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Meta is banning people from advertising after running ads for Python and Pandas

• anthomtb 3y ago
  > We used technology to detect this violation Meta, whatever this "technology" may be, you did not use it correctly.
• neontomo 3y ago
  I'll take two pandas please. I'm convinced you'll be better off advertising elsewhere anyway, Facebook is a big advertising platform for sure, but are your coding students there? Maybe. I think they're here and on YouTube. :-)
  • reuven 3y ago
    I'm going to be redoing my site and offerings in the coming months, and I was thinking of doing some advertising along the way. There are definitely other platforms, and YouTube is one I'll be trying, but I figured it was worth a shot. Not any more, I guess!
    • djaychela 3y ago
      If I may, your training is much better than your current YouTube views would indicate. I think it you spent some time on it [1] then it should pay off as your explanations are clear and concise, and it's clear from them that you're a good trainer. Your newsletter is also good, and I've had quite a few "oh, that's why that's like that" moments from reading it. [1] - When I say this, I don't mean thumbnails with you looking shocked in them and the title being "You won't believe how many Python people don't know this!" or similar.... I know it's a fine line to walk, but you're also better than that!!!
      • reuven 3y ago
        Thanks so much -- I know that lots of things about my YouTube channel need to change in order for me to rack up more views. I'm slowly (very slowly!) making those adjustments, but as a one-person business, all of these things take time. I've already seen a huge increase in YouTube subscribers since I started to make some changes, and I'm hoping that things will get even better over time. I appreciate the feedback and comments, and am delighted to hear that you're learning from my newsletters.
• pastyboy 3y ago
  Someone you know works for Meta ?
  • PinguTS 3y ago
    Did you read the post till the end?
  • sakjur 3y ago
    They checked with three Meta contacts, but because the data retention period had passed, the evidence wasn’t available anymore and the contacts were unable to progress.
• elorant 3y ago
  Just create a new account and advertise with that. Or even a fake account. I know a lot of people who have dozens of fake accounts even for legitimate products and ads. Facebook is notorious for not providing any kind of support for its ad platform. Not to mention that they don't seem to do anything to stop fraudulent traffic.
  • reuven 3y ago
    One of the Meta employees suggested that I create a new business account. Except that I can't do that, because my personal account has been banned for life, as has any business account created through it. So I could create a new account that's just for my business. And maybe I will. But ... what a pain, and I'm not sure the ROI is really that good.
    • logicalmonster 3y ago
      The galling thing to me is that these "lifetime bans" do nothing to stop scammers because they can easily create dozens of new companies and identities to continue ripping people off with. For them, it's just a cost of doing business. Either through legal or illegal means, scammers find a way to create lots of different companies and manage to get back on these platforms after their first efforts are "banned for life". The only people who are actually banned for life are normal well-intentioned people who get their fledgling small business destroyed and don't think they have any recourse.
      • kmeisthax 3y ago
        It's almost as if big tech's way of handling abuse specifically selects for assholes who know how to work around the system
• shiroiuma 3y ago
  Wow, this is incredibly stupid (on Meta's part). Way to shoot yourself in the foot. Is it just me, or does it seem like Facebook/Meta has always been much dumber about how to actually run a business than other big tech companies? I think they just got where they are because they filled a void with Facebook and took advantage of network effects. Nothing they've ever done has really seemed all that "good" to me overall, except little bits and pieces. Most recently, I got forced onto their "Messenger" app, because they basically disabled the "Messenger Lite" app. This new app is MUCH larger and more bloated, has a bunch of features I don't care about, and now won't even let me log in because "waiting for network". A little searching online seems to show this is a common problem and everyone hates this app, and many more are pissed that they've been forced off the Lite app.
  • mandmandam 3y ago
    > I think they just got where they are because they filled a void Don't forget the brazen theft (remember Stories and 'Suggested for You', aka Snapchat and TikTok). Or the cozy relationship with power, or all the ad money from scammers that would be easily blocked (were there any intention to do so). I guess all that could be called 'taking advantage of network effects', in the same way you can call torture 'enhanced interrogation' or a coup 'regime change'. My point may be murky - I'm saying, they're not just dumb; they're immoral bullies too... I don't expect high morality from giant corporations, but I wouldn't Occam's handwave all this away as incompetence either.
  • entuno 3y ago
    Have they shot themselves in the foot though? As long as the money they save from not employing people to manually review cases is less than the profit they're losing by OP (and others in this situation) not advertising on their platform then a few false positives is fine for them. Sure, they might also get the odd bit of bad publicity somewhere like HN, but I imagine that most people here already have plenty of reasons to dislike them.
    • shiroiuma 3y ago
      >Have they shot themselves in the foot though? As long as the money they save ... then a few false positives is fine for them. Yeah, I've made this point before, just today in fact about a Netflix discussion (and I like to bring it up with Microsoft too when people complain about Windows...), and agree: it seems like these companies can get away with some horrifically stupid and customer-hostile behavior while remaining very profitable and dominant. Of course, unlike Netflix, Facebook isn't primarily funded by its users, but rather by advertisers (who are other businesses, not consumers), so I'm not sure if that's better or worse here; it might be worse for Meta. I guess time will tell: bad publicity like this isn't going to help them. >but I imagine that most people here already have plenty of reasons to dislike them. True, but again, most people here aren't customers of Facebook, they're just users.
• nmfisher 3y ago
  This is why we should be fighting tooth and nail against both walled gardens and monopolies. These are literally some of the most profitable companies in the world, there is no excuse for not providing a human contact who can at least verify the grounds for suspension, and some kind of appeal system. I don’t really care how good Meta is on the open source side of things. They’re still a horrible company when it comes to literally everything else.
  • robertlagrant 3y ago
    I don't think literally everything else is true. They give their employees some of the best benefits.
    • BiteCode_dev 3y ago
      In every mafia movie, they take care of their own.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • mongol 3y ago
    They are the most profitable companies in the world because they have scaled their revenues and do not give a damn about scaling their costs related to things such as customer service. This is exactly why this happens. In a smaller, local company this would never happen, it would be completely absurd.
• klyrs 3y ago
  Damn. Perhaps I should rethink the name of my new programming language, Children. Pretty weird how they delete the evidence after 180 days, but apparently the automatic review is still able to pass final judgement after that window closes.
  • devjab 3y ago
    Rust and Go weren’t particularly good names either. At least if you wanted people to be capable of using them as search terms. Yes, yes, you can use “lang” but still.
    • VBprogrammer 3y ago
      Swift was also a pretty well established interbank communication format which struck me as a strange choice of name. It legitimately confused me back in those days because I was working with swift messages every day.
      • mike_hearn 3y ago
        After decades of global product launches the namespace is really full. Some overlap is unavoidable.
        • VBprogrammer 3y ago
          The lack of imagination in using unicode characters is astounding!
    • deleted 3y ago
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• kioleanu 3y ago
  In opposition to what the author thinks, I do think that the appeal was viewed by a human (probably from an outsourced agency somewhere far away) who simply didn't have 1) the capacity to understand what the author is selling 2) time enough to read the appeal, research and understand the problem and 3) possibly sufficient control over the English language
  • mcintyre1994 3y ago
    And also apparently nothing to base their decision on since all the data is apparently deleted since it’s over 180 days old.
  • gmerc 3y ago
    Even if someone saw it they have 20 sec to review a case and only get very limited context. It’s a farce
  • cozzyd 3y ago
    Right, how likely is it that the people reviewing know anything about software.
