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Meta bans ads for Virginia Woolf play in Spain
- jmclnx 11d agoWhy meta is not fully banned in the EU is beyond me :) I know banning or forcing meta to obey laws in the US is impossible due to bribes (political contributions), but in the EU I would think meta could at the very least be reined in.
- ActionHank 11d agoWe just need to start pirate streams of football games and it will be gone within the week.
- fooqux 11d agoI'm not saying it's not bad in the USA (because it is) but if you think there's no corruption or bribing in EU politics then I don't know what to say.
- 1attice 11d agoAlthough both continents are presently losing themselves to fascism, quantity still has a quality all its own.
- ericmay 11d agoYou're on the right track but instead of losing themselves to fascism what you should more accurately be pointing out, in my opinion, is that in general societies are becoming a lot more open to authoritarian ideologies, whether that's communism, fascism, or similar.
- mminer237 11d agoThis actually is a result of Meta being forced to obey EU law. Not sure why the article didn't explain things at all, but Regulation (EU) 2024/900 greatly restricts political advertising with typical vagueness, so Meta is enforcing a broad ban to ensure they comply.
- tygon 11d agoInformation like this should be front-and-center. Call it malicious compliance if one wishes, but if there is one thing that is clear, Meta does not do anything (besides try and make money) without being forced to. A blanket ban on anything political does indeed mean a ban on all sides of an issue, even ones many would agree is positive.
- dgellow 11d agoThe comment you’re responding to and that you want front and center is plainly wrong. The regulation is about transparency and restricting targeted advertising technics for political advertising. That has nothing to do with the situation at hand, it is meta doing something on their own. And your point about Meta being forced to act is also wrong, companies aren’t just passive institutions that only react to regulations, they constantly take decisions and actions, and regularly manufacture that type of situation as a way to lobby regulators
- tantalor 11d ago> Not sure why the article didn't explain things at all The answer is right in front of your eyes: theguardian.com
- watwut 11d agoNo, showing ads for feminism or social issues related plays is not illegal in Europe. Nor fined. And it is practically practiced all around the Europe. This strategy of "we will lie about what the law enforces, so that we can blame the regulator instead of the company" is getting old.
- darkwater 11d ago> so Meta is enforcing a broad ban to ensure they comply. No. Meta enforces a broad ban because they don't want EU to regulate them, so they drag their feet and create the most possible "unwanted collateral damage" so people will get upset at the regulation instead of the company. So, pieces like this from The Guardian are surely needed.
- mhitza 11d agoWhy do you think so many big tech companies are registering subsidiaries in Ireland? (Aside form the "Double Irish" mechanism that used to be in vogue more than a decade ago). Plenty of hands seem to be well greased over there given how long it takes to issue fines for clear&cut violations of EU regulation.
- thesmtsolver2 11d agoSo, Meta should be banned because it followed EU law to ban some things? Wow, Europeans do have a penchant for recursively banning things :)
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- tt24 11d ago> Why meta is not fully banned in the EU is beyond me :) It’s pretty simple - the EU is unable to produce alternatives. This is because they don’t have the software talent for it. Any talent they do have immediately runs for the SF Bay Area of the United States at the first opportunity. You want good alternatives to Meta’s products? Pay engineers a competitive salary. And no, the lower cost of living doesn’t even remotely begin to make up for the difference in comp. Same with healthcare - it’s effectively free in the United States for people who have jobs, especially so for SWEs.
- boudin 11d agoWhy would you want alternative to meta's product ?
- durjfirk8rjrj 11d ago[dead]
- colingauvin 11d agoWe don't have to put up with this. We simply choose to. But our laws could be whatever we want them to be.
- tygon 11d agoUnfortunately, "we" is often those with the monetary means to make their voice heard.
- ericmay 11d agoWell you can also just stop using these products. I don't have or use Facebook, Instagram, Whats App, Reddit (since they removed old.reddit.com unless you have an account), TikTok, Snap, or anything else. Folks want Facebook or whatever to be regulated into some perfect idea they have in their heads of how it should work and how it should be regulated. Sorry, many people have many views on that, and you're never going to be happy with an outcome. Even this article - Facebook is complying with EU rules/regulations and now you're not happy that your voice isn't heard through your preferred form of political activism. If Facebook allows this content, they break EU laws, or they have to allow some content you disagree with and now you're mad. I don't know why people, right, left, or sideways keep putting up with this stuff.
