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It looks like facebook disputed this story > Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesperson, responded on Twitter on Wednesday saying the screenshots are from early Marc

It looks like facebook disputed this story > Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesperson, responded on Twitter on Wednesday saying the screenshots are from early March “when the ad account was briefly disabled for a few days due to an unrelated payments issue.” > Osborne added: “The ads themselves were never rejected as they were never set by Signal to run. The ad account has been available since early March, and the ads that don’t violate our policies could have run since then.” This is from: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/06/facebook-and-signal-are-fighting-over-an-ad-campaign.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/06/facebook-and-signal-are-figh... Either way, it's a great publicity stunt by Signal.

latchkey 4y ago
Oh right, we should definitely expect to see more ads like this then... uh huh.
- pflenker 4y ago
  You can at the same time be against the ads and against misleading publicity stunts.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    It isn't misleading though. It is exposing what really happens under the covers. They didn't have to run the ads or even be truthful about being blocked. Fact is, they would have been blocked and the ads are indeed targeted. All of the details in those ads, are true. Even if FB doesn't collect the data itself, any time you shop online, you get added to buckets and those buckets get shared when the seller uploads the target data back to FB and then the process starts all over again.
  - diogenes-pithos 4y ago
    Why are you accepting Facebook's PR narrative as true? From the article (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/06/facebook-and-signal-are-fighting-over-an-ad-campaign.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/06/facebook-and-signal-are-figh...): > Signal countered on Twitter that it “absolutely did” try to run the ads. “The ads were rejected, and Facebook disabled our ad account. These are real screenshots, as Facebook should know.” I'm not saying Signal's side is necessarily true, but you're making an affirmative claim that Signal is performing a "misleading publicity stunt", by taking faith on Facebook's narrative as true. *edit: posted the wrong link
    - Mistletoe 4y ago
      History has shown me to expect that Facebook PR is actually more likely to be untrue than true. But that started at the top. https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-lying-about-facebook https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-lying-about-fac...
      - fxtentacle 4y ago
        Great article. Thanks :)
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  Interestingly, there are a lot of ads that are like this… just subtler. If you’ve ever seen tee shirts and similar products in ads that say things like “This Kansas City redhead likes their coffee with whiskey” or some other uncanny specific junk, thats how this works. There is a whole new category of products based around these ads. I don’t know what they’re actually called actually, but it was on HN sometime in the last year. They’re usually tee-shirts and other “made on demand” products, and they use the magic of software to generate images for the ads, and products that produce to a ton of permutations, and target ad demographics that fit all of description. The products aren’t real until someone clicks the link, and then software knows which ad you clicked and generates it for that permutation. The whole idea that the un-canny match will be enough to attract buyers for the novelty, and they eschew the inventory risk by just printing on demand.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    I've got a bit of experience in this area. I built an ad engine for Kink.com (NSFW) which had ads placed on even higher traffic sites like PH. I built the original pixel tracker for Marin Software, and @stickfigure and I built GearLaunch, which was the backend that sold those t-shirts you're talking about. Needless to say, you don't see as many t-shirt ads any more because FB cracked down on it... not because of the targeted ads, but because it became a copyright infringement game and it was easy to block the people creating the ads (and shirts) as they were all outside of the US (ie: Vietnam). That and thankfully FB didn't want their wall to be all ads for t-shirts, lol.
choppaface 4y ago
“the ads that don’t violate our policies” They would have denied the ads anyways. The cited FB spox is news not for adding facts but rather for its laden speciousness.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  Are we really at the level of hate for Facebook/Meta where people are justifying just making stuff up about them? "The accusations are untrue, but I think they would have been true, so that's basically the same thing." Complain about these ads being banned when it actually happens, not when Signal lies about it because you think that's what Facebook would have done.
  - diogenes-pithos 4y ago
    Why do you believe Signal is lying about it, and Facebook is not?
    - cmeacham98 4y ago
      If Facebook was lying here, you'd think Signal would speak up about it. It would be a HUGE PR win for them, I can already imagine the headlines ("Facebook denied their ads, banned their account, and then lied to cover it up"). It would be extremely easy for them to provide a screenshot of an email from Facebook or similar saying the ad was declined, so why don't they? Secondly, while I'm no fan of Meta/Facebook (and think they're a net negative for the world), I trust them way more than Signal to get basic facts right in their statement. Facebook is a massive corporation with lawyers and PR people who know that outright lying about something like this is a horrible and possibly illegal idea. It seems pretty obvious to me here that Signal expected Facebook not to comment on this and for them to net a juicy PR win. On the other hand, Facebook has no reason to believe Signal would stay quiet after being accused of lying if they had a shred of evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately Signal achieved their goal anyways, because we still have people like choppaface coming out of the woodwork to defend them because "Facebook would have done it anyways".
diogenes-pithos 4y ago
I think it'd be helpful for discussion to include Signal's dispute of Facebook's disputation of the story in your comment: > We absolutely did try to run these. The ads were rejected, and Facebook disabled our ad account. These are real screenshots, as Facebook should know.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  Are there other screenshots I'm not aware of that weren't posted on the Signal blog (as their response uses the plural)? The only screenshot I can find shows a disabled account (not any rejected ads), and also seems to support Facebook's side of the story (you can see a banner in the background saying something about their "current balance", which would imply what Facebook said was true).
  - jasonlotito 4y ago
    Facebook admits that they would have rejected a couple of the ads. See the grand-parents link.
    - cmeacham98 4y ago
      Facebook claims it would have rejected ads that "assert that you have a specific medical condition or sexual orientation", which seems like a fair/reasonable policy to me, and accepted the others.
      - WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
        > Facebook claims it would have rejected ads that "assert that you have a specific medical condition or sexual orientation" If I'm reading the picture correctly: Facebook collects and processes data about our medical conditions and sexual orientation. We've seen how FB allows ads targeting those metrics to be constructed - but FB also indicates it might get grumpy if those ads are posted. Further, FB is not revealing who it makes that data available to or even explaining why it collect+processes our Med and SO data in the first place. Does anything I've said here seem unlikely?

