These ads follows along in the proud tradition of banned ads that were designed to be banned from the onset because saying "we got banned" is useful for positioning yourself as dangerous to the establishment.
Sometimes manifestly unjust laws are challenged via an index violation of the law with the specific goal of getting the law thrown out.
If Facebook were not shy about their algorithmic approach there would be nothing wrong with these ads.
Not so much "...ads that were designed to be banned..." but ads designed to test an hypothesis.
>In English, the pronunciation of ⟨h⟩ as /h/ can be analyzed as a voiceless vowel. That is, when the phoneme /h/ precedes a vowel, /h/ may be realized as a voiceless version of the subsequent vowel. For example the word ⟨hit⟩, /hɪt/ is realized as [ɪ̥ɪt]
For words beginning with h and where the first syllable is unstressed (historic, hypothesis, but not hitter, happy) it can be appropriate to use "an" rather than "a" as the associated indefinite article.
"an historic" sounds to me like "anhistoric" (as in "lacking history" kind of like "amoral")
I say "a historic" and "ahistoric" differently, I think. The first with a hard 'h' and a slight pause between words. The second with soft/no 'h' and no pause. If I heard somebody say "anhistoric" (soft 'h', no pause), I'd think they meant "ahistoric" not "an historic". Of course, context probably makes it clear regardless.
Growing up in DC with Scottish parents was always fun. Rolled Rs, different "wh" sound (Scottish English: wheels vs US English: weels) (noticeable expulsion of air on the 'wh' sound).
Mary (lady), merry (happy), marry (get hitched) all should sound different to me, but in MidAtlantic English they're often the same. Same for Kerrie vs Carrie.
In Ancient Greek polytonic orthography, vowels can have one of two diacritic marks: οξεία and δασεία. The second one is used to denote the /h/ sound (rough breathing). Words starting with vowels with this mark in their translation to English added the H before the vowel to denote this sound because of the lack of diacritic marks/accents
I guess I don't really agree. The goal of an ad is to get new customers, not test hypotheses. If it was designed to test where the edges are, they wouldn't be blogging about it. I believe they tested the edges so they could find something that crossed the line, and then get publicity for being banned. But that's a question of intent, so who knows. Maybe they really thought this would be an awesome campaign, and are making lemonaid out of it getting banned.
Just so we're clear on this: Experimentation on human subjects without consent and informing them is an ethical violation. It truly doesn't matter how justified you think your particular research question is, or how small you would rate your ethical transgression.
[0] https://www.wired.com/2014/06/everything-you-need-to-know-ab...