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

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

#201

Post by rstuart4133 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #182

Merely _hundreds_? At Facebook's scale that seems like a really low number, no? Like, even if they were doing manual review of every single ad (which they probably aren't) I'd expect at least a few to slip through merely due to laziness or incompetence on the part of the reviewers, wouldn't you?

The headline "Facebook's ad filtering is so good it only lets 0.0000001% bad add through" doesn't sounds like good click bait to me, despite it being an impressive achievement if true. So here we are.

Facebook has about 3 billion daily users. I expect each will see many ads - probably 10 or more. But if we assume it's just one, 100 displayed in a single day would give you 0.0000001%. The study didn't look at one day of course - the observation period was over 100 days.

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

#202

Post by malnourish »

aeturnum wrote: post #167
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flaw here is in expecting Facebook to be the police. Here's what happens if you make Facebook do it. They become aware of someone running an illegal ad and ban them. But the advertiser is a criminal and still wants to make money, so they make a new account or find some way to avoid detection, and the ad ends up back in the system, and the advertiser can do this forever because they're making a net profit by conti…

I fully agree it's a hard problem, but Facebook is the one telling us they can be the police. If you really feel you can't operate a business without doing crimes, you shouldn't operate the business. It's understandable - there are some businesses that it takes too much skill to operate without doing a crime and so people don't (there are lots of things that banks won't do that fall into this category). Facebook, by…

> They get to profit off law breaking every once in a while

Make Facebook liable and required to forfeit money earned from the criminal activity.

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

#203

Post by rightbyte »

jddj wrote: post #98
vjulian wrote: post #29

Most of what’s being discussed here is naturally subjective views on propriety. Not many years ago, God forbid should one see an ad for cannabis. Even what is and is not considered a scam is quite subjective, is it not? To what extent are these platforms themselves legalised scams? Or the oh-wow-look-what-we-found false editorial strategy that most rags market.

> what is and is not a scam is quite subjective It can be, and it can also be quite objective. There are ads on there for ecommerce shops which clone the websites of known brands, with the exact logos and colours and names of those brands but which don't actually have anything to do with those brands. These websites ask for your credit card number to purchase items which are advertised significantly below the retail…

The insidious scam would be to ask significantly above retail price and drop ship it to you.

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

#204

Post by aeturnum »

malnourish wrote: post #202
aeturnum wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree it's a hard problem, but Facebook is the one telling us they can be the police. If you really feel you can't operate a business without doing crimes, you shouldn't operate the business. It's understandable - there are some businesses that it takes too much skill to operate without doing a crime and so people don't (there are lots of things that banks won't do that fall into this category). Facebook, by…

> They get to profit off law breaking every once in a while Make Facebook liable and required to forfeit money earned from the criminal activity.

This is technically already the situation and you can easily get them to pay up for each violation you prove in court. Good luck!

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

#205

Post by jdiff »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #136
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…

The flaw here is in expecting Facebook to be the police. Here's what happens if you make Facebook do it. They become aware of someone running an illegal ad and ban them. But the advertiser is a criminal and still wants to make money, so they make a new account or find some way to avoid detection, and the ad ends up back in the system, and the advertiser can do this forever because they're making a net profit by conti…

Facebook is the only one with access to all the information to know that a crime has even happened. Practically, there is no way for someone on the outside to be able to detect many of the illegal things that Facebook is facilitating. Unless you want all of big tech's data to be explicitly funneled to law enforcement, this is not a solution, especially when Facebook's incentivized to turn a blind eye and keep collecting checks.

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

#208

Post by AnthonyMouse »

aeturnum wrote: post #167
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flaw here is in expecting Facebook to be the police. Here's what happens if you make Facebook do it. They become aware of someone running an illegal ad and ban them. But the advertiser is a criminal and still wants to make money, so they make a new account or find some way to avoid detection, and the ad ends up back in the system, and the advertiser can do this forever because they're making a net profit by conti…

I fully agree it's a hard problem, but Facebook is the one telling us they can be the police. If you really feel you can't operate a business without doing crimes, you shouldn't operate the business. It's understandable - there are some businesses that it takes too much skill to operate without doing a crime and so people don't (there are lots of things that banks won't do that fall into this category). Facebook, by…

> If you really feel you can't operate a business without doing crimes, you shouldn't operate the business.

It isn't Facebook doing crimes, they're a company whose customers are doing crimes.

> The problem, to me, is that everything you said applies down stream too. You can't be sure the person purchasing the ad is trying to commit a crime either (perhaps they were hacked, perhaps they were dumb, etc).

Which is why we have investigators and courts, to sort this out. When the police execute the warrant and find the drugs, the person's claim that they were hacked is not going to hold a lot of water. Whereas if they find no drugs but seize the computer and find malware on it, then they can investigate the malware network and find the actual perpetrators.

This is law enforcement's job. To figure out who actually did the crime and charge them with it. Facebook can't do that and shouldn't be expected to.

> So you get into this situation where Facebook (and everyone else at that scale) can do some crimes, but not so many that it's a big part of their business. It seems bad.

Why is it bad? Why is it even expected to be bad? It's true of every business whatsoever. A major hardware store that sells duct tape will have as customers some number of kidnappers who use it to tape the mouths of their victims. The kidnappers will go to a gas station and buy gas. These companies are thereby profiting in some small way from crime. But so what? Go arrest the kidnappers, the hardware store is irrelevant.

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

#209

Post by nurettin »

This is the reason I gave up on google ads for my android apps back in 2015. I turned off all 18+ content and it kept on showing sex and gambling ads to users. The advertisers probably categorized themselves as entertainment and didn't check the correct boxes and I couldn't be bothered hunting all of them.

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

#210

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jdiff wrote: post #205
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flaw here is in expecting Facebook to be the police. Here's what happens if you make Facebook do it. They become aware of someone running an illegal ad and ban them. But the advertiser is a criminal and still wants to make money, so they make a new account or find some way to avoid detection, and the ad ends up back in the system, and the advertiser can do this forever because they're making a net profit by conti…

Facebook is the only one with access to all the information to know that a crime has even happened. Practically, there is no way for someone on the outside to be able to detect many of the illegal things that Facebook is facilitating. Unless you want all of big tech's data to be explicitly funneled to law enforcement, this is not a solution, especially when Facebook's incentivized to turn a blind eye and keep collect…

This is obviously not the case, otherwise how is anybody detecting the crimes in order to accuse Facebook of them?

If someone is running an ad to sell drugs or violate some other law, the users will see the ad and can report it to law enforcement. Law enforcement then investigates to find out who placed the ad and goes to arrest them.

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