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A pretty cool piece. Too bad they have to use text to make their point. It would essentially reach zero people due to rules (https://www.facebook.com/business/

A pretty cool piece. Too bad they have to use text to make their point. It would essentially reach zero people due to rules (https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/lessons/how-to-adhere-to-facebook-ad-policy-text-in-images https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/lessons/how-to-adher...). Then there's personal attributes (https://m.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/personal_attributes https://m.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/perso...). Then ads that do not sell products/services follow murky rules, and talking about Facebook itself is usually prohibited. (edited from: because the rule they're actually breaking is the "No Text" rule in Facebook ad creatives.) Is there non-symbolic imagery that they could have used to say the same thing? Perhaps they should have retained someone with this kind of creative experience. Looking critically, the most narrow and serious obstacle to advocate for privacy is storytelling.

rcfaj7obqrkayhn 5y ago
> because the rule they're actually breaking is the "No Text" rule in Facebook ad creatives maybe breaking the rule was intentional, to make this article work
enragedcacti 5y ago
Signal should sell this exact design on a targeted t-shirt and then advertise that.
fgonzag 5y ago
Though you can't have text in the image, you could put the target filters as the post's text and use the image to grab the attention.
DisjointedHunt 5y ago
The no text rule has not been enforced to disable an adaccount for years now. It merely de-ranks you. Source: Worked in advertising.
davidedicillo 5y ago
The rule doesn't exists anymore. Ads with a lot of text simply get penalized when it comes to distribution.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
> "No Text" rule in Facebook ad creatives. Where can this rule be found? That seems like a really odd rule, and https://www.facebook.com/business/help/388369961318508?id=1240182842783684 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/388369961318508?id=12... says the opposite: "Avoid too much text on the image itself. We've found that images with less than 20% text perform better, though there is no limit on the amount of text that can exist in your ad image."
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  The story goes that one of the founders hated text in ads, and decreed that it should be banned. They later converted text in ads into a penalty, so you pay more (as an advertiser) for it.
- 13415 5y ago
  FB uses a rather obscure and proprietary internal scoring system. You may be able to publish an ad campaign with lots of text once or twice, but it will make your ads account score go down and at some point it will likely be disabled - temporarily first, after one or two more incidents forever. The recommended amount of text on the image is less than 20%. Their system also doesn't like text because of potential "circumventions of policy" with putting text in images. Weird fonts that are not machine-readable will likely get the account banned fast.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    Do you have a source for this? I find it very hard to believe considering it's in conflict with the explicit unambiguous wording in their policy.
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    This actually matches with my experience. My product is text-related and I ran a couple ads with allowable amounts of text (back when there were limits). The ads performed just fine, but FB decided to stop running them, claiming they were low-quality.
- gnicholas 5y ago
mkmk 5y ago
This actually violates the “personal attributes” rule. In my experience, this rule is enforced quite strictly — although you can still see the same targeting criteria under the “why did I see this ad” feature. https://m.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/personal_attributes https://m.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/perso...
- meowkit 5y ago
  This rule reads as “don’t tell the target about our assumptions of them”. Isn’t that kind of the point of Signals post?
  - thelean12 5y ago
    I'm assuming the rule is around because FB knows it's targeting isn't 100% accurate and it might ruffle feathers if an ad claims you're something you're not. I don't see that specifically as nefarious. Especially because FB tells me why I am being shown an ad already.
    - defaultname 5y ago
      In the early days of COVID I was curious what the difference between types of viruses. e.g. how herpes and HIV hides in cells compared to viruses like influenza and SARS-CoV-2. One of those sites clearly had Facebook integration because now Facebook is sure that I'm an HIV-positive gay man, with ads that correspond. It is one thing to get the ads but it would be a bit more overt if there was a text ad declaring that I was an HIV positive gay man.
    - floatingatoll 5y ago
      People take offense at being told that there’s a machine labeling them, and would demand the right to revise or remove the machine-assigned labels. Facebook prevents that outcome by preventing disclosure of targeting characteristics. See also this Show HN from /new for purging your complete set of labels, and ask why Facebook doesn’t build this into the site UI. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045374 (The link is broken, but apparently there's a page you can single-remove specific interests from, if you can find it.)
Vinnl 5y ago
I don't think the point here was to actually run these ads. They don't look like they'd drive a lot of conversion, and there's a big risk that quite a few would actually be inaccurate in practice - Facebook's algorithms, while they know a lot about you, can also be quite wrong. But you can't see that in an article like this, and it's far more likely to reach the right people.

