'Facebook baby ads taunted me after stillborn' | Hacker News Reader

'Facebook baby ads taunted me after stillborn'

bbc.com

43 pointsNoB4Mouth18 comments

> Facebook said it was caused by a bug in the system that has now been fixed.

Funny how problems like these are attributed euphemistically to "bugs" that are "fixed" in reporting.

I do not often see journalism incorporating detailed descriptions of computer-related mishaps other than "glitches" [1,2]. It does not help that reporting on these circumstances to journalists may also be mediocre.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2016/07/2...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/07/08...

Would it really matter? The root cause would probably sound something like this:

"The user's preferences were ignored because the advert system failed to invalidate the cache during the change, causing the user's previously cached settings to be used. This occurred only for a small set of users, who were in a similar geographic location and were assigned to an experimental cohort to test an updated component of the advert system."

Would anyone understand this? Would anyone care?

I feel like turning this into a technical issue is sleight of hand

Ah but you see, it isn't, here's what happened in the ticket system:

Feature: Display most profitable ads to users without offending anyone.

Bug: User was offended.

Resolution: Add user to block list for offending advert.

Status: resolved.

My wife had a miscarriage last December; we’ve been getting mailers advertising baby formula for months - one of them was literally an entire box of samples. Turns out we’d both been trying to throw them away before the other one saw them, because it’s kind of soul crushing as a reminder. Thanks, future!

One of my acquaintances/facebook friend's daughter was murdered in Australia and she got ads about "surprising your daughter with this beautiful gift"

It's heart breaking to even think about it.

I don't know if this would have stopped this particular instance but "Parenting" is one of three ad categories you can hide completely in your Facebook ad settings (the other two being Alcohol and Pets) so at least you have the option to be creeped out by other types of ads instead.

This sucks. I thought "why not install an adblock," but not everyone thinks like that, and that's fair.

That doesn't work on the Facebook app. And then they block you for reporting too many ads. Facebook ads are late 90s era quality.

Not to mention fradulent.

"And then they block you for reporting too many ads."

Glad to see Facebook has the customer's best interests at heart.

To be fair if you try to block all ads you're not really a customer.

Users are not the customer - advertisers are. We don’t pay facebook to use it advertisers do.

> That doesn't work on the Facebook app.

Yet another reason to limit Facebook to the browser (a proper browser, too, not a Google Services Client masquerading as a browser that does not let you install adblockers on mobile).

Surely, they also get snail mail related to babies. This is not a technology/Facebook problem.

Not sure about elsewhere but in the UK we have a mechanism to prevent that: https://secure.dma.org.uk/bmpsr/

If you get offended by ads then install an ad blocking service. When I recently got a new computer, I tried to support content creators by not blocking their ads. After a few days I gave up, there were too many semi pornographic ads that offended me. After installing ublock origin, all my problems went away.

That sounds easy until you realize you would need a special adblocker for Facebook. Ublock Origin doesn't handle those.

And don't even get started on mobile adblocking, it's still widely uncharted territory. I had to use an altogether new browser on Android, because mobile Chrome doesn't allow ad-blocking plugins. Shocking, I know.

Social Fixer

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