  • reuven 3y ago
    Actually, they explicitly said (on some page, or in some e-mail) that both the original evaluation and the appeal were handled automatically. I can't find that evidence, but I remember reading it and saying, "OMG, you've got to be kidding me." Based on what they've told me, I have every reason to believe that no human ever reviewed my case.
  • Terretta 3y ago
    In Screenshot Meta says both were made by technology.
• welder 3y ago
  TLDR: A Meta ads reviewer or AI thought he was selling Pythons and Pandas when that's just the name of the programming language he teaches. Then made worse by Meta not having any real appeal process.
  • alpaca128 3y ago
    ...and worse again by Meta deleting information like ban reasons after 180 days, making it impossible for them to verify anything after that date other than the account having a ban flag set in the database. What a joke.
• nobi 3y ago
  I had the exact same thing happen to me, only I have never run any ads on Facebook. Got the ominous "you are suspended from running ads on Meta", which was very confusing since I've never run a single ad on any of their platforms, appealed out of curiosity and was met with the "you're banned forever" canned response. Crappy AI making stupid, arbitrary decisions.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• xigency 3y ago
  Reminds me of an acquaintance who had their Instagram account taken over. Support is just… crickets.
• anonzzzies 3y ago
  This feels the same like google blocking me from using adwords; it said we definitely violated something they didn't specify and were banned for life. We sold productivity desktop software b2b. Not porn or animal abuse or guns or whatever.
  • mike_hearn 3y ago
    They have special rules for advertising desktop software. I hit the same issue but wasn't banned. Eventually it got mostly sorted out. The most irritating problem: Apple forbid the use of any of their trademarks in Google advertising, for any reason whatsoever. That means you cannot make an ad like "Foobar for Mac" because it will trip their filters. Manual reviews and escalations don't help, the only solution is to get Apple to fax Google a personal permission letter granting authorized use, which is of course impossible. This absurd problem has existed for at least a decade. Presumably it's deliberate and to push people towards the app stores by preventing Mac developers from advertising their app outside of Apple controlled channels (which aren't comparable). Windows has no such difficulties.
• mvdtnz 3y ago
  Did I miss something in the article? His only evidence that he was banned because of python (supposedly a ban on dealing in live animals) is that some other guy on Linked In who also advertised for Python courses was also banned and he claimed, without evidence, that it was because of the live animal constraint? This is not very convincing evidence. It definitely sounds like something has gone wrong, but OP is jumping to conclusions on pretty thin evidence. I'm also conscious we're only hearing one side of a story here. How many people have come to HN to complain about being banned from Stripe only for it to turn out they were running an illegal crypto casino or whatever.
  • CaliforniaKarl 3y ago
    > How many people have come to HN to complain about being banned from Stripe only for it to turn out they were running an illegal crypto casino or whatever. How many people have come here, complaining that they’ve been banned from Stripe or blocked by Cloudflare, when it turns out they should not have. We’ve seen folks from Stripe and Cloudflare on HN, effectively saying “reach out, let’s look in to this.” I expect Meta has many more employees than Stripe and Cloudflare. I think if someone complains about a problem, the other sides are justified in responding, and should.
    • herbst 3y ago
      I've got help from Google when I had a bigger account issue. Stripe isn't the fastest in responding but they really helped avoiding account issues before they became a problem. Facebook ignored my HN rant, my GDPR requests, any emails and the 'please check if the ban was right' button was solved in less than a minute without answer and disappeared forever. Facebook doesn't care
  • rob74 3y ago
    Well yeah, that's one of the problems with user account suspensions, app store review issues etc. with Big Tech: they don't tell you why they did it, so you're forced to guess! And if you're waiting to hear "the other side of the story", I wouldn't be holding my breath...
  • 3y ago
• deredede 3y ago
  > Meta won’t be seeing any of my money, whereas companies like Google, who seem to employ at least some humans in their advertising department — will That is a convoluted way to say you'll do business with companies that accept your business. Google is known for fully automated bans on your full account, not just the advertising part.
  • rightbyte 3y ago
    Eventually banning everyone is a good way to condensate spammers and scammers who will just set up a new company from time to time anyways. I haven't thought about this before, but it could explain some of the degeneration of ads over time I have been noticing.
    • Izmaki 3y ago
      My immediate thought when speed reading the blog post was "just create an advertisement company, have yourself as a client and call it a day". Sometimes we gotta fight stupid with stupid, you know?
      • rightbyte 3y ago
        There are plenty of ad networks. It is just that they pay like 1/10th of what Google does to the site showing ads.
        • Semaphor 3y ago
          We have the opposite experience. They pay more, it’s just that the average ad-quality is also lower. We actually had to raise the minimum price even higher for the network to not show tons of borderline scam ads (now they are delivering fewer ads, but they are more relevant and higher quality)
          • rightbyte 3y ago
            Strange. I guess it varies with what Google's magic box guesses what an add on a site is worth.
• nottorp 3y ago
  > whereas companies like Google, who seem to employ at least some humans in their advertising department What? Google has humans? Where?
  • deleted 3y ago
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• traveler01 3y ago
  My girlfriend also got banned from advertising on Meta for literally no reason. It’s been also a year since she last advertised her Facebook page (she’s a gerontologist). They are probably banning most smaller advertisers and sticking with the largest ones.
  • sampo 3y ago
    > Self-styled vigilantes attacked the home of a hospital paediatrician after apparently confusing her professional title with the word "paedophile" https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.society https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.s... And now we have machines doing the same.
• nonrandomstring 3y ago
  > Now, I'm not a big believer in "there's nothing to be done", especially when it comes to companies and software, both of which are created and managed by people. You're right of course. Axiomatically there is always "something to be done". But corporate technology brings out laziness, contempt for others, a lack of self-respect and a blindness to ethics. It seems we don't understand why yet. Despite a great start in social tech critique in the 1960s from people like Ellul, Postman and Mumford, it remains a frontier of psychology and computer science where almost nobody dares to tread. Maybe a sincere and sustained research programme would turn-up that most of the systems we build today are psychologically and socially harmful to us. Perhaps this mirrors the way it took us half a century to see how fossil fuels and unbounded growth were invisibly destroying our ecological foundations, only this time we are destroying the capital of social bonds, mutuality and care, long term planning and so much more. It is ironic then, that these engines of societal decay like Meta started out life being called "social networks".
  • deleted 3y ago
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• ota85 3y ago
  Just one more data point to add. I manage a business with 50 physical locations in a Nordic country in Google. These are the business locations that appear in Google Maps. I constantly have similar issues to get our Google Business profiles approved due to "Live animals". It's a simple word filter they just cannot get fixed. It's a constant headache. I get it fixed every time by requesting a manual review. It's work for me and work for them. I've noticed that Meta offers much better support than Google. They have excellent tech support, at least for higher ad spend tiers. I feel like talking to a human, who seems to care. I think they assign us based on ad spend to more knowledgeable teams. From Google I've never heard a peep from a competent person.
• raverbashing 3y ago
  > get this — Meta thought that he was dealing in live animals, which is forbidden. > That’s right: I teach courses in Python and Pandas Hah I suspected that was going to be the punchline, but waited for confirmation It is believable. What is not so much is that they did a review with real people
• Xixi 3y ago
  AIs and other opaque processes making decisions are incredibly frustrating. I'm still wondering why my tea-of-the-month business [0] got turned down by Stripe when I incorporated an LLC (technically a Godo Kaisha, as it is incorporated in Japan). It came as a surprise as it was perfectly fine by them for as long as it was a sole proprietorship. Which is why I strongly suspect the rejection came from an AI. At the time of rejection we were still using the Stripe account of the sole proprietorship, and surely a human would have noticed and blocked that account if it was actually running against Stripe ToS!?! It doesn't make any sense to me. In any case, I know that financial regulations are stringent and payment providers are often required to leave us in the dark. But is it frustrating... Now I'm stuck with PayPal for the time being. Unless they, too, decide that selling green tea is against their ToS. By the way, does anyone know if it's ok to re-attempt to open an account with Stripe? Our offering has been evolving, so we might very well be within their ToS now? [0] https://tomotcha.com https://tomotcha.com EDIT: wording
  • Aeolun 3y ago
    You can always contact them? I can’t say my experience with their support has been anything like good, but we did eventually resolve the problem. Apparently Stripe has great difficulty with non-Japanese people, living in Japan, owning a company overseas.
