[HN Gopher] Meta made scam ads harder to find instead of removin...
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Meta made scam ads harder to find instead of removing them
Author : wtcactus
Score : 268 points
Date : 2026-01-01 12:29 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sherwood.news)
(TXT) w3m dump (sherwood.news)
| zaphar wrote:
| The original reuters article quotes Meta as claiming that making
| them harder to find by removing them from the system. This
| article doesn't offer any evidence to suggest that Meta is lying.
| This is lazy and poor reporting as far as I'm concerned.
| billyp-rva wrote:
| Reuters: Restaurant hides unsanitary waste from food inspectors
| by hiding it in dumpster.
| fwipsy wrote:
| Restaurant seen throwing waste in dumpster after removing it
| from food inspector's plate. Insists there's no other waste
| on other plates, apparently without checking.
|
| What proportion of the scam ads do you think this approach
| caught?
| billyp-rva wrote:
| I'm not sure, but starting with the ads that appear with
| most popular searches isn't a bad idea per se. It's a bit
| like sending law enforcement to protect popular areas.
| gruez wrote:
| >Restaurant seen throwing waste in dumpster after removing
| it from food inspector's plate. Insists there's no other
| waste on other plates, apparently without checking.
|
| That seems... kinda reasonable?
|
| Health inspector: "hey it looks like your ice machine is
| dirty, and you're not keeping foods at a hot enough
| temperature"
|
| Restaurant: "ok we'll clean our ice machines more carefully
| and install thermometers to monitor the temperature of our
| hot trays"
|
| Journalist: "Restaurant made health violations harder to
| find instead of removing them!"
|
| Would it be better if the restaurant was proactively fixing
| issues before the health inspector brought it up? Yes. Does
| it make sense to imply that the restaurant was acting
| maliciously by making health violations "harder to find"?
| No.
| josefx wrote:
| That sounds funny, until you realize that there are people
| who pull ingredients from the waste bin if they still look
| "good enough". At least one restaurant chain owner in germany
| was banned from entering his own restaurants after he was
| caught on camera instructing his staff to do just that,
| apparently only one instance of a long chain of food safety
| violations his "frugal" business practices caused.
| LordShredda wrote:
| The issue as I see it is that these searches are run when
| testers look for them, not on a regular basis. If Facebook can
| detect them, why let them be displayed in the first place?
| alsetmusic wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46446838
| barishnamazov wrote:
| The original source is from Reuters article [0].
|
| It is profoundly ironic that Meta is apparently using cloaking
| techniques against regulators. Cloaking is a black-hat technique
| where you show one version of a landing page to the ad review bot
| (e.g., a blog about health) and a different version to the actual
| user (e.g., a diet pill scam).
|
| Meta has spent years building AI to detect when affiliates cloak
| their links. Now, according to this report, Meta is essentially
| cloaking the ads themselves from journalists and regulators by
| likely filtering based on user profiling, IP ranges, or
| behavioral signals. They are using the sophisticated targeting
| tools intended for advertisers to target the "absence" of
| scrutiny.
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-created-
| playbook...
| raverbashing wrote:
| So there's Dieselgate for Meta as there is Dieselgate for Honey
| croes wrote:
| Both are American companies, not like VW, so not much will
| happen
| wtcactus wrote:
| What does this have to do with them being American? You do
| realize nothing much happened to VW in Europe, I hope.
| epistasis wrote:
| VW executives went to prison:
|
| https://qz.com/dieselgate-sentences-handed-
| down-1851782440
|
| I do not yet know if there's wrongdoing here, but even if
| it was screaming bad, all US government enforcement
| bodies have been gutted and made completely subservient
| to the will of the president rather than their
| legislatively mandated mission, under a novel "unitary
| executive" philosophy.
|
| Further, that unitary executive is completely corrupt,
| and has already been paid off by Meta. Ukraine is a model
| of clean government with proper anti-corruption
| investigations and teeth compared to the US.
| sgarland wrote:
| Jail time [0] and billions of dollars in fines is
| "nothing much?"
|
| 0: https://apnews.com/article/volkswagen-germany-diesel-
| emissio...
| wtcactus wrote:
| Those billions are because of the USA. In the EU, it was
| merely a slap in the hand.