latchkey 4y ago

Oh right, we should definitely expect to see more ads like this then... uh huh.

pflenker 4y ago
You can at the same time be against the ads and against misleading publicity stunts.
- latchkey 4y ago
  It isn't misleading though. It is exposing what really happens under the covers. They didn't have to run the ads or even be truthful about being blocked. Fact is, they would have been blocked and the ads are indeed targeted. All of the details in those ads, are true. Even if FB doesn't collect the data itself, any time you shop online, you get added to buckets and those buckets get shared when the seller uploads the target data back to FB and then the process starts all over again.
- diogenes-pithos 4y ago
  Why are you accepting Facebook's PR narrative as true? From the article (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/06/facebook-and-signal-are-fighting-over-an-ad-campaign.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/06/facebook-and-signal-are-figh...): > Signal countered on Twitter that it “absolutely did” try to run the ads. “The ads were rejected, and Facebook disabled our ad account. These are real screenshots, as Facebook should know.” I'm not saying Signal's side is necessarily true, but you're making an affirmative claim that Signal is performing a "misleading publicity stunt", by taking faith on Facebook's narrative as true. *edit: posted the wrong link
  - Mistletoe 4y ago
    History has shown me to expect that Facebook PR is actually more likely to be untrue than true. But that started at the top. https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-lying-about-facebook https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-lying-about-fac...
    - fxtentacle 4y ago
      Great article. Thanks :)
vineyardmike 4y ago
Interestingly, there are a lot of ads that are like this… just subtler. If you’ve ever seen tee shirts and similar products in ads that say things like “This Kansas City redhead likes their coffee with whiskey” or some other uncanny specific junk, thats how this works. There is a whole new category of products based around these ads. I don’t know what they’re actually called actually, but it was on HN sometime in the last year. They’re usually tee-shirts and other “made on demand” products, and they use the magic of software to generate images for the ads, and products that produce to a ton of permutations, and target ad demographics that fit all of description. The products aren’t real until someone clicks the link, and then software knows which ad you clicked and generates it for that permutation. The whole idea that the un-canny match will be enough to attract buyers for the novelty, and they eschew the inventory risk by just printing on demand.
- latchkey 4y ago
  I've got a bit of experience in this area. I built an ad engine for Kink.com (NSFW) which had ads placed on even higher traffic sites like PH. I built the original pixel tracker for Marin Software, and @stickfigure and I built GearLaunch, which was the backend that sold those t-shirts you're talking about. Needless to say, you don't see as many t-shirt ads any more because FB cracked down on it... not because of the targeted ads, but because it became a copyright infringement game and it was easy to block the people creating the ads (and shirts) as they were all outside of the US (ie: Vietnam). That and thankfully FB didn't want their wall to be all ads for t-shirts, lol.