rcfaj7obqrkayhn 5y ago

> because the rule they're actually breaking is the "No Text" rule in Facebook ad creatives maybe breaking the rule was intentional, to make this article work

enragedcacti 5y ago

Signal should sell this exact design on a targeted t-shirt and then advertise that.

fgonzag 5y ago

Though you can't have text in the image, you could put the target filters as the post's text and use the image to grab the attention.

DisjointedHunt 5y ago

The no text rule has not been enforced to disable an adaccount for years now. It merely de-ranks you. Source: Worked in advertising.

davidedicillo 5y ago

The rule doesn't exists anymore. Ads with a lot of text simply get penalized when it comes to distribution.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

> "No Text" rule in Facebook ad creatives. Where can this rule be found? That seems like a really odd rule, and https://www.facebook.com/business/help/388369961318508?id=1240182842783684 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/388369961318508?id=12... says the opposite: "Avoid too much text on the image itself. We've found that images with less than 20% text perform better, though there is no limit on the amount of text that can exist in your ad image."

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
The story goes that one of the founders hated text in ads, and decreed that it should be banned. They later converted text in ads into a penalty, so you pay more (as an advertiser) for it.
13415 5y ago
FB uses a rather obscure and proprietary internal scoring system. You may be able to publish an ad campaign with lots of text once or twice, but it will make your ads account score go down and at some point it will likely be disabled - temporarily first, after one or two more incidents forever. The recommended amount of text on the image is less than 20%. Their system also doesn't like text because of potential "circumventions of policy" with putting text in images. Weird fonts that are not machine-readable will likely get the account banned fast.
- mdoms 5y ago
  Do you have a source for this? I find it very hard to believe considering it's in conflict with the explicit unambiguous wording in their policy.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  This actually matches with my experience. My product is text-related and I ran a couple ads with allowable amounts of text (back when there were limits). The ads performed just fine, but FB decided to stop running them, claiming they were low-quality.
gnicholas 5y ago

mkmk 5y ago

This actually violates the “personal attributes” rule. In my experience, this rule is enforced quite strictly — although you can still see the same targeting criteria under the “why did I see this ad” feature. https://m.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/personal_attributes https://m.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/perso...

meowkit 5y ago
This rule reads as “don’t tell the target about our assumptions of them”. Isn’t that kind of the point of Signals post?
- thelean12 5y ago
  I'm assuming the rule is around because FB knows it's targeting isn't 100% accurate and it might ruffle feathers if an ad claims you're something you're not. I don't see that specifically as nefarious. Especially because FB tells me why I am being shown an ad already.
  - defaultname 5y ago
    In the early days of COVID I was curious what the difference between types of viruses. e.g. how herpes and HIV hides in cells compared to viruses like influenza and SARS-CoV-2. One of those sites clearly had Facebook integration because now Facebook is sure that I'm an HIV-positive gay man, with ads that correspond. It is one thing to get the ads but it would be a bit more overt if there was a text ad declaring that I was an HIV positive gay man.
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    People take offense at being told that there’s a machine labeling them, and would demand the right to revise or remove the machine-assigned labels. Facebook prevents that outcome by preventing disclosure of targeting characteristics. See also this Show HN from /new for purging your complete set of labels, and ask why Facebook doesn’t build this into the site UI. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045374 (The link is broken, but apparently there's a page you can single-remove specific interests from, if you can find it.)

Vinnl 5y ago

I don't think the point here was to actually run these ads. They don't look like they'd drive a lot of conversion, and there's a big risk that quite a few would actually be inaccurate in practice - Facebook's algorithms, while they know a lot about you, can also be quite wrong. But you can't see that in an article like this, and it's far more likely to reach the right people.