Facebook is pushing back on these claims: https://twitter.com/Kantrowitz/status/1389735736644091906
"These ads were never rejected because they were never set by Signal to run. The ad account has been available since early March"
"These ads were never rejected because they were never set by Signal to run. The ad account has been available since early March"
1. Signal planned this as a PR stunt, anticipating that Facebook would reject the ads.
2. After setting up their ad account, the account or payment method was flagged for additional verification, triggering the dialog they showed in the screenshot in their blog post.
3. That dialog has a big red padlock that says "Ad Account Disabled". That's perfect for Signal's needs, so they stop here and don't even bother getting the actual ads reviewed and rejected.
Signal's post is careful not to say that the ads were rejected, only that their account was banned.
In response to the pushback, on Twitter, they posted another screenshot showing that the account was restricted, but still no evidence that they actually attempted to run the ads.
I would say both Signal + Facebook. I only use iMessage.
In Apple I trust =)
If I send someone a message on Signal or Messenger, it will only come through to them via that platform. With iMessage you cannot guarantee that.
Edit: I was completely wrong, iMessage does do that, my apologies.
The problem is that Signal prefers to also set itself up as the default SMS app and doesn't clearly show which messages in the feed are what kind. As someone who has to explain this difference to his father about twice a month I don't like this "feature", it's utterly confusing to people who don't know or don't care about the distinction between web-based messaging, SMS and MMS(now defunct here) when they want to send a picture.
Signal requests the status as default messaging app, which imho is a problem when combined with inexperienced users who tend to just click "OK" to get rid of popups and error messages, and now don't understand why they can't send a picture to someone in their contact list. And yes, Signal just lists everything in the same interface. For non-technical users this can lead to a lot of unexpected behaviour.
It sounds plausible that Signal’s account was briefly suspended due to a payment issue, and someone in Signal’s marketing is simply mistaken, confused, and/or inexperienced at using Facebook’s ad campaign tools.
Doesn't seem to be totally opaque to me.
Looking at the big modal style box in the middle of the screenshot it says:
"Ad Account Disabled
This ad account, its ads and some of its advertising assets are disabled. You can't use it to run ads." And there's a see details button.
Maybe the see details indicates a fixable problem, and some of the text behind seems to maybe indicate a fixable payment problem, but it's not clear at all from the text of the big box that the problem is fixable. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that when Facebook says you can't use this account to run ads, it means you can't use that account to run ads, end of story. There's not a call to action to contact customer support or fix the payment or anything, just disabled, you can't run ads.
I'm looking at this image https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E0lx59fWEAI9HcX?format=jpg&name=...
My point being that being told that I cannot run ads, doesn't mean that Facebook doesn't like my ad campaign. There are many reasons I would think why an ad account is disabled, to simply assume this was because FB didn't like your campaign despite having no rejected ads doesn't seem very smart and is a big call. If Signal had followed through to try resolve the problem and had actual evidence that it was due to the nature of the campaign, then they should be showing that, not conjecture.
And why is it an ad account status warning if you need to fix it to proceed.
I mean maybe Signal overreacted if the text in the big box didn't mean what it said. But I don't expect them to be experts at running advertising campaigns; and I kind of expect advertising campaigns to be easier; at least if it's supposed to be self-serve. If you're expected to work with an ad rep, sure it can be clunky and hard; train the reps, sell to Fortune 500, cash the big checks, whatever. Maybe the story here should be bad FB UI drives away advertiser who thought they were banned.
Signal should have verified the problem first, then ran the ads campaign and posted a legitimate response from Facebook regarding why. The situation makes Signal look nefarious.
How would one know they could use that channel? Since there's no contact link or phone number on the thing that says you can't run ads.
I guess the moral of the story is FB doesn't care about user experience for users or advertisers.
This is called the benefit of doubt, and it’s something you lose when your company and culture gain a reputation of chronically lying to the public, regulators and legislature.
Facebook would likely reject thousands of ad campaigns as they would go through an automated clearance platform. Therefore why are there no rejected ads at all in the screenshots provided by Signal. Without that information I would have expected Signal to have dug deeper to resolve the issue to find the reason why before launching a public claim.
As I said in my earlier post, it's not the benefit of doubt but conjecture.
Facebook has lost the benefit of doubt. That means when one is in doubt, Facebook isn't given the benefit of assumed good faith.
> when the information you provide to substantiate your argument shows signs of going against your claim
Reading this as someone who doesn't use Facebook Ads on a day to day basis, I don't see anything in their evidence that goes against their claim. It's only the fact that multiple credible accounts on HN have corroborated that claim of Facebook's that leads me to trust it. At the very least, the messaging therein sows doubt.
You've repeated similar comments across this thread. It might make sense to consider where the other side is coming from. This may come down to nothing more than horrible UI at a predictably sensitive time combined with Facebook's arrogance in believing they can skate by with minimal support costs and Signal's trigger finger on its Twitter account.
My argument is based on the fact that Signal have come out with an official blog post about it, because they believe that Facebook have rejected their ads and have disabled their account because of the campaign. They have not said that Facebooks UI is confusing and they’re unable to figure out how to unblock their account, they have made the assumption that the campaign was rejected because and I quote “Facebook is more than willing to sell visibility into people’s lives, unless it’s to tell people about how their data is being used. Being transparent about how ads use people’s data is apparently enough to get banned; in Facebook’s world, the only acceptable usage is to hide what you’re doing from your audience.”. This is a massive call to make and is a big overstep in judgement without much to substantiate your claim (based on the images). Even if it was due to Facebook’s confusing UI, I think it is irresponsible for Signal to simply assume this is what Facebook have done and why.
If it has come down to what you say it has, it does not look good for Signal.
The screenshots Signal posted showed they were from early March and show no ads rejected. I never thought I would say this, but so far I'm leaning towards believing Facebook over Signal.
So, they never ran the ads as a publicity campaign, caused some Facebook exec without enough PR experience to promise they will be run, and now they run... a publicity campaign... seems like Signal is winning twice here to me.
If FB's claims turn out to be true, then it will look very bad for Signal — that they staged evidence to create a fake story about FB, and went on record to double-down on their dishonesty.
It does mean that Facebook’s messaging is confusing enough to cause that though.
Are there any grammy-like awards for corporate speak performances? This is gold.