|
| Annual revenue of VW at the time was 217B EUR. In the EU,
| they paid 1.5B EUR. So, 0.7% of their annual revenue for
| a scheme that went on for years.
|
| Granted, in the US, they actually did persecute VW
| properly, and they ended up paying close to 30B $. A much
| proper sum.
|
| As for the jail time, they arrested 2 from middle
| management in the EU. No member from the board or the CEO
| went to jail here.
|
| Is that what we call justice now? Specially when we want
| to pretend we are superior to the USA in that regard?
| ffsm8 wrote:
| The crime was committed in the USA.
|
| You are expecting third party countries to begin
| litigation on crimes that happen outside of their borders
| - even if they're not even strictly illegal where they're
| headquartered?
|
| That shit never happens, and if it would, you'd first
| have to start jailing lots of S&P CEOs for the companies
| crimes that are committed in other countries and never
| amount to anything, precisely for the same reason.
|
| Like literally every company thats involved in any
| mining, drilling etc. They always don't adhere to local
| environmental regulations etc
| wtcactus wrote:
| > The crime was committed in the USA.
|
| What? No, you are completely wrong. The crime was
| committed in many places. In the USA, but also in several
| EU countries (Germany included).
|
| In fact, the numbers were more than 10x higher in the EU
| (since we use a lot more diesel cars) than what they were
| in the USA.
|
| 600 000 vehicles were affected in the USA, while 8.5
| million vehicles were affected in the EU.
|
| USA courts, effectively, issued a fine more than 200x
| higher per vehicle affected, than what we did in the EU.
|
| No one that actually followed the news (and isn't German
| and therefore completely biased) will say with a straight
| face that EU justice system didn't favor VW due to
| established interests. The German government obviously
| manipulated the judicial system all over Europe to let
| the case go away.
|
| It also says a lot, that it had to be the Americans
| bringing the case to light. A lot of people probably
| knew, but the control that the Germans had (and still
| have) over European economy and judicial systems didn't
| allow anyone inside the EU to speak up.
|
| No justice was made over here.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scanda
| l
| dleslie wrote:
| The American Justice system. Many no longer trust in its
| willingness and ability to enforce the rule of law.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Not to mention Uber's little program to detect whether a
| rider was likely to be law/code enforcement in cities where
| there were restrictions on Uber operations.
| medalblue wrote:
| "First, they identified the top keywords and celebrity names
| that Japanese Ad Library users employed to find the fraud ads.
| Then they ran identical searches repeatedly, deleting ads that
| appeared fraudulent from the library and Meta's platforms."
|
| That doesn't sound like cloaking. They really are deleting the
| ads. They're just concentrating on the ads that the regulators
| are most likely to see based on what they usually search for.
| paddw wrote:
| > The scrubbing, Meta teams explained in documents regarding
| their efforts to reduce scam discoverability, sought to make
| problematic content "not findable" for "regulators,
| investigators and journalists."
|
| This seems to be the "smoking gun"... but it's unclear from
| the article what the source or context of the quotations are.
| billyp-rva wrote:
| > "not findable" for "regulators, investigators and
| journalists."
|
| > but it's unclear from the article what the source or
| context of the quotations are.
|
| Good point, this quote could just be painting their actions
| in the poorest possible light.
| araes wrote:
| Needs verification on the normal user side of the
| experience. Like noted, unclear whether the ads are
| completely deleted, or just deleted from what regulators
| would return in search results.
|
| Later part makes it sounds like the ads were at least
| deleted from the Japanese / Taiwan results areas
| completely, and then just redistributed to other geographic
| areas. "If an unverified advertiser is
| blocked from showing ads in Taiwan, for example, Meta will
| show those ads more frequently to users elsewhere, creating
| a whack-a-mole dynamic in which scam ads prohibited in one
| jurisdiction pop up in another."
|
| However, still difficult to tell from the story what the
| experience of "normal" Japanese / Taiwan users is relative
| to what regulators view.
|
| Notably, from a different article about fake accounts, and
| how much they cost, Japan's regulation seems to be working
| (at least somewhat). [1] Fake Accounts for Facebook
| Available (US, 157,401, @$0.13/account; Japan, 16,
| @$3.00/account, Dec 31st, 2025 data)
|
| [1] https://cotsi.org/platforms?view=map&platform=fb
| quikoa wrote:
| Not quite. The ads themselves aren't deleted but only not
| displayed for a subset of keywords. If the ads were deleted
| no keyword would be able to show these.
