There’s Something Wrong with Facebook’s Ad Platform (unless it’s supposed to be horrible)
This past April, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company was taking “big steps” toward remediating the company’s well publicized problems after they “identified Russian interference in the 2016 US elections” and acknowledged that “election interference is a problem that is bigger than any one platform.” So, it is disappointing that at the time of this writing, I am running a Facebook ad campaign promoting a site that offers one-on-one and small group seminars on how to subvert western democracies through election interference. The ad campaign was approved by Facebook.
To be clear, this is not what I had originally wanted to advertise and I have no desire to see the downfall of western liberal democracies. What I wanted to do was to use the vaunted Facebook ad platform to advertise individual and small group seminars on how to buy, sell, and safely store cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies represent a new and emerging asset class and I have some expertise in navigating the complex digital pathways and methods required to participate in these markets. I met with a social marketing consultant and was advised to use the Facebook platform to promote my seminars, but the plan hit a snag when I built the FB brand page and submitted my campaign. Facebook denied my ad.
The response from the Facebook team that reviewed my ad noted that because cryptocurrency is “frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices,” they would not run it. The response also offered a path to appeal the decision which I did, noting that I was not selling cryptocurrency or offering financial advice, but merely providing computer consulting on how to safely participate in these markets. The Facebook ad team denied the appeal.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always respond to this kind of setback in a mature way. I immediately pecked out a snarky reply to the rejection. “Thanks for the consideration,” I wrote, “I guess I’ll go back to my first plan of subverting US elections with Russian propaganda.” But, in a rare win for adult behavior, I didn’t hit send. Besides, I remembered the old writer’s adage “show don’t tell.” And that’s how www.subvertdemocracy.com was born.
The site advertises the same kind of one-on-one and small group seminar as the cryptocurrency training, but the offerings on the Subvert Democracy site include spreading “false and misleading claims” on social media and how to outsource your election interference to Russian troll farms. Voter suppression in Georgia and North Carolina are held up as success stories. I wasn’t very subtle in highlighting the politically destructive services on offer.
Before I go on, yes, I am so petty that I registered an Internet domain name, built a landing page, spun up an Amazon Web Services linux server instance, installed a web server, uploaded the site, built a FB page for it, then created an Ad campaign, and then complained about it on every platform to which I have access. Maybe this wasn’t a huge win for adult behavior after all. But after this cathartic exercise, I had soothed my aggrieved ego and was ready to get back to work when something sad happened.
Facebook approved my ‘Subvert Democracy’ ad.
Facebook is, of course, free to set whatever policies they want for content on their site. I acknowledge that. If they want to make sure that no ad on their platform even mentions bitcoin or cryptocurrency, they are completely within their rights to do so. I also think it is important to consider that this is a sample size of exactly one. Maybe, the facebook ad team just ‘slipped’ and let a site promoting election interference in 75 pixel high, bold, all caps font into the ad system.
But the cryptocurrency seminar ad was blocked ostensibly to protect Facebook users from deception and the Subvert Democracy ad was unceremoniously ushered in while openly promoting deception. It is, at least, inconsistent. And, looking closer at the current state of Facebook public relations woes, it is not an isolated event. While it has made some progress in reducing how shockingly easy it is to target hate groups with hate-groupy content using the platform, the company’s response to criticism has been less than stellar.
Although Facebook claims that combating political manipulation will be a “constant arms race” because “bad actors are going to keep trying to get more sophisticated in what they are doing,” based on the limited experience of this would-be election manipulating bad actor, you don’t have to be very sophisticated at all. You can even be upfront about it.