I Have Cancer. Now My Facebook Feed Is Full of ‘Alternative Care’ Ads
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Life is significantly better without it. Really.
So if you want to raise some money for a friend who has cancer you can start a GoFundMe campaign and spread the word via email. It's going to be more work, though, and I bet you won't get as big of a response due to the friction of the medium.
In all those cases, you can block ads. On Facebook, you can't. The arms race between Facebook and adblockers seems to be in Facebook's favor.
Also I’m not sure how relevant blocking ads is to this. If it’s just about annoyance then Reddit and Twitter both have some extremely annoying aspects as well. Reddit is absolutely relentless about trying to get you to install their crappy app. Twitter is relentless about trolling external links that get too popular.
Cancer patients need compassion and listening instead.
I don't miss it.
I've made one for a few months to communicate with Gen-Xers and Europeans in some special planning group here and there. Then I download and delete. Always use a new email address or new phone number for the next profile, although lately Facebook will block your account within hours if you do that, it is extremely creepy. They must be so smug that their antispam provisions coincide with their social graph vampirism.
The issue is getting all your contacts to use it. Works for about half of mine and it's ready to go for the rest when facebook do something foul that pisses them off. This is a good backstop that counterbalances all the reasons facebook want to do something evil to those users. (Eg break the encryption, put ads in the messages, provide the NSA with a backdoor etc etc.) "Mark, if we do that, we lose most whatsapp users to signal by the end of the week."
Signal is great. It costs nothing to have next to whatsapp on your phone. The desktop client is significantly better. Most of what is good about whatsapp they literally bought from signal.
In my experience, cookies and browsing history influences facebook ads more than the text in posts. For example any links sent via messenger or whatsapp or products on amazon.
Could it be the case that the authors browsing history is actually what is driving these ads? For example, if the author is an expert on pseudo science it seems natural that they would research fake cures at some point.
Recently I decide to start doing video essays. I searched for a ton of medieval history stuff and watched a ton of related clips. I notice that YouTube began to show ads of at least 2 "I get rich from millions in debt" self-help workshops/courses to me, which I've never shown any interest in.
I have watched audio equipment review videos as well, and that's the only possible connection I can establish between the ads and my online behaviour. Are a lot of unemployed people seeking to enter audio/video making? Or are the snake oil ads showing on many people's screens because of the dire economic situation many of us are in?
So, my question for you is have you been making comments or sending messages online about debt, money, wealth, etc? Then again, maybe Skynet just knows you're unemployed and that's what makes you a target for get-rich-quick.
Thinking that just that could make me a target of these crooks ... wow, just wow.
On large, generic platforms like Facebook and YouTube, I sense the possibility that these ads that are essentially spam can drive a much higher conversion than the legal businesses' ads, and eventually drive out other types of ads. Those are not nigeria princes asking you for "hlep", you can tell the guys behind it put in a lot of efforts and serious money, some made it like a trailer of _The Pursuit of Happyness_. There's no way Google or Facebook's AI could tell that they are suspicious schemes.
How's your situation, are you still learning and pursuing your own journey? I can totally relate to the feeling of being out of work but I believe strongly that our work is a calling and we must listen to our intuition on the journey to mastery of our art.
I am learning to be an independent content producer if that's a thing. But I have family and there's constant self-imposed pressure to pursue a regularly paid job. I am juggling between job applications and making things at the moment. I guess I really need to talk to people and think it through.
Your kind words give me a lot of support I need. Thank you.
One night I couldn't sleep and thought about how an average guy like him could do a 180 like that. I googled just to see what arguments the 'movement' tried to lean on. The following weeks I was bombarded with suggestions of more flat earth content, even after downvoting it YouTube kept recommending it for weeks if not months.
Who knows how many minds have been eroded already.