| commandersaki wrote:
| I posted in the other thread but in case that no longer has
| traction I will repeat my question here:
|
| _I 'm still wondering what the Scam Prevention Framework enacted
| in Australia will do to mitigate this kind of stuff._
|
| _https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/cth/conso...
| (Part IVF)_
| lax0 wrote:
| Not to distract from Meta but I'm surprised Google doesn't also
| get heat for this. A number of phishing sites win >30% of the
| auction on my company's brand keywords and I see it on many
| others as well, especially in CPG and e-commerce. I've yet to
| have any luck getting Google to ban the advertisers.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| I remember getting "lend us your google account" ad ON YOUTUBE
| of all places
| nerdponx wrote:
| I think 80% of my Youtube ads are either outright scams or AI
| generated ads for questionable "as seen on TV" style products.
| johnnyfived wrote:
| It's insane work when you just search "Coinbase" and literally
| the first or sponsored results are _not_ Coinbase but scam
| sites. I 've seen this first-hand in Google. Obviously SEO and
| DA isn't on their side so it has to just be like pay enough and
| you can push whatever you want.
| mcbutterbunz wrote:
| My wife got hit by this. Click an ad for to a 100% fake site
| with deep discounts, put in her credit card, order never went
| through. I checked the advertiser and it was somewhere in
| China. A few days later, her CC was used to buy some gift cards
| online. At least it was a good learning experience.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Easy solution: Don't patronize Meta.
| arealaccount wrote:
| Nobody can figure this out for some reason
| akagusu wrote:
| My first question in 2026. Why does such company is allowed to
| exist and harm society?
| Jgrubb wrote:
| Because money.
| timeon wrote:
| Because it is based in US.
| jfengel wrote:
| Because companies have only existed for a few hundred years and
| we still haven't caught up with the idea of making things they
| do illegal. We tend to pass responsibility to the people who
| make up the company, rather than the corporation, but the
| people have gotten pretty good at making it impossible to
| assign blame to any individual. And you can't cost the owners
| (shareholders), because of course none of them are at fault,
| either.
|
| Who at Meta is responsible for posting scam ads? Nobody. But
| Meta isn't responsible, either. So some executive makes a
| halfhearted promise to do something about it, but without any
| accountability.
|
| The "limited liability" was just supposed to be for debts, but
| it turned out to be good for laundering responsibility, too.
| Originally, corporations had fixed term charters. And it might
| be worth looking at that again.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| We need to start holding executives accountable for things
| going on in their companies, and go as far as holding board
| members, and if its an external company then hold them
| accountable as well, and their board members. Just go all the
| way on accountability to the point where it becomes hard to
| mess around because someone will freak out. I wonder how many
| "save my skin" whistleblowers we will see at the executive
| level if everyone at the top of a company can be held liable
| for stuff like this, that goes on for over a decade. Its
| pretty obvious Facebook KNOWS there's fraud, but they
| willfully do nothing, harming consumers everywhere.
|
| What you would see is firms divesting from companies that do
| this to save their own skins too, so funds would dry up if
| they don't remediate it.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Liability is the answer to a lot of problems or lack of
| liability is the cause. Online BS can be solved if
| platforms were liable. Corporate BS can be solved if the
| humans at the top are liable.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| My issue is you have to do it correctly, there's an
| insane amount of nuance involved, but the world could be
| fixed heavily by making more people liable, and big hedge
| fund investors just as liable.
| timacles wrote:
| Unfortunately the fabric of our society has started unraveling
| and 2026 is the year where predatory business models and
| abusive monopolies dominate
| DivingForGold wrote:
| 3 or 4 years ago I tried Google Adwords to see if I could gain
| new customers. I admit I had a niche business, it was already
| successful, but I had read prior about certain tech companies
| overcharging - - or not cancelling services after you requested,
| so I opted to use only pre-paid credit cards bought at my local
| drug store. I chose $200 limit per card. That lasted for about
| 1.5 to 2 years, several times Google emailed me that my card
| expired or ran out of $$, and I needed to correct the error.
| That's when I bought another pre-paid card for a limit of $200
| and funded my acct again. I never noticed any uptick in customers
| contacting me from my websites.
