Facebook approves ads calling for children’s deaths in Brazil | Hacker News Reader

Facebook approves ads calling for children’s deaths in Brazil

arstechnica.com

As a test, 16 ads with violent content were sent to Facebook which then approved all but two. The same ad set was also sent to youtube which not only did not approve any of the ads but also suspended the account trying to place them.

Youtube has the opposite problem: false positives, especially wrt takedown requests motivated by bogus copyright claims.

It's all about moving metrics. If I made a code change that allowed these ads, I can increase ad revenue by x%. That means I can get promoted in the next cycle and switch teams before anyone's the wiser.

I get this isn't cool, but the ad they present is talking about politicians, not children, and I'm not seeing in the article where it says children were targeted by the ad

In Ars Technica's article:

> To ensure that none of their test ads reached vulnerable audiences, Global Witness deleted the ads before alarming messages like “Death to the children of Lula voters” could be published.

And in the published results[0] hyperlinked by Ars:

> Out of sixteen test ads submitted by Global Witness to the platform, only two were rejected. Those approved included text in Portuguese such as “unearth all the rats that have seized power and shoot them”, “Death to the children of Lula voters” [...]

They seem to be mostly talking about politicians, yes, but there was a specific ad right there that advocates for killing the children of Lula voters that was approved by Meta, and as a Brazilian that has seen this kind of advocating before in social media, I'm not surprised Meta isn't doing their job properly.

[0] https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/facebook-app...

While the ads in question should have been banned, I find it interesting that it is Meta's responsibility to stop civil protest in some countries, and also its responsibility to be the platform for civil unrest in others.

This is a very concerning problem, as the media outlets so concerned with Facebook's role in the US and Brazil were openly encouraging the development of such features when it comes to things like the Arab Spring.

Now, these countries are not comparable, but one should think wisely when encouraging social platforms to do X in country Y, because thing X might happen in your country too.

It’s not. It’s responsible for policing ads and content on its own site. That’s it.

I'm not responding to the main thrust of the article. As I said, I believe the ads in question should be banned. I'm responding to this part of the organization behind it as written in the article:

> In its press release, Global Witness seems to suggest that Facebook is not taking the Brazil attacks as seriously as the social platform took the US attacks last year when the company implemented “break-glass measures” to prevent civil unrest from spreading on Facebook.

It is not actually Meta's responsibility to stop civil unrest. Companies shouldn't be in the business of telling the populace how to respond to their government, and insofar as they fail to meet this ideal, democratic watchdogs should not be blessing this unholy alliance of corporations and government.

The way I read it is “they did it in the US but not in Brazil”

> It is not actually Meta's responsibility to stop civil unrest

Not their responsibility. Their interest.

I am not a Brazilian law expert but in my country facilitating unrest is a crime. Facebook needs to abide to the laws of the countries it wants to operate in. If it doesn’t, it risks facing sanctions or even a national ban.

Facebook is not asked to stop or promote civil unrest as a nebulous category. It is asked to police content based on actual content of messages in question.

I would encourage you to read the article in which ars technica indeed makes the claim that the organization responsible for these ads believes that it is indeed's meta's job.

As for the particular content of this ad, I would encourage you to re-read my comment, which is prefaced with:

> While the ads in question should have been banned

Reply on news.ycombinator.com