They've also just given me an account warning for hate speech. Commenting on the differences between English and American punctuation, specifically on whether to place a comma inside or outside quote marks, I concluded – as a copy editor who thinks US grammatical rules on this point are silly – by saying: “Stupid Americans.” (Note that, US grammarians. The full stop is inside the quote marks here because I'm quoting what I actually wrote. If there'd been no full stop in the original, it should of course go outside the quote marks.) It seems FB regard calling Americans stupid as hate speech. Stupid Americans.
But there is something. Facebook lives from onsite advertising and likes to personalize that to each user according to... whatever criteria they use. Presumably they auto-trawl your posts, your comments, your likes, what advertising you actually click on, your groups, your pages, your friends, put tracking cookies on your computer, and so forth. I think there's a setting where you can turn this off. I must have done that at some stage because I used to get all sorts of irrelevant sponsored junk. When I ever took any notice of it, it was merely in order to click “Hide”.
Recently, there's been a change there. Possibly FB activated personalization again without telling me, because they seem to have refined what they send my way. Now I do get targeted advertising – and of just one type: women's clothing and accessories. That's it. Nothing else whatsoever.
For instance:
Those harem pants do look very comfortable. I could certainly go for the round neck velvety top. I love those patterned tights. Nice shawl too.
Have I bought anything? No, I haven't. Am I going to alter my advertising settings again? No, I'm not.
Okay, FB, score one to you.
I find Facebook's stance on hate speech and vulgarity poor. I remember reporting someone who stated "that person should be raped." and a different person on sending a picture of his -ahem- parts. On both occasions, Facebook returned with these haven't violated our community standards. Really Facebook?
ReplyDeleteOh yes indeed. That's the main reason why “Your comment goes against our Community Standards on hate speech” induced such a massive eye roll. The stuff they let through every minute of every day and they're pulling me up on this? I'm rolling my eyes again right now.
DeleteI am on Facebook for the similar reasons to you - it's the simplest way to keep in touch these days. But I detest many of its policies and - lets call a spade a spade - its spying. OK, it's free so I feel somewhat guilty complaining - after all, it's up to you to use social media or not, at least in theory, although it's hard to get by these days without doing so. But you pay by having your life details sold to advertisers and similar or more dubious organisations. I have rid it somewhat of targeted advertising (which gives some odd results - US churches, flashy cars, kids TV...) And I never accept friends requests from people I've never heard of. Use with caution. Sue x
ReplyDeleteI'm also admin for one group (Notts Trans Hub) and one page (Radical Femme), so I have to stay for those as well. But yes I keep my Friends list quite slim ;)
DeleteWhile I delayed in leaving Facebook, it's not a massive faff. Moving to more private systems like Signal et al require a bit more effort, but I guess it depends how much you don't want to by targeted by Facebook.
DeleteUpdate: One of the sponsored ads FB is currently sending my way is from CacciaChi. Like wow! Some of their stuff is just gorgeous.
ReplyDeleteMy second order just arrived, including one of these. It's so nice it even looks quite good on me :)
Delete