|
| Eventually Google shut down the ability to use pre-paid credit
| cards (it came back an error when I attempted to enter the new
| card no) and that's when I closed my account. Their response was
| too obvious evidence <Goggle in conspiracy with the ad click
| bots> desired the ability to scam my account and one day I would
| check my email and get a $5,000 bill.
|
| There is a rather obvious "conflict of interest" when you have to
| dispute a charge with your credit card provider knowing that the
| credit card co is fully aware they only make their "cut" if the
| charge goes through.
| kyrra wrote:
| Prepaid credit cards tend to be a very common fraud vector
| (very similar to gift card scams).
|
| For chargebacks, the merchant has to pay at least a $15 fee on
| every chargeback, regardless of the outcome of the result. It's
| why many merchants prefer for you to contact them and ask for a
| refund rather than going through the chargeback process. For
| small purchases, merchants tend to just refund rather than
| dealing with an angry customer that's going to charge back.
| DivingForGold wrote:
| On the other hand, prepaid credit cards seem to be one of the
| only ways to prevent merchants from "running up" the charges
| on a customers account. Sure, a customer can go through the
| dispute process but it's quite a hassle. Just "limiting the
| amount of money you place on the table" is quite effective.
| Giving a merchant your credit card with say a $5,000 or more
| available balance seems like insanity, like laying out 50 of
| $100 bills on the table: "here, go ahead, can I trust you to
| take only what you should" ? I would pay extra to have a VISA
| or MC credit card that only offers say a $200 limit, just for
| dubious situations, but again, providers have a "conflict of
| interest" in that they only make their "cut" when the charges
| go through, so the more and the larger the charges - - the
| more "cut" they obtain.
| charcircuit wrote:
| A prepaid card doesn't prevent you from being liable for a
| bill. This is like how leaving your wallet at home when you
| visit a resteraunt doesn't entitle you to free food because
| they don't charge you up front.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| No but it significantly raises the effort for collecting
| said money. The company would need to have a strong case
| (that they need to be able to defend in court if
| necessary) to do it.
|
| No scummy company relying on dark patterns/etc to charge
| the customer without their consent will dare potentially
| airing this dirty laundry in front of a judge.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I consider it immoral to dodge paying bills just because
| you can get away with it. This is like saying it's okay
| to shoplift because a store may not think it's worth it
| to go through the legal process to come after you.
| DivingForGold wrote:
| Nextgrid hit the nail on the head. If you are being an
| honest customer, but a company is attempting to
| "blackmail" you into paying bogus or "run up" charges
| like Google Adwords, which multiple reports indicate they
| are more than 70% bot generated hits, you can sue them in
| your local jurisdiction, here we have justice of the
| peace, small claims, force the big corp to hire local
| counsel. Do they want to take it higher ? Taunt them with
| "dumping discovery on them", otherwise known as a far
| reaching motion for discovery, they'll be forced to
| deliver a tractor trailer load of paper . . .
|
| With all due respect, historically, the guy with the
| greenbacks holds the upper hand in any deal. Many abide
| by the rule: "The customer is always right".
|
| Internet merchants often with unrealistic low pricing to
| "bait you" are attempting to sway the balance in their
| favor by cutting corners, eliminating posting a telephone
| number answered promptly by a live human being, too often
| sending out "one way" do-not-reply emails, which is
| shameful. Recently I encountered a tactic whereby a large
| corporate health care company would ONLY discuss matters
| over a phone call, so unless you were recording the
| conversation (and provide proper legal notice of such at
| beginning of call) there was no record of the
| conversation (now internet providers like Spectrum are
| doing the same). In fact, they were attempting to force
| me to sign a 30+ page contract full of legalese and
| "boilerplate" in their doscusign pdf format which
| coincidentally disallows one from modifying or typing in
| any disclaimers within the signature line. They refused
| over multiple communications to respond to several of my
| questions regarding costs and any future billing. I
| finally just stonewalled them by saying I would only
| communicate via email so there would be a written record.