    • Xixi 3y ago
      We tried, to no avail, just got the same unhelpful answer each time. Although we didn’t push too much, as we were still relying on the sole proprietorship account, and didn’t want to jeopardize that! Now that we’re 90% done with the migration to PayPal, I think we can try again…
      • bombcar 3y ago
        It sounds like the real story is you need to keep two payment processing setups active and used at all times, because you never know when one is going to mysteriously disappear.
• andyjohnson0 3y ago
  Welcome to the future. Before too long this kind of bs will be an almost daily occurrence for most people who have to interact with businesses/institutions on the net. Highly automated inscrutable processes with hairtrigger banning logic and review paths that never lead to a human. Because the humans that survived the automation are too busy feeding the Algorithm to ever interact with the customers.
  • donmcronald 3y ago
    Government contractors seem to love it from what I’ve seen. They’ve always been about quantity over quality because most people don’t have the resources to fight the government. “AI” driven by greed and ignorance is a step towards ruining and collapsing a lot of government services in most western countries IMO.
  • saiya-jin 3y ago
    That's the cheap route, like car manufacturers slapping big glossy crappy tablet instead of 40 high quality physical knobs (really, have you ever seen any physical button not working on any car, even 15+years old? I didn't a single time, as long as we don't talk about wrecks). Then you have premium companies with premium prices, where actual humans serve you. They'll be slower but you have chance for some empathy and non-standard solutions to your problems.
  • bb101 3y ago
    Our legal systems have already become like this. Only those with the knowledge on how to navigate the system or those qualified to interface in the expected protocols have any hope of achieving results. Super-corporations are now just the next rung down, adopting all the habits of their superior, but without the responsibilities.
• lbriner 3y ago
  The whole issue around not telling you what rule you broke "because then you might work around it" is total BS. It's like a company I complained to the other day because they didn't label one of the inputs on their password reset form because "it would help a hacker know what to type in it" (it was the password reset password they expected but you wouldn't know). How much quicker would this be resolved if the first AI said, "your account has been blocked because we detected an advert related to live animals" to which you could appeal with your one sentence reason, "these are not animals, they are programming languages with the same names as animals" which would take a very cursory check and continue to bring in advertising revenue. I think like another poster it is probably true that if you were spending a lot, you would have been given more time to argue your case. For someone who brings in $10 a month, it's not worth their time.
  • reuven 3y ago
    Yup, I'm sure that I'm just not big enough for them to notice or handle personally. That said, this is still absurd.
  • mongol 3y ago
    Yeah exactly. Imagine if our laws worked like that. Complete dystopia.
    • omnibrain 3y ago
      There is a book on that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial
      • rurban 3y ago
        Kafka is about human bureaucracy. This case is about AI bureaucracy.
        • teddyh 3y ago
          Someone needs to re-write “The Trial” for this millennium. The new title can be “The Algorithm”. (Re-post of <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27378230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27378230>)
• mordae 3y ago
  If there's enough people who were wrongfully banned for any reason on Facebook because their review process is broken, maybe it's time for a class action suit? Also, banning somebody and not keeping the relevant evidence, not showing the evidence to the client so that they can archive the case themselves to appeal in court? You don't have any anti-discrimination laws to prevent sellers choose their customers on subjective basis? Because at this point Facebook cannot prove that the people violated the ToS and thus Facebook is restricting the services it offers to then.
  • ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
    >You don't have any anti-discrimination laws to prevent sellers choose their customers on subjective basis? US businesses can choose to not do business with whomever they want as long as they aren't a protected class. Besides that point, what damages could you sue over?
• hakanderyal 3y ago
  This non-sensical auto bans is a well-known phenomenon in the ads industry (personal/small companies). There is even a cottage industry of companies that's specialized in recovering banned ads accounts and/or getting around bans. Usual methods for getting around this is creating business accounts via relatives, giving yourself admin rights and using that. Some have success with fake profiles. That doesn't guarantee against banning of the new accounts, you just move on to new ones. Because ROI is so damn good on these platforms, people put up with all kinds of BS to use them.
  • ZiiS 3y ago
    People prepared to commit fraud may get good ROI; many legitimate business get terible ROI anyway.
• pr337h4m 3y ago
  >That’s right: I teach courses in Python and Pandas. Never mind that the first is a programming language and the second is a library for data analysis in Python. Meta’s AI system noticed that I was talking about Python and Pandas, assumed that I was talking about the animals (not the technology), and banned me. If this is true, that is insanely embarrassing for a company that purports to be a sophisticated programmatic advertising platform.
  • reuven 3y ago
    Yes, indeed.
  • random_coder 3y ago
    What's wrong with talking about animals anyway? Truly bizarre.
    • petargyurov 3y ago
      I'm assuming something to do with the illegal trading of exotic/endangered species; mentioning pythons and pandas, alongside whatever wording was used to sell the course probably triggered the bot to flag it. That's the only explanation I have.
    • folli 3y ago
      Perhaps you're not allowed to use Facebook for selling animals. Which would be sensible IMO
      • quickthrower2 3y ago
        Selling pets should be fine?
        • dspillett 3y ago
          Depends on local laws. Also it can be difficult to reliably distinguish between an individual passing on a pet, a properly licensed breeder selling animals, and a bad actor doing the same (selling exotic animals, being an unlicensed breeder in jurisdictions where this is not permitted (generally or for particular animals), etc.). For this reason many advertising companies simply have a blanket ban on advertising any animal trading. Being more selective potentially leaves them open to legal issues if the selection process makes a bad decision and lets something illegal through, and that risk is not worth taking in order to allow (and therefore take a cut from) the more legitimate trade.
• jonathanstrange 3y ago
  I've had similar problems with Fabebook/Meta before and eventually gave up on buying ad services from them. One solution to this problem would be a law that 1. mandates to give users the information when they are dealing with an algorithm only, and 2. forces companies to make it possible to contact humans within a specific time frame. I very much hope at least the EU will enact such a law soon. Apart from monumental wastes of time with AI interactions for which no one is compensated, the thing that worries me most is that either AI "customer support" cannot do anything of substance anyway or the AI is given the power to make substantial changes to user settings, billing, etc. The first option means the company is bullshitting their customers, the second option can have very undesirable consequences.
  • gumballindie 3y ago
    > forces companies to make it possible to contact humans within a specific time frame. Some EU countries do require this and it works a charm. However it doesnt seem to affect meta. That company, along with google and amazon and any other company that only relies on ai for customer support should fined into bankruptcy.
    • david_draco 3y ago
      Ireland, which is milking Facebook, would block high fines. Their DPC does everything but enforce ... (see noyb.eu)
  • Angostura 3y ago
    It's the kind of thing I thought had been handled way back in the 90s when AOL was rightly ridiculed from stopping people from entering the town Scunthorpe as their location because of a certain substring it contained.
  • josephcsible 3y ago
    > make it possible to contact humans More specifically, it'd need to make it possible to contact humans with the authority to overturn the algorithmic decision.