choppaface 4y ago

“the ads that don’t violate our policies” They would have denied the ads anyways. The cited FB spox is news not for adding facts but rather for its laden speciousness.

cmeacham98 4y ago
Are we really at the level of hate for Facebook/Meta where people are justifying just making stuff up about them? "The accusations are untrue, but I think they would have been true, so that's basically the same thing." Complain about these ads being banned when it actually happens, not when Signal lies about it because you think that's what Facebook would have done.
- diogenes-pithos 4y ago
  Why do you believe Signal is lying about it, and Facebook is not?
  - cmeacham98 4y ago
    If Facebook was lying here, you'd think Signal would speak up about it. It would be a HUGE PR win for them, I can already imagine the headlines ("Facebook denied their ads, banned their account, and then lied to cover it up"). It would be extremely easy for them to provide a screenshot of an email from Facebook or similar saying the ad was declined, so why don't they? Secondly, while I'm no fan of Meta/Facebook (and think they're a net negative for the world), I trust them way more than Signal to get basic facts right in their statement. Facebook is a massive corporation with lawyers and PR people who know that outright lying about something like this is a horrible and possibly illegal idea. It seems pretty obvious to me here that Signal expected Facebook not to comment on this and for them to net a juicy PR win. On the other hand, Facebook has no reason to believe Signal would stay quiet after being accused of lying if they had a shred of evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately Signal achieved their goal anyways, because we still have people like choppaface coming out of the woodwork to defend them because "Facebook would have done it anyways".

diogenes-pithos 4y ago

I think it'd be helpful for discussion to include Signal's dispute of Facebook's disputation of the story in your comment: > We absolutely did try to run these. The ads were rejected, and Facebook disabled our ad account. These are real screenshots, as Facebook should know.

cmeacham98 4y ago
Are there other screenshots I'm not aware of that weren't posted on the Signal blog (as their response uses the plural)? The only screenshot I can find shows a disabled account (not any rejected ads), and also seems to support Facebook's side of the story (you can see a banner in the background saying something about their "current balance", which would imply what Facebook said was true).
- jasonlotito 4y ago
  Facebook admits that they would have rejected a couple of the ads. See the grand-parents link.
  - cmeacham98 4y ago
    Facebook claims it would have rejected ads that "assert that you have a specific medical condition or sexual orientation", which seems like a fair/reasonable policy to me, and accepted the others.
    - WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
      > Facebook claims it would have rejected ads that "assert that you have a specific medical condition or sexual orientation" If I'm reading the picture correctly: Facebook collects and processes data about our medical conditions and sexual orientation. We've seen how FB allows ads targeting those metrics to be constructed - but FB also indicates it might get grumpy if those ads are posted. Further, FB is not revealing who it makes that data available to or even explaining why it collect+processes our Med and SO data in the first place. Does anything I've said here seem unlikely?