Wherein the Facebook Morality Police have decided that we are porn
dnalounge.com
dnalounge.com
>"Your ad content violates Facebook Ad Guidelines. Ads are not allowed to promote the sale or use of adult products or services, including toys, videos, publications, live shows or sexual enhancement products."
From DNA Lounge's page, http://www.dnalounge.com/calendar/2015/04-10.html:
>"From the dawn of humanity, to Ancient Egypt, to the glory that was Rome; everybody loves a burlesque show! Join San Francisco's world-famous Hubba Hubba Revue for an epic night of tassels & tease, thousands of years in the making!"
It's an adult live show, a burlesque. Facebook policy rules it out and it's very cut-and-dried.
The only reason this appears to be here is an attempt at viral marketing.
13+ social media site won't advertise 18+ (or 21+ presumably if it's USA based on drinking laws) live show for adults with softcore sexual content.
Flagged.
If you've got a conservative workplace, I wouldn't recommend clicking through. Their site includes topless women ... which I would be hard-pressed to defend as "not adult", regardless of their hand placement.
It's clearly false indignation; a common "viral" marketing technique.
You're free to form your own opinions, although if you must, I would urge you to avail yourself of the opportunity to read through his website and past writings. I find your continued contention that he is using viral marketing to be rather amusing.
The OP blog-post is definitely mock indignation, it's not there to accomplish anything but notability through complaint against a corporation (Facebook) against whom it is trendy to complain vehemently. This is known as a "viral marketing technique" because, as has been seen, the intention is that the complaint should acquire attention and in doing so will shed light on the complainers business interests. jwz may not have intended it but the blog post is operating in that capacity.
> Facebook has made itself sadly, tragically, despicably indispensable as a means of reaching customers.
I would think the solution is blindingly obvious.
It feels obvious, indeed, but please explain the steps we should take to achieve the solution, because some of us are a bit slow.
/s
Then he says it's essential.
So he wants everyone else to get off Facebook, and then he (presumably) will when it's no longer essential.
If you want something, you yourself have to do it. It's like voting, people say that "my vote doesn't count, so I won't vote." But the point of voting is not individual votes, it's that significant portions of the population vote. And you win some, you lose some.
So if he wants Facebook to crater, he needs to step up, step out, and accept that it won't happen right away, or even ever. But FFS, don't whine about it and then not do anything about it.
The worst part wasn't that they mistakenly blocked our ads, but that they continued to do it. My best guess is the campaign, landing page, or our advertising account was "flagged" which made subsequent ads more likely to be blocked. We changed and tested everything in the ad and the landing page, completely rewriting it and not even mentioning the free gift. Every time we would get blocked for the same reason, then our appeal would come back "sorry, we didn't mean to block your ad."
We spend a lot of money on Facebook ads, over $20k/mo. As much as people like to belabor Google for not providing product support, when you spend money with them (AdWords) their support is top notch. Facebook has a long ways to go in that regard.
I don't believe, though, that something like Burlesque should be prohibited by the same rules which are designed to prevent dildos from appearing in ads, but I imagine it's a side effect of Facebook being an American company and many of its users sharing our prudish sensibilities when it comes to sex.
Used to be, we had a postal system whereby the problems were handled directly by humans. That's flat-out impossible here. Automation, policies to ensure legibility, these things are necessary because you can't build a social network without them and scale it across the globe. But since they affect humans and their lives, they have real human costs.
So, users wouldn't be upset with Facebook if ads with sex toys started appearing on their homepage?
We absolutely expect them to censor their page to meet with our moral sensibilities, and complain loudly to the world when they do not.
Would you do a burlesque show at a high-school?
It's not porn per se, but it is an "adult live show".
EDIT: Maybe I should clarify, I'm not agreeing with OP. I just like to point out a logical fallacy when I see one.
Facebook, Google, Apple and any number of Silicon Valley companies have been playing Morality Police to the world for a years now, censoring ordinary peoples content because it doesn't hold up to puritanical American standards. I find that way more offensive than this particular incident.