• halukakin 3y ago
  There are many digital marketing executives who are banned to advertise on Facebook. FB decides they did something wrong once, and now they cannot advertise anymore. So effectively they cannot find a job in digital advertising because Meta wants you to use your personal account for advertising even when you are working for a company. This needs to stop. Maybe this could be moved under the scope of "EU Digital Markets Act" with some effort.
  • philipwhiuk 3y ago
    Why should Meta be forced to give people second chances who didn't read the rules the first time. A lot of the times when you actually dig into this stuff, the person banned did break a perfectly reasonable rule.
    • xen0 3y ago
      You never made a mistake?
• easyThrowaway 3y ago
  I've experienced similar issues multiple times in the past with meta, especially while advertising french and italian restaurants whose names and menus, once automatically translated in english during the publishing checks, would trigger all kind of bans. One of the most hilarious cases came up with southern-italian style braised fennels, whose internal machine-translation naming by meta was not exactly LGBTQ friendly. As I said in a previous post, most of these cases were usually resolved trough the legal department of the agency, It was considered basically a requirement of being in the ad business.
• quietbritishjim 3y ago
  I know I'm thinking about the wrong part of this article, but... even if the adverts really were about real pandas and pythons, the adverts were for courses in them. Am I not allowed to advertise a course on how to look after your python on Facebook? Or a course on the status of pandas in the wild? Even that seems very odd. (Maybe the adverts didn't read that way.)
• TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  I suppose there's a certain irony in an AI system not knowing what Python is. It would be even more ironic if it was Python code that made the decision.
  • fuzztester 3y ago
    Shows they are not self-aware. :)
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • jjgreen 3y ago
    Maybe it doesn't know that it's an AI ...
• bagels 3y ago
  Facebook made an ai tool using Python (pytorch) and might've used it to ban you. You need someone there to submit an oops for you.
• Fischgericht 3y ago
  I've multiple times tried to open a seller account on Ebay. Two minutes after the account was created and confirmed it got blocked due to me having violated their terms of services. At this point I had not done ANYTHING with the account yet, not even putting in a profile picture. And the rest went the same as with you: Appeal process is done by a bot who only knows one answer: "We are right, you violated our ToS, your account is blocked, this decision is final". Oh how I miss the times when an organization for which you potentially are making a lot of money was still willing to hire a human for customer support... And of course in these days, where your whole business may depend on being able to advertise or sell on the small number of platforms, a bot may decide to kill my business and company at any time. It's scary.
  • hn8305823 3y ago
    I'm curious what "type" of IP address were you using when you created the account? Residential, mobile, work/office, or data center?
    • Fischgericht 3y ago
      Own, I'm a RIPE member. Clean subnet, never been on any blacklist whatsoever.
      • hn8305823 3y ago
        I wounder if it was tagged as "data center" by default without knowing who/what/how it's actually being used. It certainly wouldn't be considered the most privileged (residential) by default. It doesn't matter if it's "clean" and has never been in any spam/abuse blacklists. Apparently it is (wrongly) assumed that a data center IP is someone scripting/scraping, or worse. Ignoring the fact that actual humans do work and visit data centers and use their Wi-Fi.
        • jeltz 3y ago
          Also many corporate VPNs use data center IPs.
• fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  I'm banned for life from all Facebook properties (except for WhatsApp) because of my surname. They believe it's fake (or too controversial) and a copy of my passport hasn't changed their minds. I used to have a Facebook account ~13 years ago before their real name policy came into force, but I closed it because I found it awkward to refuse or accept so many contact requests by people from my distant past. Now unfortunately I can't access the Facebook group that is the only source of information for important things going on in the building I live in. My wife does have access though, so it's not a big deal. It seems the only way for me to get around Facebook's real name policy is to use a fake name. But I guess that wouldn't allow me to advertise on Facebook or use any of their developer related stuff.
  • shantnutiwari 3y ago
    and what is your surname?
    • quickthrower2 3y ago
      most likely: fuck
    • crdrost 3y ago
      Assuming that they don't dox themselves some examples that would trigger a filter: - Phillip K. Dick, etc., So like a body part or cuss word, or even an ethnic slur, for instance in Papua New Guinea a hundred or so people have the surname “Wop” which might trigger an algorithm. “Fokker” is a Dutch example of this, refers to someone who was an expert in getting animals to breed—possibly some other culture has a variant like Fucker that's the same. - The name could be identical to a celebrity, for instance a Malcolm X born to Arthur and Jenny X having nothing to do with the more famous person of that name. Then you would still say “it’s because of my surname.” Alternatively the celebrity could be notorious e.g. if your name were “Jack Hittler.” - The James Randi Educational Foundation once dismissed an application for a prize that they administer, because the person did not appear to be using their real name. This had to be reopened when notarized copies of a court order changing the name were submitted, confirming that he had indeed changed his first name to Prophet and his surname to Yahweh. So if that guy has kids with more normal first names...
• lambda_garden 3y ago
  Title is misleading. They weren't banned because they "teach Python. " but because Meta has faulty algorithms.
  • reuven 3y ago
    I'd say that both are true.
  • em-bee 3y ago
    it is necessary to point out how faulty the algorithm is so that people can understand how dangerous automated decision making is
• iefbr14 3y ago
  I dont think its tripping only over the words Python and Pandas but possibly also the word "courses" used in the same sentense. They think you are serving those fuzzy animals for dinner ;)
• dizzydes 3y ago
  I was waiting to hear from someone else on this. We were planning on spending a decent chunk of our seed money on Meta Ads. After 3 verifications and repeated bans with no recourse we gave up. I don't think we can blame this on all AI customer management/support, either. Google Ads assigned us an account manager for the first 90 days, we've upped our spend because they gave us good guidance and we saw conversions. The irony that Meta remains a cesspit for fake news.
• toasted-subs 3y ago
  Honestly I feel like it would be a reasonable decision to have the government step in and give us a website to request unbanning accounts. A lot of these services seem so Integrated into living stopping people from using them seems like taking a rights away from people. Especially with digital laws being added in CA wouldn't be surprised if we as citizens get to control the digital oligarchs within the next 20 years.
• zmmmmm 3y ago
  What I find most frustrating about this is that they straight up lie to you. They don't actually review your account and the ban isn't permanent. The minute people in this situation get through to a human (one with any autonomy, anyway) the ban gets reversed. So it's all about the cost and efficiency and convenience for Facebook/Meta. I definitely think there need to be laws made about this. Because it's really clear that the market has no power to correct this behaviour - yet it can be utterly devastating to individuals when they have life long bans put in place on what are (whether you like it or not) pretty much essential online services.
  • RugnirViking 3y ago
    There exist laws about this, which provide a market solution. It's just that everybody has their fingers in their ears yelling about how big tech aren't monopolies so the existing laws aren't being applied. In an actual competetive environment, you would go to the next door buisness that didn't arbritrarily ban you/has actual people in their customer service...
    • shortrounddev2 3y ago
      There exists dozens if not hundreds of programmatic advertising companies you can go to to show banner ads, not to mention Google
      • pc86 3y ago
        How many of those let you advertise to 3 billion MAUs on Facebook, on Facebook?
  • jessriedel 3y ago
    But why is it not in Meta's interest to have a human take a quick look at this? Or ask the user to pay for a human review? How much can it cost, in human time? $20?
    • smsm42 3y ago
• helpfulmandrill 3y ago
  I had the same thing with Ebay. Tried to sell an old linguistics textbook. First thing I ever tried to sell, new account. Instantly banned. Refused to tell me why. Total lack of accountability. Guess I'm never buying anything from Ebay.
