How to Use Facebook Ads in the Search for a Missing Person | Hacker News Reader

How to Use Facebook Ads in the Search for a Missing Person

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45 pointstrahn15 comments

You should check with the department or officer in charge of your case before doing this, unless you have good reason to believe they're botching it. The public is certainly a resource that's considered in missing persons cases, but it has disadvantages and the people in charge of the case may not be involving the public for good reason.

Depending on their local rules, they may be obligated to investigate any leads coming in from the public, and that can become a massive drain on resources that would be better spent on following up leads they may already have. Psychics, intuitives, and other "helpers" are kind of a pain in the ass this way. Depending on the case, if somebody says, "I've helped find four other people, and last night I dreamt that so-and-so was alive, and cold, and in a big steel pipe in the woods", then the people in charge of the case get to spend a bunch of resources checking out culverts in forested areas. Public missing persons cases always bring out these folks.

If LEO does want to get the public involved, they often have even better tools available, including reverse-911 text alerts.

They may also be operating with a different set of information than they're sharing with you, and may be withholding some information for good reason. They may already have a working theory and not releasing details about what the missing person was last seen wearing may be helpful for sorting out good leads from bad ones.

All that said, law enforcement isn't infallible and mistakes are made in missing persons cases, even by well-intentioned and experienced people. And certainly the grief and frustration and helplessness experienced by friends and family during cases like this should be given more consideration than perhaps it usually is.

Also remember if you see a poster or ad claiming to be searching for a missing person you should ignore the contact number - contact police directly if you think you have information, as claiming someone is missing is a frequent tool of abusers trying to find a hiding victim.

So this is basically a how to do geo fenced ads in FB. Ok cool.

But, if you run an ad that has the word "YOU" you're going to have a bad time in FB either by ads getting rejected or the AI straight banning your account.

*: I run well over 7 figures a year in fb.

Any ideas for alternatives?

Thou

>if you run an ad that has the word "YOU" you're going to have a bad time in FB

Why?

It's commonly used in clickbait headlines. If you're using an ad account that Facebook doesn't consider very trustworthy, you'll have a difficult time getting ads with certain attention-grabbing words approved.

I used facebook ads to find my two missing dogs and it worked. Within 2 days my dogs were back home.

My friend did this for me when we lost our family cat. Unfortunately we didn't find him (he was quite old) but the amount of awareness and people who saw and engaged with the adverts where incredible. We still get people asking today if we ever did find him.

tldr; it is an ad for the authors saas

Many people already use Facebook posts to raise awareness, but the effect here is that they mostly get shared within their own circles and not necessarily in the location, where it makes sense. With Facebook ads your able to target exactly the people in the search area and ask them to not only keep an eye out for your missing loved one, but also to spread the word. Essentially, you are paying Facebook to show the post to the right people in a timely way.

Most of the money goes towards Facebook ads. We take a 10-20% cut for our services.

Services like this should be pro bono, and facebook should also support this.

Hell no. It’s the principle of the matter.

What if it turns out that missing person cases that are advertised on Facebook are resolved, on average, at a faster rate, or some such.

Would you still object if outcomes were objectively better?

Does the end justify the means ?

Actually, it's the fact that you're (hopefully) currently not (and hopefully not ever) worrying about someone who went missing.

I say this as someone who really doesn't like FB, and thinks that at least on a napkin it makes sense that by contributing to depression it might contribute to all sorts of negative stuff, including people going missing. That's all valid, but both secondary and kinda tasteless in this context.

Someone looking for a missing person will be happy to hear useful information about any and all avenues they could take. I'm right with you picketing companies and anyone who has a Facebook page instead of an "actual webpage", and whatnot. But people who are worried about someone who went missing? Nah. I get where you're coming from, I respect and might share it as knee-jerk reaction, but think it through. In that situation, you exhaust all options.

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