|
| I can regularly obtain a live human on the phone with
| Amazon and have always received a favorable response - -
| - obviously Amazon values their reputation. I personally
| will not do business with any company that fails to
| provide a telephone number answered promptly by a live
| human. Often I buy locally from brick and mortar shops
| with return policies in the event the product doesn't
| hold up to expectations. The somewhat higher prices I pay
| at brick and mortar are just "added insurance" that
| doesn't even compare to the serious disappointment or
| anger one experiences from some internet purchases where
| the seller sent a fake or missing GPU card, or the item
| coming from China has no reasonable cost of shipping it
| back "hoping" for a refund, or even a US merchant who
| refuses to honor a valid return. Now that memory prices
| have exploded, I expect to see even more of these fake or
| missing GPU shipments from online sellers.
|
| Having been a former cc merchant, I know that any
| merchant that receives a chargeback will suffer at least
| a $35 hit, plus more on the time and effort to respond
| and fight the chargeback, indeed I encourage all buyers
| to challenge any that we discover dishonest. Merchants
| getting enough chargebacks will suffer the company
| providing the merchant account cancelling their business
| merchant account, often the merchants are are then
| "blacklisted" in the cc industry.
| pkphilip wrote:
| How much more scammy and illegal behavior must we tolerate from
| Meta before anyone thinks of putting that Zuck behind bars?
| transcriptase wrote:
| I suspect there are either employees or contractors getting a cut
| because even getting a legitimate ad that doesn't break any rules
| through review can be an exercise in frustration.
|
| I once spent days getting rejection after rejection for ads for a
| Christmas light show event at a vineyard (not winery, it was a
| dry event), on the grounds that I was apparently selling alcohol.
|
| Meanwhile I get ads for black market cigarettes, shrooms, roids,
| cannabis, and anything else you can imagine.
| asimeqi wrote:
| Yes please I totally agree. Something big must be going on
| there. I once bought an item through an Instagram ad. For about
| a month I got fake updates about shipping. Then one day I get
| an email that itvwas delivered 2 days ago, complete with a
| different shipping path and an apparently real USPS tracking
| ID. Of course I received nothing. Complained to PayPal, the
| complaint was closed within minutes as not valid.
| D13Fd wrote:
| What compelled you to buy something through an ad? Does it
| often work? My operating assumption is that every click-
| through internet ad other than major brands (Apple, car
| makers, etc) is basically a scam.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I've bought shirts I've seen through Facebook ads before.
| Ads can work, but Facebook is propped up with so many scams
| these days you have to wonder at what point do they get
| investigated over it? Amazon has had a similar problem,
| I've seen loads of threads here over it. I have been
| fortunate enough that most things I've bought off amazon
| have been legit.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yes, it often works. Ads are basically the only way for
| small business discovery.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I've gotten to the point where I consider _anything_
| advertised to me to be at least somewhere on the "scam
| spectrum". With the actual value/scamminess being
| indicated by a number of factors:
|
| 1. Frequency: The more I see ads for something, the more
| of a scam / less value I believe it to be.
|
| 2. Channel: Anything on YouTube or social media is 100%
| unequivocally a huge scam. To the point where if I think
| a product is legit or worthwhile, and I happen to see it
| on YouTube, I will change my mind and not even consider
| purchasing it.
|
| 3. Algorithmic vs. word of mouth: Anything I see that is
| obviously algorithmically fed to me (like
| recommendations, "you might like" and "featured"
| products) increases the scamminess / decreases the value.
|
| It's too bad that legit small businesses trying to crack
| into a market are collateral damage, and I feel for them,
| but the ad pond is full of scum and if you're legit and
| you dive into it, you're going to get scum all over you.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Yeah, don't do that. Instagram ads are no different to the
| WURGLBIXY and HUYTVING and XORMLINAP and other smashed up
| syllable "brands" on Amazon, except they'll mostly deliver
| something to you, even if it is shit.
|
| Take any of the images from an Instagram ad. Someone,
| somewhere, did (probably) build or design the product being
| sold (a lot come from Kickstarter and may have never
| launched), but if you search you'll find _hundreds_ or more
| scams riding on that coattails who will hope to collect and
| fuck off with your money before IG shuts them down (if they
| ever do).
| nativeit wrote:
| I took an IEC power cable that came with a no-name broken
| printer my folks bought off Amazon. It was rated for the
| usual North American 120V/15A, but the conductors on the
| inside were hardly suitable. Measuring with cheap calipers,
| I reckoned they were good for about 1/10th of that.
| Similarly dangerous products with _any_ of the generic
| electronics currently selling on Amazon /Temu/eBay/et al.