• sharts 3y ago
  This isn't just bad AI or ML. It's just straight up bad product management and development. Some small group of people decided to make this the behavior and implement it. Don't attribute to machines that which was clearly malice, ignorance, or apathy (or all of the above) by the builders.
  • eloisant 3y ago
    That's deliberately deciding so spend less on fighting fraud (i.e. no humans in the process) at the cost of collateral victims. This shouldn't be legal.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• gigatexal 3y ago
  The silver lining here seems to be that Meta deletes logs after 180 days? Shrug
• michaelbuckbee 3y ago
  At a previous job at an enterprise cybersecurity company, we were spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on ads across Facebook and Instagram and _constantly_ were having ads and posts flagged as being about "hacking".
• varispeed 3y ago
  This is only my experience. I had great organic reach for my page. I thought I will get even more if I advertise it. Big mistake. Advertising helped a bit, but the moment I stopped paying they cut my organic reach. I'll never touch advertising again. It seems to be designed for start ups with VC money to burn and not small business.
• Neil44 3y ago
  "The UK GDPR gives people the right not to be subject to solely automated decisions, including profiling, which have a legal or similarly significant effect on them." https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/individual-rights/automated-decision-making-and-profiling/what-does-the-uk-gdpr-say-about-automated-decision-making-and-profiling/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...
  • philipwhiuk 3y ago
    The right to have a human review a decision predates GDPR - it was part of the Data Protection Act.
• herbst 3y ago
  I've had my Facebook account for years, I've used it as Facebook in it's early days and as blank business account with real name and passport details later. My ad spent was several thousand dollars over the years, and even thought Facebook was billing me for wrong clicks (10-30% did not fit my criteria, mostly wrong country) I went back again to publish some ads. After a week or so Facebook suddenly banned all my ads about cotton masks my grandmum has sewn. I tried to publish one ad again and since then have been banned forever. No way to contact, no way to ask why. No warning and no rule changes at this point.
• qwerty456127 3y ago
  AIs should be globally banned from making final decisions. Whenever an AI makes a decision, it should be guaranteed that you can demand a human to actually review the case, evaluating evidence manually. It is also questionable whether lifetieme bans should be allowed to exist, let alone full bans like when Google's AI dislikes something in your app and you loose access to your GMail and everything forever (in my oppinion not even a terrorist deserves this).
  • teddyh 3y ago
    A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION — IBM slide, 1979
• throwme_123 3y ago
  Of course we can blame AI, lack of humans and stuff. But the good news is you'll never advertise again on Meta and you can inspire others to do the same. These giants have too much power and since the justice system that should break them up is corrupt or not willing to do the job, it is up the users to do it.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• JacobSeated 3y ago
  Regardless of the reason, of course not acceptable. We have to insist on complete transparency, and life-time bans should always be liftable through some sort of dialogue. It is impossible to have a productive relationship with someone that abuses AI to conduct reviews that should clearly have been done by a human. Facebook cannot be trusted. Period. Their conduct is extremely abusive. Same lack of proper review prevents people from restoring hacked accounts, even in cases where it is completely obvious that the accounts were hacked. E.g. The name and/or e-mail was changed by a user in a different country than the account owner. If Facebook has access to such sophisticated AI, then it is quite amazing that they cannot deduce (even without AI) that an account was hacked. A set of if statements in their code should be enough to check for typical suspicious circumstances. E.g. The user is suddenly in a different country, and happen to change their name (highly unusual and very suspicious circumstances)!!
  • darepublic 3y ago
    > set of if statements in their code should be enough to check for typical suspicious circumstances. I am not defending Facebook here but come on. There is at least some nuance you should acknowledge
• dalbasal 3y ago
  So... certainly with social media, the rules the rules and only we know the rulebook. The incentives are just stacked towards not having policies. First once you have a policy, that policy can be criticised. Nothing withstands criticism these days. Politics also lost its explicit policy statements for the same reason. If one politician has a policy plan, his opponent's "policy" will be a critique of his plan and that gives the opponent an edge. Second, once e have a policy, you need to implement it. FB is better resourced than all the others, but none of these "policies" are even designed to be implemented broadly. Vagueness just serves, and if you aren't vague you will regret it. If you are clear, there will be a ton of criticism of your clear policy. Then there will be criticism of your imperfect implementation. If you're vague and concommital, you can half implement a half baked plan plan and change or drop it when you want.
• wodenokoto 3y ago
  Ha! I’m at Pycon MEA and yesterday a speaker from Namibia was talking about how one of the hurdles in evangelizing Python in Africa was that people thought of dangerous snakes and didn’t like it.
  • reuven 3y ago
    I'm so jealous! I was supposed to be there (and give two talks), but had to cancel at the last moment. Sigh. I hope to attend next year.
• logicchains 3y ago
  There's a lot of debate about whether the first amendment (freedom of speech) should apply to private platforms like Facebook, but maybe such discussion should also include the sixth amendment (right to a fair judicial process), if we take the position that these rights are inherent things that society should guarantee, not just restrictions on what the government can do.
• mikojan 3y ago
  That is great news!
• geek_at 3y ago
  Meta is really the worst company I have dealt with in the past. We are trying to advertise with a budget of 700€ per month (in total over 50.000€) and they just can't figure out the payment process. First they wouldn't let us add credit cards or normal accounts, just Paypal.. okay Then (after many support calls and cases always by different agents of course) they activated our credit card. One payment got through then no more. Meanwhile on Meta side the "unpaid balance" is rising because they won't charge the card (support didn't help, mixed us up twice and invited us to a video call that was booked by someone else already) Total madness. They just won't let us pay them
• rexreed 3y ago
  Lesson learned: don't click on that Appeal button. That's the human confirmation they're looking for in the otherwise 100% automated system with no human in the loop.
  • qingcharles 3y ago
    YES! Do not click on any appeal buttons on Meta properties. It is a known trap. Read my post here that goes into detail about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37254898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37254898
• nabla9 3y ago
  Check if anyone who is competing with you has personal connections with Meta, or someone just don't like you. Meta staff have been hijacking Facebook, Insta accounts (and few dozen have been fired for doing so). It would be not surprising if some working for Meta, or their spouse or friend, is doing what you are doing and they are cutting your legs.
  • eesmith 3y ago
    From the link: "I’ve been in the computer industry for a while, and have no small number of contacts. Three friends who have worked at Meta (two current, one past) offered to check into this for me." Followed by a description of their failures.
    • nabla9 3y ago
      Yes, and some of those 'friends' may be the one who got him canned. The evidence of their involvement is already destroyed (180 day retention). Check for friends who compete and work with Meta.
      • eesmith 3y ago
        When are you going to option your movie script? That is, look at the benefit/risk. If someone does this and is caught, they could lose their job. The instigator must assume reuven wasn't going to notice this change within 180 days, and assume reuven doesn't have another contact at Meta who can figure things out. This only works because reuven does little advertising on Meta, but that means there isn't much benefit to the instigator. Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
        • nabla9 3y ago
          I understand what you are saying. On the other hand I think you don't get how common what I describe. People do this and get fired if found out, but rarely do. Meta fired only people who took bribes before doing nasty. If you mess with nobody users for personal gain, its seemingly non-issue for them.
• philipwhiuk 3y ago
  At no point does the author provide a single example of an advert they created. Does no-one else find this slightly fishy?
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • reuven 3y ago
    The last ads that I created were 2-3 years ago. Some were advertising my paid courses on Python and Pandas. Others were advertising my free courses about regular expressions. Still others were advertising my mailing list. None of this comes even close to anything illegal, unless I'm massively mistaken.
