Frankly, if you are an advertiser and know your ads are being served to someone who, through tragedy, cannot use your product and instead are now part of a thousand cuts treatment, you should be pretty offended yourself.
How, exactly, are they supposed to know that? The bigger issue here is everyone expecting Facebook to somehow be omnipotent. They're not. They are a sharing platform that makes money by selling targeted ads. They're not all knowing.
It just happens infrequently enough that they haven't had to care about it. Yet.
Because situations have more than one possible outcome. Lumping everyone into a single cohort based on a majority rule (e.g. people who buy pregnancy-related products often buy baby-related products later) is a kind of insensitivity that would be frowned on if applied in person.
> The bigger issue here is everyone expecting Facebook to somehow be omnipotent.
I'd argue that Facebook (or its advertising algorithm in this case) is operating _as if it is_ omniscient when really there are lots of shortcomings that can and do cause harm. It should be reigned in instead of forgiven.
> Or maybe, just maybe, not at all.
As "please don't".
Never going to happen, they say marketers ruin everything for a reason.
I switched interest based ads off on Google a few times, and also tried using YouTube while logged out. It’s pure trash.
When you opt out of interest based ads you actually opt in to their inventory of worst content imaginable. There’s no middle ground.