| Poor isolation, poor grounding, underrated wires, incorrect
| fuses, knock-off ICs, lord knows what kind of chemical
| treatments and/or lead content; It's as if regulations no
| longer exist, since there's no longer any fixed target that
| can be sued to enforce them. Something will need to be done
| directly to Amazon that will cause them to put a check on
| these products, but that seems laughably naive in the
| current political contexts.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Yeah, Amazon literally could not give less of a fuck.
| Leave a review on the seller, deleted. Leave one on the
| product, deleted. They say it's because of co-mingling
| but sorry, that's your hole you dug yourself, Amazon.
|
| And why did you remove the option on returns to say "I
| think this is counterfeit"? etc. etc.
|
| Full willful head in the sand.
|
| Anything electric/electronic like that, now, I only order
| from places like Adorama or B&H or the manufacturer. And
| then actual "higher" end ones like Anker, etc.
|
| "We're just a marketplace". I really need to revisit
| leaving Amazon as a resolution.
| leobg wrote:
| Same on X. It's possible that the scammers just operate
| networks of credit cards and domains and rotate as soon as they
| grt flagged. Numbers game basically. But it's also possible
| that the rules are applied differently to advertisers that
| bring in a lot of cash, regardless of legality.
| smokey_the_bear wrote:
| I bought my daughter a shirt I saw in a Facebook ad, from
| Chalk & Stone. The shirt arrived and is great.
| alex1138 wrote:
| I don't think it was Jack's fault, but Twitter went from
| something that (granted they did tend to do a few shady
| things from a UX perspective) was fine and largely worked but
| did have a massive censorship problem, to something that
| works less well (seriously? i can't see posts chronologically
| without an account? on TWITTER???) and apparently still has
| censorship (although I was mostly preoccupied with covid,
| actual doctors getting banned for truthful information, pre-
| Musk)
| busymom0 wrote:
| > seriously? i can't see posts chronologically without an
| account? on TWITTER???
|
| From twitter's POV, that's a feature, not a bug. It's
| intentional.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Exactly. Blatant scam ads are reported to no avail, and I see
| them still multiple times a day.
|
| After reading Careless People, it became much more tangible.
| "Yes people are motivated by money", but Zuck and others at the
| top of FB actively make a point of expending significant effort
| to avoid fixing things. It's not that they don't know, or care,
| it's that they know and care about keeping the gravy train at
| full speed while they pat themselves on the back for being
| masters of the universe, so to speak.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Always baffles me when there's rules that criminals can just
| get past, at the expense of normal users who are being genuine.
| jackhuman wrote:
| I deleted my facebook. Its the only thing I can do it seems and I
| advice everyone to do the same. Screw this platform. Facebook's
| scams have caused the elders in my family so much pain and me so
| much stress dealing with it, its not worth it. A monopolistic
| cancer on society.
| D13Fd wrote:
| I completely agree. I did this many years ago. The only thing
| that annoys me is that for many local things it's the only
| option. I'm actually significantly less informed and involved
| in the local community because things are so heavily reliant on
| Facebook, and I refuse to sign back up.
| alex1138 wrote:
| What's fun is how many things they lock behind a "fuck you,
| sign in to read this" popup (and now Instagram too)
|
| This from the same company that conveniently tends to reset
| privacy settings on posts
|
| (It ought to be possible to access info as a non-user, but
| you can't, so they force you to sign up)
| withinboredom wrote:
| They globally reset the privacy settings for pretty
| entertaining reasons. Every few years a post goes around
| saying crazy privacy things that gives you instructions to
| change your privacy settings to only "share with yourself".
| If you're dumb enough to do it, you basically shadow-ban
| yourself. If enough people do it, they have to change the
| settings back because also those same people will complain
| about their aunt/neighbor/dad/sister whatever not being
| able to see their posts and have no idea why.
| alex1138 wrote:
| I just honestly feel Zuck's lost the benefit of the doubt
| but I'm willing to be proven wrong
| ceroxylon wrote:
| I left Facebook over a decade ago, and it was painful to
| realize how many people simply forgot that I exist, and how
| many events I missed because many people exclusively use it
| to invite people.
|
| Similar experience where I met someone in 2017 and was
| enraptured with them, and we eventually drifted apart because
| they only communicated through Snapchat and Instagram.