• jbverschoor 3y ago
  I'm curious which images he used to advertise.
  • reuven 3y ago
    I think that any images I used came from their approved list of stock photos.
• foreigner 3y ago
  I'm Meta's defense, a Python and a Panda trained to work together would be really dangerous!
• jfoster 3y ago
  On Facebook I get ridiculous amounts of crypto scam ads falsely claiming to be associated with Elon Musk or his companies. I think even simple text based filters could catch them. It's been happening for years. I keep thinking surely they'll have it under control soon. Seems they are busy creating filters & banning accounts, just not the right ones.
• RecycledEle 3y ago
  We need a social credit system that is more like what eBay feedback was like in 1996 than what China has today. Everyone who has ever had feelings with me should be able to leave feedback on me, and I should be able to leave feedback on everyone I ever dealt with. It should be illegal to share a calculated score for money. Instead, a scripting interface similar to Excel formulas should allow us all to write out own metrics for who is a good guy and who is a bad guy.
• sydneycatalyst 3y ago
  I a digital forensics investigator who owns a small business. I was also banned for life from advertising. Not told why but the only thing I’ve changed is that I started teaching a social media evidence course at university - then almost immediately banned. Facebook/Meta don’t accept messages from people banned for life. The NSW small business ombudsman won’t touch the case because they only will resolve cases with companies that have Australian contact details. My history on Facebook is pretty boring. Family photos and news about my advocacy for blind and low vision people and the occasional work post. Pretty mundane stuff. This article is useful because I thought I was the only one. I’m not sure about my next steps. I am probably required to notify the uni but I also don’t want to create trouble for them.
  • 15457345234 3y ago
    > I’m not sure about my next steps Write to your minister of parliament. The net is closing in a bit too obviously and this 'there's nothing you can do, government will obey tech' narrative isn't going to survive. That's a narrative, it isn't reality. Don't let it become reality. It's only tech. If you pulled all the plugs and went back to usenet and 486s the world would still turn.
• Zetobal 3y ago
  90% of these posts are just sob stories because they fucked up and he fucked up at least with "waiting a year". Makes absolutely no sense to me.
  • reuven 3y ago
    Yeah, it's totally my fault that I didn't jump right away to find out why I had been banned from an advertising platform, when I'm running a one-person business and hadn't been advertising for several years.
    • Zetobal 3y ago
      1 year.
      • reuven 3y ago
        I hadn't advertised in several years. I noticed the ban, and then didn't do anything about it for one year.
        • Zetobal 3y ago
          So you are saying it wasn't really necessary for years to advertise. You decided after receiving an injust ban to not appeal for over a year besides your knowledge about other horror stories. Now your life depends on being able to advertise on Facebook and the way to go forward was writing a bad sob story gladly obfuscating your own failings in it. Looks like a lot of blaming and no self reflection.
          • reuven 3y ago
            Actually, I saw that I was banned, and thought, "OK, I'll deal with this another time." I hadn't heard horror stories. I didn't know that there was any such thing as a lifetime ban. It never occurred to me that if I didn't act soon, it would make a difference. I don't think that it's a sob story at all. I think that it's (a) incredibly funny that they would make such a mistake, (b) a combination of bad UI and bad service on Meta's part, and (c) crazy that even three Meta employees cannot undo such a ban. So yes: It was my fault that I didn't notice or care faster. And sure, you can call this a sob story. But I think that beyond my personal experience and issues here, this points to some deeper problems with Meta, as well as other large companies that depend on AI.
• Oras 3y ago
  Out of interest, what was the text title of the ad? and which image did you use to advertise? I'm not defending Meta and I agree that AI shouldn't used to review appeals, but the title is clearly a clickbait. Based on the article, they banned you because AI thought you're trading live animals not because you're teaching Python. So I'm curious to see the original title and ad image.
  • reuven 3y ago
    I have no idea which ad caused me trouble, or when. The ban happened in June 2022, and I noticed it in July 2023. The most recent ads I ran were probably 2-3 years previous to that, and to the best of my recollection, they used videos of me and/or stock photos that Facebook officially offered and approved.
• estebarb 3y ago
  In the other hand, you can post explicit hate speech against homosexuals in Facebook and they will reject your report automatically. I would have expected that FB actually uses all that NLP research...
• intended 3y ago
  This is super weird. The review loop should at least have gone to a person. It’s hard to assume both review loops missed something like that. I have never put ads on FB - I would assume that there is at least a tagging, or topic orientation for ads (Education, Coding, CS, IT, for example). The fact that the full ban came so quickly after the appeal is also very strange.
• yayr 3y ago
  this is seriously such a hostile behaviour pattern of most tech companies. It should be banned by EU and US regulation
• ezoe 3y ago
  As we improve the accuracy of automation and now the neural network, once laughed as a toy idea, does cough up something half decent, people ask "But who take a responsibility when things get wrong?" My answer is nobody. These software giants never take a responsibility of wrongful automated result for decades but we keep using it. Meta doesn't have an incentive to fix this case. It costs them manual labor of many manhours that outweigh the ad revenue from this person. It probably keep this way.
  • faichai 3y ago
    It seems the notions of accountability and responsibility have broken down when it comes to AI. Any given AI should have clear lines of delegated responsibility from an accountable flesh and bones human. Any decision made by an AI should be marked as such and provide a channel for the decision to be reviewed by said human or a human delegate thereof should scope (in Meta’s case) be large. If it’s too much work to manage the reviews, tough shit.
• FedorinoGore 3y ago
  This is a hilarious and kinda obvious mistake to allow in your system (if you work with data for couple of month at least it is). But it is also very surprising, that this process is not being turned into a stream of profit and good pr. Like, allow paid human supervision....
• kunley 3y ago
  I wonder if anyone is recognizing that the fail here is in removing a human element in the support and instead relying on a far inferior technology to handle cases it can't handle. In other words, the problem is that suddenly a machine is not only making laws but also executing them. But we as a society did not agree to hand our laws to the machine. Luckily, the area where these laws apply, is very narrow atm - it is only the fb space. But the tendency seems alarming.
  • codingdave 3y ago
    From the comments, I think everyone here is recognizing that removing the human element is the problem. What I think is missed by some is that the human element is also the solution - don't use products whose support processes are like this.
  • redog 3y ago
    The article states that the evidence was removed as well. A human wouldn't have had anything to review no wonder they got rid of him.
    • qingcharles 3y ago
      My gf last year had a Tumblr account that was banned for unknown reasons. I finally got hold of someone in the C-Suite to look at it and they said they couldn't do anything because when you get banned they delete all the data that caused the ban, so there was nothing to review?
• megous 3y ago
  I mean who cares. Some website blocked some person from spending money on advertising on their platform. This person who already has their own website and a lot of means to propagate whatever they wish and conduct business on the Internet in many other ways. It happens all, the, time. Also this non-sense is repetitive here, with nothing new to add, nothing technical, nothing intersting. Just useless filler content, to induce some fake indignation towards some useless entertainment platform that will change nothing.
  • SeanLuke 3y ago
    According to Statista, Facebook is approximately 1/5 of all global ad revenue. That's not just "some website".
    • megous 3y ago
      Yes it is. Just advertise on the other 4/5.
  • vitro 3y ago
    Until it happens to you.
    • megous 3y ago
      No, I don't care. I removed myself from Facebook before instagram was even a thing. Only thing I'd be pissed about would be ISP censorship, or someone taking away my domain, but there are strict rules around that already, so I don't worry. Anything else is pretty much just inconvenience and the cost of doing business.
• deagle50 3y ago
  Outrageous. Bans like this without clear proof of violation should be illegal.