I've noticed this kind of thing happening for search terms related to thyroid hormone testing. For example, if you search for "thyroxine"[1] the top search results are from reputable sources such as the Endorcine Society or WebMD. However, if you search for "reverse T3"[2] -- an esoteric test favored by the alternative medicine crowd -- then most of the top results are from naturopaths, herbal supplement peddlers, etc.
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=thyroxine [2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=reverse+T3
From there animal telepathy isn't too far of a stretch for someone to make.
I haven't seen scientific proof and I don't think anyone has. But I would still expect others would make sites and claims.
But you feel there is a harm in there. Because it is reenforcing what a mental ill person believes.
I'm not sure what the best compromise is. The core problem is the fact that there are communities who want to talk about animal telepathy doesn't work with your worldview. Asking sv to exclude them makes the web a smaller more corporate place. I'm not sure that's the best approach.
In your situation you need a censored google. A google to match your worldview. In fairness google has been trying to show you you-centric search results if you are logged in. In your case this is a one-time transaction so history wouldn't place a factor.
But I come back to why is this a sv problem? The root of the problem is your family member isn't taking his medicine or it is not working or he is right and you won't listen.
If I had a family member like that I would just go along with it. Things don't need to be 100% correct in life. People need to believe in something. No harm here.
There are areas now facebook and google doesn't service like hacking/cracking sites but those sites still exist.
When you try to hide information and the person discovers the truth it becomes so much more powerful because you are telling them this is forbidden knowledge that only a few have heard exists, you were right.
See, for instance, the UK pertussis vaccine scare and whooping cough epidemic in the 1970s... [1]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_hesitancy#UK,_pertussi...
[1]I'm not implying it's real, just that people experience it exactly as they do real things, like hearing voices.
When snake-oil damages someone when it was advertised by facebook, facebook, who took the money to diseminate the harm are liable for that.
The other thing worth noting is that the hugely successful internet advertising campaigns, eg Tesla, who have a brand now comparable to Mercedes, paid facebook, google et al. precisely $0 to achieve that. Unless you are selling snake-oil, it would seem internet advertising is something to avoid.
I think if everyone had to take direct responsibility for the advertising they publish, quality newspapers would be more profitable and facebook & google very, very much less dominant. Would it make the world a nicer, kinder place? Dunno. I say it's worth running the experiment.
But even if they were unviable, someone else would work out how to set up a competing viable business with those constraints. Do you really doubt that? And perhaps if facebook can't be viable without advertising evil, destructive propaganda killing people who are mentally weakened by serious disease, they, you know, shouldn't be operating? Just a thought.
Oh and "hur dur" yourself, man. Not productive to a rational and sensible discussion, yeah?
How are you even supposed to determine what is fraudulent advertising as a publisher ? Are you supposed to inspect every product or verify the existence of every event before accepting a campaign ? This would basically wipe out the option to run small/local campaigns because of the upfront costs.
And how would this benefit small players ? Their campaigns are smaller so as a % the flat cost of verification is going to be a significant price hike. Are they in a better position to verify that the ads they are running are not fraudulent ? And how would they cover their risk exposure considering a few missed fraudulent ads could put them out of business entirely compared to a large market player ?
It would have radical consequences to a huge industry and it sounds like a knee jerk reaction because you don't like ads.
If it turns out that it was snake oil in disguise, the defence of that not being obvious to a reasonable person is a thing. You know much the same way the genocidal maniacs can't advertise genocidial mania in the new york times. Or your local newspaper. Is that ok on facebook or do they actually stop that? If they don't they probably should. If they do then they should keep doing it and extend to snake-oil frauds and such like.
It benefits the small players as the cost reduction to google and facebook from the sheer scale of not vetting anything much is diminished encouraging publishers to run their own ads rather than outsource to the huge players with all the associated problems with that. (e.g. just one aspect, How can your advertising startup possibly compete with google given the status quo? With a diminished advantage of scale you have a better chance of setting up your advertising company in some particular niche or other).