|
| I often wonder if abstaining from the platforms that I
| dislike was worth the increase in loneliness and detachment
| from society, but I don't have access to the alternative
| universe where I decided to grit my teeth and accept the data
| hoarding companies and dark patterns as a tradeoff for being
| able to interact with people who couldn't care less about the
| technicalities.
| vpShane wrote:
| it is how it is, but nothing's stopping any of us from
| reaching out or calling a friend or sending a calendar
| invite. I used Facebook for a local animal shelter I was
| volunteering at, but from the infinite scroll filled with
| infinite ads, very little local things in the middle using
| "FB Purity" firefox addon to hide all the garbage you see
| how much garbage is actually there. it feels like I pulled
| away from a dark matrix of things designed to keep us
| hooked, then I look around and see everybody else hooked,
| commenting with bots, sharing facebook encouraging
| memes/new age spirituality posts and fb doing all it could
| to hook everybody's attention, getting riled up against
| political opinions, bots.
|
| is the loneliness worth it? probably not. is the freedom?
| yes.
|
| > where I decided to grit my teeth and accept the data
| hoarding companies and dark patterns as a tradeoff for
| being able to interact with people who couldn't care less
| about the technicalities.
|
| I know, right? that infinite scroll/showing all the good
| things on the timelines isn't their real life, they're
| filling a void within themselves surfing short videos and
| voicing opinions on nearly everything.
|
| even Zuckerberg said Facebook isn't for making/interacting
| with friends anymore, it's other things, and not good
| things.
|
| you're not alone, and you're not detached from society,
| you're just unplugged from the matrix. of course I say this
| while browsing subreddits and hn, but hobbies and
| activities where we meet people, these are always going to
| be the best thing available to us. in the digital world
| there's plenty of people who'd be down for a LAN, a
| hangout, an event like going hiking, and I've met some cool
| people outside of social media but there's many days where
| it was me, 4 walls, a book/finding things to occupy my
| time.
|
| trust me you did yourself a solid.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think, if someone refuses to interact with you unless
| it's over their preferred corporate advertising-delivery
| platform, then they really aren't your friend. Real friends
| are willing to put in effort and at least agree on a least
| common denominator communication channel!
|
| My friends know I am not on Facebook. If they really want
| me to invite me to an event, they know how to reach me, and
| they do. Anything being communicated out only on Facebook,
| I just don't go to, and I probably wouldn't want to go to
| it anyway.
|
| I've been off of Facebook for so long, I don't even
| remember when I quit. At least 10 years ago, probably 15.
| And I never joined Instagram, TikTok, or any of these other
| ad-delivery platforms. I don't feel that I am any more
| lonely or more detached from society because of it.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Are people still using Facebook in 2026? I sometimes go back to
| my Facebook account, it is a complete wasteland, my feed is
| just generic doomscroll material, nothing new from actual
| people I know. Communities I follow mostly moved to Discord, it
| is also no longer where events like festivals post their latest
| news. Facebook looks like it is #1 on paper, but my experience
| is completely different, it is nothing like it was 10 years
| ago, in fact, a significant portion of my Facebook feed is
| "remember 5-10 years ago".
| csa wrote:
| > Are people still using Facebook in 2026?
|
| Some of the best B2C customers are on FB -- willing to spend,
| low expectations, low maintenance.
|
| If you add IG to the mix, it's even better.
|
| Your typical HNer does not really fall into "ideal customer"
| profile for most B2C businesses. Our saving grace is our
| above average income profile. Other than that, on average we
| are tolerated rather than sought after (imho).
| ahoka wrote:
| So basically the suckers stayed?
| root_axis wrote:
| > _Are people still using Facebook in 2026?_
|
| I know this is meant as rhetorical snark, but facebook is by
| far the most popular social network on the planet, so it just
| sounds silly.
| not_a_bot_4sho wrote:
| You're right. But there's a generational aspect to this
| too.
|
| Younger generations won't touch Facebook. It's seen as a
| platform for "old" people. So Facebook is on a modest
| decline. (Enter Instagram and Tiktok and all that to fill
| the void...)
| owebmaster wrote:
| It doesn't sound silly and Facebook is definitely not as
| relevant as it was 10 years ago.
| ben_w wrote:
| Yes, though it is much reduced.