- dgellow 11d agoThat has absolutely nothing to do with the EU regulation that requires to label political ads and restricts targeting technics
- ericmay 11d agoYes it does. You're using the product and seeing the ad. You and others are mad that the product is complying with the regulation in a way you don't prefer. Stop using the product, and no ad is there to be seen and none of this matters.
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- martythemaniak 11d agoSounds like malicious compliance, they should get a fine for that as well.
- abirch 11d agoMaybe they should be forced to advertise "Careless People"
- roryirvine 11d agoAgreed. The other comments talking about the "heavy burden" of complying with local laws are missing the point - these ads would still be profitable for Meta even accounting for the costs of compliance (which, after all, are primarily one-off cost of implementing an automated system, and which can be amortised over many users). The fact that Meta is choosing instead to refuse the ads is therefore purely performative and likely intended to elicit precisely those sort of anti-regulation comments in their aid.
- Illniyar 11d agoProbably got better publicity with this ban then if they actually showed the ads. My money is that this is manufactured by some PR team. Possibly the Ad's text was purposely inflammatory (something like "overthrow the patriarchy" or something) so that they can say it was banned.
- jetrink 11d agoYes, Meta has consistently acted with integrity and has earned the benefit of the doubt in situations like these. It's safer to assume that the massive PR team working for this one-woman play in Spain has manufactured the whole thing, including the damning quotes, which the Guardian has somehow published without properly verifying.
- talon8635 11d agoThe guy you’re responding to is acknowledging FB’s crap practices and is suggesting a PR team may be using that to their advantage for guerrilla marketing. Not an insane suggestion, actually savvy and common in our modern rage landscape.
- pogopop77 11d agoWell now we know Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Meta, apparently.
- petcat 11d agoAppears to be a response to EU regulation in 2025 banning political/electoral advertising [1]: > Ending Political, Electoral and Social Issue Advertising in the EU in Response to Incoming European Regulation I guess rather than micro-regulate what constitutes "designed to influence an election/referendum, voting behavior, or a legislative/regulatory process", they just decided to refuse to run ads for anything potentially politically or socially "sensitive". I'm guessing that they also refuse to run ads for things that are less socially acceptable such as anti-feminism which I would say is a good thing. [1] https://about.fb.com/news/2025/07/ending-political-electoral-and-social-issue-advertising-in-the-eu/ https://about.fb.com/news/2025/07/ending-political-electoral...
- eithed 11d agoWhere did you get this from? I don't see anything in the article mentioning that specific regulation
- dgellow 11d agoThe regulation asks to label political ads and restricts how targeted they can be. Meta is doing the usual whining because that touches their bottom line a tiny bit, there is nothing serious in their complaint. Political ads aren’t banned in the EU Look at Meta argument in the article you linked to: > For example, the TTPA places extensive restrictions on ad targeting and delivery which would restrict how political and social issue advertisers can reach their audiences and lead to people seeing less relevant ads on our platforms. It is yet another threat to the principles of personalized advertising, ignoring the benefits to advertisers and the people they want to reach. They don’t complain advertising is banned, they complain they cannot achieve their dream of perfect “personalized advertising”. It’s such a lame complain
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- rayiner 11d agoHow is Meta supposed to police that line? In a democracy, influencing voting behavior is a key purpose of every “cause.”
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- aworks 11d agoIs this an EU or Spain issue? I regularly attend at a theatre in Chicago that has socially "sensitive" plays. I often see their ads on Facebook.
- dgellow 11d agoIt’s a meta problem
- mediaman 11d agoMeta does not do this outside the EU. It's a EU problem, and was caused by the EU's TTPA enacted last year which imposes heavy bureaucratic compliance process on any advertising that touches on any social or political topics. Meta doesn't do this outside the EU, and they didn't do this in the EU prior to the TTPA. Draw your own conclusions about whether this is a "meta problem."
- dgellow 11d agoIt’s Meta lobbying against EU regulations that requires to restrict how targeted politics ads can be. Making it a Meta problem
- frumplestlatz 11d agoFailure to comply with burdensome regulation in the way that you would prefer does not inherently make it the problem of those you have burdened.
- thunderfork 11d agoIt's their choice among other viable choices, so the "problem" is on their end. If the law mandated exactly one thing, then it'd be the law's problem. Since it doesn't, of course the choice of how to comply can be criticized.
