ban, so there was nothing to review?

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

#487

Post by Izkata »

guidoism wrote: post #420
miki123211 wrote: post #344

Other similar cases I'm aware of. * The Scunthorpe problem, AOL didn't let users set their hometown to Scunthorpe because of the "cunt" substring. This is a classic. * Amazon banning sales of Guns N' Roses merch (because guns). * People named Miranda having issues with bank transfers (because of the substring "Iran"). * Some games displaying the nickname "Nasser" as "N* er", suggesting that it is the n word. Alexa no…

People named Guido not being able to create an account because apparently my name is also a racial slur in some part of the world where I do not live.

I think that's why an online card game I play won't let me name my tarot-themed deck "Tarot", it changes it to "*ot". Not sure what it means but I guess their censoring mechanism taught me a new slur?

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

#488

Post by johnnyanmac »

rmbyrro wrote: post #457
johnnyanmac wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that's the only account I've read of this kind of error. it's still anecdotal, but the author did mention that they went to FB/LinkedIn and they got a pretty swift answer. If nothing else, it sounds like it wasn't a unique case (or the author has a very tight knit group of tech isntructors).

What I mean is, there are certainly a lot more than 2 or 3 individuals or businesses that have ever advertised on FB for Python and Pandas (programming) stuff. Courses, recruiting, books, events, commercial libraries, etc. If this kind of error was systematic, no one would be able to run these ads. We'd have certainly already seen a public outcry about it. That doesn't seem to be the case, here (yet)?..

I did leave the possibility of "tight nit group of tech instructors".

With that said, it's not impossible for this to be a systematic issue considering (theoretically, I don't have formal evidence)

1. Facebook may not be the best place to reach out to the tech community

2. There may simply be too many positives (so, actual exotic animal trading) for it to be worth fixing the few false positives. And the author lacked the financial worth to properly fix the issue.

3. At the end of the day, the issue was not resolved. Leaving the potential next victim wanting to talk about Python laying in wake.

I subscribe to #2 personally.

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

#489

Post by bertil »

ayhanfuat wrote: post #472
bertil wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a story in three steps: 1. The problem is that there is a staggering amount of “things” that can be either sold on Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp or advertised for (it’s the same service): every film on Netflix, every item for sale on Etsy, eBay, Amazon, every game on a random retro console platform, etc. There are hundreds of billions of things. Some are duplicates (humanity barely makes that many things), but not…

Thanks for the detailed answer. I guess these are unavoidable without investing a lot more money on it if you are aiming for basically reducing false negatives to zero at that scale. One thing that surprised me is that Yann LeCun frequently mentions transformers have been in prod for all parts of moderation on Meta for a while already but maybe they come into play at more critical problems or at later stages.

Moderation, yes definitely. There’s are a couple billion users, they post a handful of comments per day and rarely post anything long enough to justify applying a transformer, so “everything posted to Facebook/Instagram” is several orders of magnitude smaller. Barely an inconvenience.

Messenger is bigger, but hardly one writes anything long enough to be suspicious. WhatsApp isn’t moderated the same way.

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

#490

Post by kazinator »

kazinator wrote: post #479
plorg wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The earnest answer is I wanted to play my ripped mp3s and recordings off the radio on my computer at home. We had slow dial-up and 4 kids fighting over it, but I had my own non-internet-connected computer and an early flash drive, and the school had fast internet.

I wonder if spelling the MP3 part of the path name with URL encoded characters might not have defeated the check yet still resolved on the server end. E.g. instead of /mp3/ you write /%6dp3/. Filed under Idle Questions About Past Events Next To Impossible To Answer Today (IQ APENTITAT?)

If I knew then what I know about /g?urls/ today, ...
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