|
| I might look at my feed* perhaps 2-3 times a week; despite
| this, there's a good chance only one of my friends has posted
| anything new. Unfortunately, that particular friend is also a
| fairly cliche left-of-the-Cuban-Communist-Party (no,
| seriously) activist and 95% of her posts are "signal
| boosting" things I, a Brit living in Germany, do not have any
| connection to, e.g. "Demexit memes" or Bernie Sander's
| opinions about anything.
|
| Doesn't help that this trillion dollar corporation still
| can't handle rotation metadata*, so if I see something and I
| want to share it, even if it's a good fit for my feed, 50%
| chance the pic looks stupid the moment I've uploaded it, to
| which I respond "ugh, never mind then" and forget about
| trying to solve this and don't post it.
|
| * though the messenger app's web view
| com2kid wrote:
| Facebook marketplace has completely taken over the used sales
| business in my area (Pacific Northwest). Craigslist is dead,
| offer up is dead, FB marketplace won.
| pxx wrote:
| is this still really the case? I feel like Facebook
| Marketplace has been significantly more dead than even last
| year. and it definitely seems completely dead for things
| like rental listings.
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| It's become a defacto forum for a lot of local niche stuff
| like clubs, schools, non profits, and other special interest
| groups.
|
| In my area there are groups related to a lot of different
| outdoor activities , and they share information, trip
| reports, etc. There might be some other forums for that, but
| they aren't as widely used or frequently updated.
| zyngaro wrote:
| Unfortunately this monopolistic cancer has become the only way
| for businesses to get to their customers.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I purposely don't use mine. They keep shadow profiles on you,
| if you're in IL you can sue them (there already was a lawsuit
| about it) and get some money from them.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| No one will go to jail. The fee will cost less than they
| profited. Crime is defective legal, there's just a toll.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] Discussion on source:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46446838
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Not sure why this only seems to happen with IG ads, but I've
| noticed twice already that i'll purchase something on IG for a
| fixed price, and it will automatically enroll me into a monthly
| subscription plan without any chance to cancel it. Further, the
| subscription can then not be cancelled without email interaction
| -- no web-based cancellation.
|
| The checkout screen had no mention of a subscription or any cost
| of a subscription, so not even sure how this is legal.
|
| It has not gotten to the point where I dont make any purchase via
| IG. I'll independently search for the product and purchase it
| (usually less expensively via Amazon.com).
|
| Not sure how this is good for IG, because the attribution is then
| not matched on the purchase. Further, not sure how this is even
| good for the merchant, since I'll inevitably have to do a
| chargeback.
| vgeek wrote:
| Gavin Belson would _never_ suggest scrubbing negative mentions of
| Hooli from the internet.
| neoCrimeLabs wrote:
| Adding to this frustration is a 25yr registered 501(c)3 non-
| profit I volunteer for that holds an annual art festival. The
| festival proceeds go to funding educational materials. They've
| had an active facebook page for at least 15 years, with thousands
| of followers from around the world.
|
| When the non-profit tried to advertise the art festival on
| Facebook. Facebook not only denied them, but when the non-profit
| asked for a review of the denial they were warned if they asked
| again their entire facebook page would be flagged and deleted.
|
| Facebook is large enough I cannot imagine their reasoning. They
| very likely have several conflicting streams of logic depending
| on teams involved. One thing I think is reasonable is that money
| is a motivational factor for Facebook.
|
| Put simply, organizations who come in immediately spending money
| on advertising are more likely to be fast tracked. Organizations
| who don't spent a lot of money are more likely to be shut down.
| ("you've been a freeloader all this time who will likely not pay
| sustainably after this one-time payment. We're focusing on
| sustainable paying customers, goodbye")
|
| Addition: Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if
| there is a literal metric of "money/time" ratio. The more money
| you spend in less time likely improves your chances of being
| fast-tracked, thus biasing new accounts who immediately spend on
| advertising over existing ones who sparsely pay.
| thunderfork wrote:
| Having worked in advertiser support: fb pages are basically an
| unsupported product and their support channels for advertising
| are farmed out to the lowest bidder.
|
| They do bucket out support into spend tiers, although when I
| was there it was overall spend, not frequency
| neoCrimeLabs wrote:
| Thanks for the insights! That was helpful.
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