- MiloLeo 11d ago
- sxp 11d agoThis is a shitty article. It doesn’t mention that the ban on social ads in the EU is due to their anti-free speech rules rather than a Meta specific policy. Meta is in favor of social activism ads in general but restricts them in the EU: https://about.fb.com/news/2025/07/ending-political-electoral-and-social-issue-advertising-in-the-eu/ https://about.fb.com/news/2025/07/ending-political-electoral...
- piltdownman 11d agoCompletely wrong. As per Meta's own guidelines, they simply require increased authenticity and transparency to run social issue ads that seek to influence public opinion through discussion, debate or advocacy for or against important topics, like health and civil and social rights. Meta literally spell it out with an equivalent example of advertising for an equivalent event - in this case a 'Civil Rights Exhibition' - on Slide 6 as eligible to run in the EU. https://efa-net.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/META_EU_Update_Ads_about_Social_issues_Elections_or_Politics.pdf https://efa-net.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/META_EU_Update...
- mediaman 11d agoThe article doesn't mention this, of course, but Meta prohibits "socially sensitive" advertising due to the EU's TTPA law, or "Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising." It imposes substantial bureaucratic compliance burden on advertising platforms to accept ads that deal with political issues. Meta decided that the revenue wasn't worth the compliance burden, so they do not accept any political advertising at all. They filter anything that smells like political or social issues, whether it be a campaign about anti-immigration or a play about feminism, because if they accept it they will get heavily fined by the EU. This is why Meta does not ban this advertising outside of the EU. It's a EU regulatory problem. The Register does not mention this anywhere in the article.
- dgellow 11d agoThat’s not true, you’re repeating the exact same wrong statement that has been said multiple times in the comments. The EU requires political ads to be labeled and restricts how targeted they can be. There is no EU regulation forcing Meta to ban anything. It’s very clearly a Meta problem, they are the ones deciding to make a blanket ban on ads for social issues (or at least say they are doing it, in practice that doesn’t seem to be the case, we don’t have a lack of such advertising in the EU)
- frumplestlatz 11d ago[dead]
- petcat 11d agoThe words of the TTPA: > liable and designed to influence the outcome of an election or referendum, voting behaviour or a legislative or regulatory process, at Union, national, regional or local level Now, we all agree feminism is an important civil rights topic and Virginia Woolf should be (and is) celebrated in the western world. But how can a platform that is explicitly not allowed to permit advertising for political or social causes be allowed to run paid ads about "feminism" especially while Equal Pay for Equal Work is such a hot-button political issue [1] all over Europe? So on the one hand we have the EU saying that no political or cause-centric advertising is permitted, and on the other hand the regulation is so overly broad that it is left up to everyone else to "figure it out". As a result, and as we see here, most social media has just chosen to ban it all completely. [1] https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/gender-equality/gender-equality-strategy_en https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/ju...
- latexr 11d ago> To resolve the situation, Meta recommended removing “key words” so that the text doesn’t appear to encourage activism. Move along now, don’t make a racket, don’t do anything to disturb count Zuckerberg and his masters. Go away with your progressive ideas like… Allowing women to express themselves.
- tescreal 11d agoWhy do people still bother with meta and others? In my community (outside USA), we use local websites and posted bills. There's no magic to it. >Network effects If people decide the cost/effort is too high, that will dissipate. >"Somebody else will" This amounts to a thought-terminating cliche at this point. You are responsible for your own choices, not what others do. It's the worst cop out, you are claiming no agency. *royal "you" where applicable. I find a lot of responses to these stories fiendish. It is not "privileged" to refuse a bad deal. If anything, it is "privileged" to say one has no choice. Sorry if this comes off as rantish... I find a lot of the conversation around big conglomerates tedious and usually just laden with overtly bad-faith arguments and lazy defeatism. Conversely, love or hate Woolf, surely there is enough respect for simple arts people should find these behaviors abhorrent.
- tantalor 11d ago> As a theatre we have to publicise our activities … and we have to make use of social media so that people are aware of cultural activities Does the theater have a right to advertise? Is FB obligated to carry their ads? Can FB unilaterally reject their ads, even without giving a reason? It seems only fair they control what happens inside their walled garden. But they are effectively holding their user population as hostages. Don't like the decision? You can fuck off.
- josefritzishere 11d ago[dead]