• deagle50 3y ago
  AI trained with python banned python ads?
• peteridah 3y ago
  I just want to say thank you for your python courses. I learned a lot over the years from your teaching style.
  • reuven 3y ago
    I'm so delighted to hear it! Thanks for letting me know.
• cowsandmilk 3y ago
  I hang out in the whitewater community on Facebook and there’s tons of stories about bans for selling dagger kayaks because the systems believe you’re selling weapons. https://www.dagger.com/us/ https://www.dagger.com/us/
  • reuven 3y ago
    Wow, what a fantastic example.
• felipemesquita 3y ago
  I got the exact same permanent ban for supposedly violating Facebook’s advertising policies, but I’ve never ran a single ad there. My account was unused for about five years, when I recently logged in to try the WhatsApp API, I got an email asking for a document to confirm my identity. I sent the email and received a successful response. About a week later I received an e-mail of a permanent ban from fb ads. Annoyingly, even though I had no plans to advertise there, I can’t generate a system user and get a longer than two months access token for my WhatsApp api. Also, my business (registered within my personal account and I’m the sole member) has full advertising capabilities. TLDR - I got permanently banned form ads without ever running an ad - due to the add ban I can’t create a _system user_ and so my WhatsApp api tokens are limited to the two month extensions allowed on the temporary tokens - my dev/business within my one account can advertise on fb normally - obviously there nothing resembling support from fb
• tim333 3y ago
  Going forward probably the answer to dumb AI which can't figure if python is snakes or code, is smarter AI. I mean FB and Google are unlikely to suddenly hire thousands more smart people to sort this but already AI like ChatGTP seems smart enough to do a reasonable job on understanding "why was I banned?" and "no, code not wild animals" etc.
• nologic01 3y ago
  Extrapolate this type of "unfortunate incident" to medicine, finance, insurance, policing, education, corporate hiring etc. where automation and "AI" is supposed to slash costs and improve efficiency and ponder what kind of society we are heading towards and why. There is nothing wrong with using technology to empower humans (in this case Meta employees) to be more efficient in processing information. But removing the human from the loop in matters that affect other humans (whether in small or major ways) is a disastrous direction. Coincidentally on the frontpage of the Financial Times today: "Meta’s Yann LeCun argues against premature AI regulation".
  • syndicatedjelly 3y ago
    > "Meta’s Yann LeCun argues against premature AI regulation". Let AI moderation commit genocide once, shame on Facebook. Let AI moderation continue to go unregulated, and... https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-part-i-the-setup https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-part-i-the-setup
• ht85 3y ago
  Were you selling 2 or 3 pythons?
• dghughes 3y ago
  This reminds me of Instagram which I rarely use but one time when I did it indicated that I had been blocked for some reason. You have to take a picture of yourself yes a selfie (yuck) and send it to Instagram. The funny thing is I have no selfies on Instagram so what are they using or comparing my selfie to? I was unblocked and that was that no idea what happened.
  • redog 3y ago
    > what are they using or comparing my selfie to? A graph database that is more you to them than you are you to them. You know meta things.
• decafbad 3y ago
  I remember from twenty years ago, Amazon recommended a book for dementia patients, related to purchase of an AS/400 manual. Because of the name similarity between the IT author and other book's illustrator. We couldn't move one step forward.
• graphitout 3y ago
  I can understand your frustration. I was banned from Google ads and to this day I have no clue why. I was selling a speech recognition product. I appealed once, but it didn't get anywhere. These big companies don't care much about small users and can be quite nasty in their language. They have no interest to make the process fair because they have all the power.
• dhfbshfbu4u3 3y ago
  Not surprised by this at all. “Animal trading” is such a touchy category within Meta. Once you get flagged for this, you can basically kiss your account goodbye. It is impossible to get support, even in cases like this where it clearly has nothing to do with animals. Meta simply will not touch it. There are other categories like this too. Ultimately it is easier/safer for Meta to just wholesale ban any use of terms even if it seems really stupid. This will only continue as Meta continues its exit from detailed ad targeting. Google is doing the same thing too.
  • eh_why_not 3y ago
    > This will only continue as Meta continues its exit from detailed ad targeting. Google is doing the same thing too. Meta and Google are exiting "detailed ad targeting"? How so?
    • dhfbshfbu4u3 3y ago
      Both companies are pulling way back on targeting categories and have been for a couple years now. Most of it rolls up under privacy these days but when they started they were pretty coy about it. Eventually, they'll exit entirely. You can see this in the ad products they are both pushing: Advantage+ on the Meta side and PerformanceMax at Google. Marketers ability to target with these ad products is severely curtailed. They are opaque black boxes at best.
  • btbuildem 3y ago
    It sounds like an interesting opportunity for a DDOS / social engineering type attack
    • dhfbshfbu4u3 3y ago
      Oh indeed. Some activists do this already and it is very painful for advertisers who get hit this way.
• realusername 3y ago
  I've also been banned from advertising on Facebook. The story is pretty funny, I spent a little bit amount of money to try a campaign, none really converted so I gave up. Then 6 months later (yes you read that right), Facebook banned the completely inactive account which had done nothing during those 6 months. They do still send me ToS updates by email though like it somehow matters and that I'm somehow bound to it.
• gertrunde 3y ago
  I suspect the only solution for these cases is some form of small claims court / independent arbitration process (and not just for Meta, but for all of the FAANG bunch and their like). Can you imagine a big tech employee having to say to a judicial person, "The system automatically blocked the user, then automatically denied their appeal, and we have no way to know why, because there is no evidence or other supporting data because we deleted it all." Surely any form of arbitration or legal scrutiny would turn that into an instant default judgement against the tech giant? And while I would generally support the right of any business to choose who to do business with, there comes a point when a business becomes somewhat monopolistic, and a gatekeeper of access to the market, at which point these kinds of decisions need to have a reasonable route of appeal. It remains to be seen if the behaviour of these companies will change in response to legislation, for example the EU Digital Markets Act has some obligations relating to "Allowing business users to access end users" that may be relevant.
• nojvek 3y ago
  Perhaps their AI is just a big black box, it outputs if banned or not, no reasoning. No one has cracked proper reasoning AI based like human commonsense. Human commonsense is legit really hard.
• awinter-py 3y ago
  FB's enforcement style is shitty but IMO the larger point here is that they're no longer built for small business advertisement if you're an agency or if you're large enough to have an account manager, things go smoothly if you have facebook / insta cred and try to build a following on top, you're probably also okay but if you get on there to build a business from scratch, and don't have the budget or creative team, it doesn't work for you. I tried last year, learned some tricks, but ultimately came away with 'this isn't what my business needs right now'
• queuebert 3y ago
  The elephant in the room is that this happens because these companies are too big. They command such monopolies over their walled gardens that everyone must advertise with them, so there is no requirement to provide customer service to any but the largest accounts. With many smaller companies in a competitive environment, some would be forced to provide a good customer experience to differentiate their service. Theoretically, at least. (Note the advertisers are the customers, not the users.)
  • swayvil 3y ago
    So there should be a size limit corporations. Too big and it starts interfering with the system. The system that maintains the lives of us citizens. I think that's straightforward enough.
• btbuildem 3y ago
  It sounds like the way to advertise on there is a network of fake accounts run by bots. AI vs AI type of approach.
• hoofhearted 3y ago
  I had the same issue a few months ago. My Facebook account was the admin on a page for a business that we had for 10 years. At some point in the last year, FB apparently flagged my advertising account and seeked request. I didn't respond in time, and that account is now permenantly banned from advertising with no way to request a review lol.. Whatever! I figured the universe was telling me that the good old days of advertising to real people on FB were gone. I did however want to start gathering insights on potential audiences with the Meta pixel; so I just simply created a new Facebook account, and then a new page with 0 advetising history. That seemed to work, and haven't had any issues.. Old account is still flagged; and I just have to flip between my accounts when I actually use FB.