Beyond that I have no issue with small, local internet advertising being more expensive - if that even is the outcome, which I'm not convinced about. So running a small, local campaign pushes people and their advertising spend to local non-internet campaigns? I'm completely fine with that. I think that is a good thing, myself.
More competition for advertising spend is a very, very good thing, in my view. For so many reasons. Censorship mitigation among them. A wouldn't publish the ad, B was unsure, but C said it was ok so I went there. Better than FB said no on a whim so now I can't advertise competitively.
See, sensible discussion. I don't require you or anyone to agree with me. Just be civil, and not put words into others mouths they did not say e.g. "...because you don't like ads"
Fine the publisher every time they publish something fraudulent. It's not the public's problem or responsibility to solve this for Facebook.
How?
Relevant here is that it is a fact that they did it paying facebook (& google etc.) absoutely nothing and have clearly been wildly, amazingly successful.
A lot of the times it is actually picking the right word but somethings you don't want to be constantly reminded of.
Well as this "therapy" was really dangerous, there were a lot of articles on the danger and that and my insistence managed to keep her from that. She has now recovered with chirugucal operation and hormone therapy.
I then followed up on that, discovered something called zététique[0], basically applying scientific method to all claims. It worked quite well for me.
When you're in a situation like cancer you're extremely vulnerable. You think to yourself what's the point of me keeping this money if I'm just going to die so vulture companies decide to use this vulnerable state to destroy you.
As a society we should stop turning a blind eye towards this. Yes they're an adult and should know better, but maybe that view isn't always correct? Maybe sometimes adults can't consent to stuff properly because of the situation they're in.
Why should they know better? Why are adults expected to be experts in all things? Certainly if it was bad the government would stop it or they wouldn't make enough money to advertise to lowly old me is likely what most of them think.
If I'm feeling a little sick and decide to look up the symptoms, half the results are "alternative cures" that involve drinking olive oil, applying tea tree oil, drinking green tea (I think these people think tea tree and tea tea are the same) and BOOM cured. Just this week I was looking up a couple animal videos, and Youtube's sidebar recommendations were absolutely full of "natural cures" for various pet ailments. Of course, every single one mentioned olive oil in the title.
I can't even look up basic recipes or info about specific ingredients or even simple gardening info without half the results being things like spinach being some miracle food that helps treat/cure syphilis and cancer.
I'm sick of it. I'm not exactly in favor of deplatforming, but these people are spreading actively dangerous and outright wrong information. And for what? I know there are people out there seeking to profit by selling fake cures, but there are people out there legitimately saying you should just go to the store and buy olive oil (and it's always olive oil) and eat a few oranges and your diseases will go away--they don't get any direct benefit from the deception. WHY are there so many people out there saying this bizarre shit?
I was very much on the "there must be another explanation" train, especially since it should be possible to notice a ton of bandwidth if they were streaming conversation audio.
But I've really never been able to figure that one out. If you've got an explanation for me I'd be really interested.
'Options' from your browser's extensions settings > 'Filter Lists' tab > 'Annoyances' about 1/2 way down.
Gets rid of many soft paywalls too.
It's pretty depressing itself. I'm not going to be susceptible to these suggestions but I'm sure some desperate, suffering people are. It's sick.
What is interesting to me is that they did not believe they were being manipulated and lied to before.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23771585
Any other suggestions would be helpful!
I wondered if Facebook etc might have any liability here. But no, they don't, under US law.[0] Maybe they should, however.
Inadequate healthcare is the real problem. It is foundational. That fact that these companies exist is a problem, yet really we need to focus on the fact that social media and alternative care is the only "welcoming" experience for so many who either can't afford, or who can, & meet critical treatment with a slap of reality and a world of so much uncertainty and direction that THEY ultimately have to navigate with only the general guidance of whoever's care they land in.
"Delete Facebook" ... no, I disagree. Embrace social-care and find others in similar situations.
And they’ll be sending you that stuff and then saying “If only he’d tried...” as they lower your casket.