I just saw a #Mulvad VPN advertisement on #YouTube that gave me the impression that London, and the U.K. government, were censoring its advertisements.

I did some digging, and this is misinformation. No regulator censored anything. Not the government, nor #Ofcom, nor the #AdvertisingStandardsAuthority, were involved at all.

#Clearcast, a private organization owned by some of the telly channel companies, which works with advertisers pre-broadcast, had some questions and rejected the initial advert copy that was sent over. And the tale as told even by Mulvad itself doesn't have Mulvad even answering them before it went off in a sulk to YouTube crying 'government censorship'.

One of Clearcast's questions, I read, was what rape, murder, and paedophilia had to do with #VPNs such that they ought to be in a telly advertisement. Given #TomScott's long battle with misleading VPN advertising, that seems like a fair question to be asking.

https://clearcast.co.uk/what-we-do/

#AdvertisingStandards

@krypt3ia Will a $1 donation to the #crowdfunding campaign confer to me 1 vote that I might cast if I wanted to suggest another naming option, such as "industry groupwank"? I think I would be willing to donate on this basis.

Also there's a joke about signal:noise ratios and Dr Shannon's work out of Bell Labs, that would lead to another witty name suggestion, but I can't see the answer yet. Maybe I ought to feed the matter into an LLM.

#advertisingStandards #linkedIN #hostileTakeOver

Just over a year ago, the two ads that I saw in the most prominent spot on Facebook’s Web site–at the top-right corner–had me think for a moment that I was seeing double. They mimicked the notifications, messages and menu buttons above, a form of impersonation banned by ad-standards policies at online platforms that want to stay in business.

The “Using Meta Intellectual Property and Licenses” page, linked to from Meta’s ad-standards page, makes that much clear. The text there bans content depicting Meta user interfaces in a manner that:

Is an inaccurate depiction of the current appearance, features, or functionality of the products.

Modifies the user interface in any way, such as adding special effects, interference or animation.

Uses elements of the user interface separately or individually

Does not depict the user interface within the context of a relevant device like a mobile or desktop.

And the text of these ads–each saying I had new messages, with a link to a .shop address below–also seemed an unambiguous case of deceptive behavior. I filed a report but don’t remember what Facebook did with it and can’t check anyway, because there’s no record of my report in Facebook’s “Support Inbox.”

I do, however, know what Facebook did when I reported two new ads last week that took this deceptive template and twisted it to suggest that my Facebook account was in danger, as you can see in the image above. The response to both of my reports, received Wednesday morning: “We didn’t remove the ad.”

This should have been an easy call. Advertising policies should rank among the top rules at an advertising-supported platform–having some ads look like scams makes readers wonder how many other advertisers are trying to rip them off and pollutes the well for legitimate businesses.

(I could say the same about the garbage ads that keep crawling out of the programmatic-advertising cesspool, but that’s another post.)

But while I’m dismayed to see Facebook trip over its own shoelaces this badly, I am not susprised. So much of the user experience on that platform now–the incessant suggestions that I join groups and follow pages tangentially related to my interests, the increasingly ad-dense layout of my feed, the chaotically-sorted algorithm that reveals friends were in town days after they left, the scattershot “People You May Know” suggestions–speaks to no higher priority than trying whatever might momentarily push #engagement.

Inconveniently enough, Facebook remains the leading place online for me to see what most friends and family are up to, followed more or less by Instagram. So this company continues to get its chances to monetize my eyeballs.

I can, however, choose where I try to promote my own work. And Facebook left that list years ago, because of the reasons above and because of this company’s history of rug-pulling newsrooms. My public page that once seemed like a valuable bit of reader outreach might as well be covered in cobwebs; I last posted anything there in April, a link to a PCMag story about Meta’s content-moderation machinery running amok that closed with a reminder to look me up on Patreon. These days, I can’t even be bothered to delete the scam notifications on my page from fraudsters impersonating Facebook support staff.

In other words: Don’t even think of suggesting that I put more time into Threads.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/10/03/facebook-ad-standards-look-like-yet-another-area-where-meta-has-lowered-its-standards/

#advertisingPolicies #advertisingStandards #engagement #facebook #FacebookAds #fakeAds #meta #onlineAds #rules #scamAds