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Without a link to the actual report, which hopefully contains more information, anyone who's ever spent $5 running a campaign on FB would know this is a little

Without a link to the actual report, which hopefully contains more information, anyone who's ever spent $5 running a campaign on FB would know this is a little suspicious. You can upload content to your hearts content, but ads are not actually 'approved' until they running. And there's no way to actually 'target' without running an ad ... which they didn't do ... so ... If they were looking for hard evidence, they could have in fact put $5 into FB, and put the ad 'live' and simply taken it down once it was approved, but before it received any views (though technically that might not be perfectly possible, it is pragmatically possible). It's possible to mine data sets, and do queries on userbase behaviours etc, but none of that would be in the context of a specific ad being run. I think this is also what the article alludes to, and it crosses streams with the other part of the story and probably causes confusion. All of that aside, the notion that FB, a $800B company is going to risk that by blatantly running ads for alcohol to minors where it is clearly illegal kind of defies the logic of a very self-interested entity like Facebook. How much money would they make from that, while risking sanctions and major fallout? Probably almost none, as the buyers of ads would probably be doing something illegal, how many breweries are going to be running ads to 14 year olds? Basically none, so there's no money in this activity, and only downside. More appropriately, it would help the case if someone, somewhere in Australia actually found FB ads that are targeting children. Finally, there is nowhere them to hide, making the claims a little more suspicious. Everyone on the planet, can right now (including you reading this), pop open Facebook, upload an ad and try to run it. Judge, police, regulators, you, me, anyone in the world can just 'see for ourselves' at a moments notice, at any time, with less than 5 minutes without any need for complicated research - find out if FB is really enabling vaping ads to teenagers. It seems odd that something so illegal would be so out in the open, visible to everyone. Edit: not 'defending' FB here, just calling out what I see as possibly a big inconsistency and problems with truthiness. I've never been a fan of Facebook, I loathed them from the start, but facts are facts, and this story does not pass the smell test, we'll need to see more data. There are probably a ton of legit things to deal with on FB, I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt they are running vaping ads to kids.

tdfx 6y ago
Yes, this reads like it was written by someone who has never run a real Facebook ad. Facebook routinely accidentally blocks legitimate advertisers from running normal, compliant ads, and there's a massive underground devoted to beating Facebook's algorithms to get non-compliant ads running. This looks like they just got lucky with a few ad sets, and since they never set them active, it looks like they might've not been approved, anyway.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  > there's a massive underground devoted to beating Facebook's algorithms to get non-compliant ads running. And they're extremely successful - I see several such ads every day. They vary from microdosing (using drugs is illegal here) to obvious scams. It looks FB completely got rid of manual review and decided algorithms can approve ads. And it failed spectacularly because any algorithm can be gamed by a creative human. Who is held accountable for it? Nobody. Something that has negative influence on others lives is presented as just a glitch in the system, not a result of an ethical decision "Yes, we can accept some percentage of scams as long as we maximize value from serving ads."
RileyJames 6y ago
Here is a link to the report: https://au.reset.tech/uploads/resettechaustralia_profiling-children-for-advertising-1.pdf https://au.reset.tech/uploads/resettechaustralia_profiling-c... Inline with your point, the report states that the ads were not actually run, which kind of invalidates their argument. They state they were ‘approved’. But their motivation was likely to get a specific headline across the media, and that appears to be working.
runarberg 6y ago
Not saying you’re wrong, but this feels like a pretty convenient separation for facebook to hide behind. A good journalist has a pretty strict code of ethics that they won’t cross under any circumstances. Getting an ad approved without running it doesn’t cross the code of ethics for most journalists, but running it would (even for 5 minutes; don’t blame them, selling gambling to random kids is bad for any amount of minutes, especially if you can’t go and debrief your victims). I think getting an ad like this approved is news worthy in and of it self, even though nothing illegal nor immoral was directly demonstrated. What was demonstrated is the potential for this to happen, and that what you would expect to be a safeguard against this (an approval process) is either not a safeguard at all or is insufficient. Either way it is news worthy (albeit the latter case a lot more news worthy; but harder to investigate). The problem with facebook is that it is so personalized and it is really hard for a third party to investigate any other person’s experience. For a journalist investigating what goes on for other people is hard at best. Seeing what gets approved is one way of investigating.

tdfx 6y ago

Yes, this reads like it was written by someone who has never run a real Facebook ad. Facebook routinely accidentally blocks legitimate advertisers from running normal, compliant ads, and there's a massive underground devoted to beating Facebook's algorithms to get non-compliant ads running. This looks like they just got lucky with a few ad sets, and since they never set them active, it looks like they might've not been approved, anyway.

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
> there's a massive underground devoted to beating Facebook's algorithms to get non-compliant ads running. And they're extremely successful - I see several such ads every day. They vary from microdosing (using drugs is illegal here) to obvious scams. It looks FB completely got rid of manual review and decided algorithms can approve ads. And it failed spectacularly because any algorithm can be gamed by a creative human. Who is held accountable for it? Nobody. Something that has negative influence on others lives is presented as just a glitch in the system, not a result of an ethical decision "Yes, we can accept some percentage of scams as long as we maximize value from serving ads."

RileyJames 6y ago

Here is a link to the report: https://au.reset.tech/uploads/resettechaustralia_profiling-children-for-advertising-1.pdf https://au.reset.tech/uploads/resettechaustralia_profiling-c... Inline with your point, the report states that the ads were not actually run, which kind of invalidates their argument. They state they were ‘approved’. But their motivation was likely to get a specific headline across the media, and that appears to be working.

runarberg 6y ago

Not saying you’re wrong, but this feels like a pretty convenient separation for facebook to hide behind. A good journalist has a pretty strict code of ethics that they won’t cross under any circumstances. Getting an ad approved without running it doesn’t cross the code of ethics for most journalists, but running it would (even for 5 minutes; don’t blame them, selling gambling to random kids is bad for any amount of minutes, especially if you can’t go and debrief your victims). I think getting an ad like this approved is news worthy in and of it self, even though nothing illegal nor immoral was directly demonstrated. What was demonstrated is the potential for this to happen, and that what you would expect to be a safeguard against this (an approval process) is either not a safeguard at all or is insufficient. Either way it is news worthy (albeit the latter case a lot more news worthy; but harder to investigate). The problem with facebook is that it is so personalized and it is really hard for a third party to investigate any other person’s experience. For a journalist investigating what goes on for other people is hard at best. Seeing what gets approved is one way of investigating.