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> Frankly, if you are an advertiser and know your ads are being served to someone who, through tragedy, cannot use your product and instead are now part of a th
by res0nat0r 8y ago
> Frankly, if you are an advertiser and know your ads are being served to someone who, through tragedy, cannot use your product and instead are now part of a thousand cuts treatment, you should be pretty offended yourself.
How, exactly, are they supposed to know that? The bigger issue here is everyone expecting Facebook to somehow be omnipotent. They're not. They are a sharing platform that makes money by selling targeted ads. They're not all knowing.
- protomyth 8y agoI would imagine that in this case, some of their social media folks are seeing the problem. Target got word that they were accidentally telling some parents their kid was pregnant. Enough retweets and articles should hit the any social team worth the name.
- ahi 8y agoIf I employ a human too stupid to not insult my customers, I would probably fire him.
- mcguire 8y agoThe same way they know to present the ads in the first place? If they can do one, they can do the other, right? It just happens infrequently enough that they haven't had to care about it. Yet.
- davefp 8y ago> How, exactly, are they supposed to know that? Because situations have more than one possible outcome. Lumping everyone into a single cohort based on a majority rule (e.g. people who buy pregnancy-related products often buy baby-related products later) is a kind of insensitivity that would be frowned on if applied in person. > The bigger issue here is everyone expecting Facebook to somehow be omnipotent. I'd argue that Facebook (or its advertising algorithm in this case) is operating _as if it is_ omniscient when really there are lots of shortcomings that can and do cause harm. It should be reigned in instead of forgiven.