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Meta has run hundreds of ads for cocaine, opioids and other drugs

wsj.com

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Re: Meta has run hundreds of ads for cocaine, opioids and other drugs

#101

Post by bediger4000 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #30
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I routinely see ads for scams on YouTube and report them and never hear back. Stuff like "a 19 year old invented this that saves you a hundred bucks on your power bill but Big electricity is suppressing it" Just the most bullshit claims over stock footage, things I saw debunked on Snopes 20 years ago as a literal child. It's disappointing

Its not just youtube. I unsubscribed from LA times after their email newsletter had one too many "Doctors don't want you to know about this!!!!" esque ads. Pure poison marketing. I can't believe people greenlight this crap to run on their platform. Maybe they already fired who greenlights ads.

For me Washington Post and Daily Beast newsletters were filled with ads for "Grunt Style" brand qanon clothing, sometimes all 5 or 6 of the ads in a given newsletter email. I ended up DNS blackholing some FQDNs, but I suspect that Grunt Style was targeting ads to "own libs".

Re: Meta has run hundreds of ads for cocaine, opioids and other drugs

#102

Post by Scoundreller »

jrflowers wrote: post #48
axoltl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are likely for muscimol gummies as opposed to psylocybin gummies. Despite having psychoactive components muscimol containing mushrooms (Amanita Muscaria, etc.) are legal, as is muscimol itself.

A recent brand of gummies was found to have 4-ACO-DMT in them, which is a prodrug of psilocin. https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/07/diamond-shruumz-cand...

> Perhaps the most plausible possible cause identified so far is yet another compound identified by Diamond Shruumz itself.

> In its recall notice, the company reported that third-party lab testing of some of its candies identified higher than normal amounts of muscimol, a psychoactive compound found in hallucinogenic Amanita mushrooms, including the iconic toadstool A. muscaria.

> These mushrooms contain a combination of muscimol and the related ibotenic acid, both of which resemble neurotransmitters.

> Together, they could cause the symptoms seen in the cases so far, including seizures, central nervous system depression (loss of consciousness, confusion, sleepiness), agitation, abnormal heart rates, hyper/hypotension, nausea, and vomiting.

And in pharmaceutical manufacturing, diluting things is definitely a science. Gotta worry about demixing, adsorption, absorption, granulations, cracking or creaming of emulsions (if present), caking... lots of fun when you need to make something consistent at low concentrations.

Re: Meta has run hundreds of ads for cocaine, opioids and other drugs

#104

Post by RobRivera »

aeturnum wrote: post #42

This is part of a larger pattern for Facebook and other "large scale" advertisers where it's clear they are breaking laws at some rate and are protected from paying a real consequence by the cost of discovering the exact rate of misbehavior. Facebook recently settled a lawsuit related to racially discriminating in housing ads (a federal crime)[1]. I suspect this will get added to the pile of illegal services Facebook…

Ubers Greyball was an eye opener for me

Re: Meta has run hundreds of ads for cocaine, opioids and other drugs

#105

Post by PaulHoule »

... and in the meantime Meta won't let me create an Instagram account from either my home or work computer. I have very little history w/ either since I deleted my Facebook account in 2016 but started a new one to use with an Oculus VR headset. Yes I have run a webcrawler at home but never against Meta properties and I don't believe I've ever made trouble of any kind for Meta.

I badly want to support a friend's social media marketing efforts and it's just ridiculous that I'll probably have to create an account with false information despite me sending multiple emails to Facebook asking if they can clear whatever flag is on my account and/or IP addresses.

Re: Meta has run hundreds of ads for cocaine, opioids and other drugs

#106

Post by grecy »

Muromec wrote: post #82
grecy wrote: post #28

I find it really interesting Facebook collect money from someone to run these ads, and they can continue to do that without getting into legal trouble. When I moved countries it took 6 months for Facebook to stop showing me ads for the old country which were very clearly only supposed to be shown to people in that country. Again, people are paying money to run these ads and Facebook are clearly showing them to the wr…

They still get the money in both cases. Why would they care?

Both are illegal. One is taking money to advertise illegal substances, the other is taking money for a service and then not delivering that service.

Re: Meta has run hundreds of ads for cocaine, opioids and other drugs

#107

Post by galdosdi »

World's easiest problem to solve if we just get the political will to do so:

Pass a law requiring a human being to sign off in "writing" (can be eSigned through an internal moderation platform) on any ad that will be run that the platform will profit from and that will be pushed to users by choice of the platform as opposed to request by the user. This human serves as an agent who will be liable along with their firm if there are any illegal issues that should have been obvious to a "reasonable person" reviewing the ad. Require anyone doing this job to be supervised by a licensed attorney, who must document their hiring and supervision practices and can be disbarred for failing to run a reasonably tight ship.

Problem solved. Bam. So easy.

It is not fair that platforms get to pretend that being able to automate running ads means they have no responsibility for their choices. It's like saying you can't murder with a handgun, but if you set up an automated machine gun turret, now it's OK.

Re: Meta has run hundreds of ads for cocaine, opioids and other drugs

#108

Post by lovethevoid »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #24
lovethevoid wrote: post #6

Advertising networks get away with so much, it's quite ridiculous. The same company that will ban your account for posting about such content, will regularly run ads about such content. Worse, there's nothing you can do about it except run ad blockers (which they in turn will use various measures as punishment for you doing so). Guess we didn't learn anything from Cambridge Analytica.

I'm trying to get more into self hosting and things like federation that can allow technical people to be admins of low-maintenance services for their friends and family. It's a slow push but it's gonna happen. Microtransactions are stuck in deployment hell, advertisements are a deal with the devil, and this is the only third option I know of

Agreed, also a lot of room for improvement in this general area. I remember when Mastodon instances used to be a giant pain to get up and going, and now there's one click deploys and even entire businesses who will manage your server.

Re: Meta has run hundreds of ads for cocaine, opioids and other drugs

#109

Post by jbpnoy6fifty »

aeturnum wrote: post #42

This is part of a larger pattern for Facebook and other "large scale" advertisers where it's clear they are breaking laws at some rate and are protected from paying a real consequence by the cost of discovering the exact rate of misbehavior. Facebook recently settled a lawsuit related to racially discriminating in housing ads (a federal crime)[1]. I suspect this will get added to the pile of illegal services Facebook…

Music has always been a great way to advertise drugs and other criminal acts, however, they never get chosen to get arrested.

Re: Meta has run hundreds of ads for cocaine, opioids and other drugs

#110

Post by RomanPushkin »

> “DMT,” a psychedelic drug.

I would argue that. It's probably the least offensive thing, compared to alcohol you can buy everywhere. DMT and other entheogens are far less harmful than alcoholic drinks available. It's confirmed by many academic papers, and DMT is not something people use for recreational purposes.

Moreover, some of these "psychedelic drugs" are used by people who have serious illness, wether it is life-threatening like cancer, or all kinds of PTSDs. It is very well known that these "drugs" help to prevent suicides, and very often it makes people's lives less miserable.

While I agree with the narrative, and totally against unregulated drug sale, I can't say WSJ put a lot of thought into the article posting a picture of DMT powder as the main evidence to make entire article look more scary. Average Trader Joe's with vodka looks many times scarier to me.

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