• silent_cal 3y ago
  Similar story: I had an old account locked and I wanted to delete it. They asked me security questions about random Facebook friends to verify my identity, and I had no idea who they were. So I sent in my driver's license photo, which was rejected for an unknown reason.. and around and around it went. I ended up finding a random Facebook corporate email address online and I just kept spamming it in hopes that a human would actually read it and do something about it. To my surprise, it actually worked.
  • s3p 3y ago
    One time my instagram account was suspended for suspicious bot-like activity. submitted all the appeal forms, sent them photos of my drivers license, sent them a photo of my face with a custom handwritten note held next to it (which they literally asked for), but no response. Ended up making a facebook business page and running an ad to get access to FB business support. They were the ones who finally helped me get unbanned. My FB business did get permanently banned, but I only cared about the instagram account anyway :)
    • silent_cal 3y ago
      Clever!
• thedudeabides5 3y ago
  the machine is down
• josephcsible 3y ago
  Water companies, emergency rooms, and the Post Office basically aren't allowed to ban people. Meta is so big that they shouldn't be allowed to either.
  • _DeadFred_ 3y ago
    My mother had cancer and was unable to get to her mailbox in a timely manner. The Post Office turned off her mail. She appealed and upset the local postmaster. Over 3 years after her death I still can't get mail at that address.
• miki123211 3y ago
  Other similar cases I'm aware of. * The Scunthorpe problem, AOL didn't let users set their hometown to Scunthorpe because of the "cunt" substring. This is a classic. * Amazon banning sales of Guns N' Roses merch (because guns). * People named Miranda having issues with bank transfers (because of the substring "Iran"). * Some games displaying the nickname "Nasser" as "N*er", suggesting that it is the n word. Alexa not being able to say "pussycat" properly, which is an issue to this day. * Parental control software that filtered on "anal" in URLs, which also affected "analysis". * Another parental control software that removed any file with "sex" in the name. This also included "sysext". I know of a school whose entire computer room got bricked because of that bug, the IT person decided it would be a good idea to update all the computers to Windows 10 at once, without checking for software incompatibilities first. * The British politician Dominic Cummings not being able to set up a Twitter account.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • dotnet00 3y ago
    This reminds me of middle school while I was temporarily in a country with heavily censored internet, where, I couldn't even search for info about sexual reproduction in plants for an assignment without a VPN because they filtered on "sex". So while I couldn't find info on actually innocent topics, it had been trivial to play around with search terms to find porn that the filter couldn't catch.
    • pierat 3y ago
      > temporarily in a country with heavily censored internet So, the USA huh? For "children" (read: under 18), schools are some of the most despotic, censorious, and anti-democratic institution we have, and we send young humans from 6-18 through this meatgrinder. During health class, our teacher was unable to see anything about "breast cancer", even though various cancers were in the discussion topic. Didn't matter. "Breast" is a evil horrible sexualized word that we must never allow anybody ever see... Even though you're legal to consent to sex at 16 in most states, and 17 in the rest. Even the community college had the same blocks on it as the local high school. By definition, people who attend are 18+ , and yet treated like 3rd graders. It may not be as censored on your own connection (cell, cable, fiber, etc), but this country absolutely does heavily censor, and they censor humans when most vulnerable and under state compulsion to attend.
• sol8 3y ago
  I've had a python code sharing post blocked on Facebook because it "violates community standards". If I remember right it was a script to search a word doc and highlight certain words by changing the color. Their bots are stupid.
• Rastonbury 3y ago
  This happens to many many small businesses, they unilaterally ban you for nothing shady. I'm talking about mom and pop stores, businesses who have been using FB ads for ages. Suddenly poof, that marketing channel and the revenue that comes with it is gone and is not appealable.
• lakomen 3y ago
  He's got friends at Meta. What do people do who don't have friends at Meta?
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• Rebuff5007 3y ago
  What is the point of having all the "greatest" AI scientists in the world if you can't solve meaningful problems of these systems when used in production... This is a product failure, an engineering failure, a research failure, etc. etc. I don't mean to pick on just this one exampl as there are instances in all of big tech [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil...
• __mharrison__ 3y ago
  I guess now that Reuven is banned, I should jump on this ;) (We're friends who both happen to be Python and Pandas trainers.)
• browningstreet 3y ago
  When I created a new Instagram account for a project I'm working on, it instantly locked my account and said it was restricted. It takes you to a page where you can submit a form asking for a review, and when you submit that forms it errors out. Sigh.
  • qingcharles 3y ago
    Don't submit the form. It's a known trap to permaban you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37254898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37254898
• __mharrison__ 3y ago
  A couple of questions. Does Python run into this as well? Do Facebook ads for technical content work. If you have successfully done this, I would love to chat.
• dbg31415 3y ago
  Remember when Facebook just flat out deleted Native American's accounts because they thought their names weren't "real people names?" These guys are shitty, always have been shitty, always will be shitty. They don't have good product manages who research use-cases and examples, they don't have good QA or test data, and their customer support isn't empowered to fix the issues customers report. Just a shitty company through and through. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/facebooks-name-policy-strikes-again-time-native-americans https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/facebooks-name-policy-...
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• kayxspre 3y ago
  I will never understand why Facebook isn't willing to take action against known phishing pages/advertisers, and even let them boost post with advertising, while legitimate advertisers get much less impression. At one point, a scam about high-return investment targeting elders are very common. The same applies to online gambling (it may be legal in many countries like the Philippines, but not in my country) and 419 scam (known in my country as "call center scam") Another annoying things is the use of affiliate links to online marketplace (Lazada is a notable example; sometimes it can lead to a more sinister destination, such as malware-dropping site) masquerading as a link to news site, which was often spammed in a comment below the news post. They even typed in my language even though the account appears to be based in Indonesia or the Philippines. I have heard numerous people reporting this, but so far the situation isn't improving at all (and can even get worse)
  • colpabar 3y ago
    It's pretty simple really, they allow all that because it makes them money. If that ever changes, they'll crack down.
• cvccvroomvroom 3y ago
  Needs someone to submit an "oops." When I started there, the mere act of visiting the 2FA page caused an irreversible hellban... not once, not twice, but 3x. Each page on Facebook is really a Hack controller with many layers of abstraction and various byzantine messes behind them.
• efitz 3y ago
  I can’t believe people are making these tools out of endangered species.
• punnerud 3y ago
  I guess this message was through Message within your account? If you check the sender they just created the account, and the link looks like Facebook. I get this within a couple of hours after my first advertisement on a new page. This is probably phishing, and I guess it was not Facebook contacting you in the first place.
• selcuka 3y ago
  In a company I worked for 20+ years ago the IT set up an email "spam filter" that used a big list of regexes, but the problem was the filter ran on the raw message, so it also filtered SMTP headers. I noticed this when an email that was routed through smtp123.essex.hp.com or something similar never arrived to my mailbox.
• bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  huh, I thought this automated suspension from twitter was ridiculous - but at least it wasn't permanent https://medium.com/p/44664b6b2b04/ https://medium.com/p/44664b6b2b04/ - be warned reading, crude language found.
• Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  [dead]
• EchoReflection 3y ago
  Meta is an addictive toxic shithole and a blight on the world. I deleted my Facebook account about 5 years ago and my life has been way better ever since. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-meaning-life/201404/7-ways-facebook-is-bad-your-mental-health https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-m...