I tried to make an account while forgetting my VPN was engaged. Another US IP address but one from a block of IPs I’m sure is used for nefarious purposes. So because I briefly shared an IP block with ne’erdowells, I am, without an option to appeal, banned from interacting with Facebook forever.
Google Ads is ghosting me too. I really could get behind legislation that requires companies to have a human point of contact in these cases, but I guess a private company has the right to ignore people they don’t want as customers.
I made an account on LinkedIn while forgetting my VPN was enabled and set up my profile. They immediately flagged me as suspicious and restricted my account, and demanded I upload an ID to remove the restriction, to which I complied and they lifted the restriction. Then about a month later I tried to add my sibling as a connection and they didn't get any notification, then my sibling tried to search up my name to add me and I wasn't showing as a search result. Seems I was shadowbanned even after providing my ID, which seems insane to me that the main professional social network can just do that to someone without due process or any indication. This type of thing could sabotage someone's entire professional career or ruin their self-confidence as everyone ignores all of their messages and activity
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If you are a business that wants to advertise, there’s not much out there besides Meta and Google, so if they don’t pick up the phone, I guess we just won’t advertise online (back to radio spots and the local newspaper which for a small shop is fine I guess)
I've been lured to more local businesses with radio spots and coupon booklets in the mail than Meta/Google ads. Probably an outlier, but still.
Edit: Oh, also comments on reddit r/$cityname recommending a local business are quite useful/effective. They might be botted to hell at this point, but I've never had a bad experience.
So, Meta are certainly happy to take advertiser money (except when they aren't, apparently), and demonstrably triple-digit-billion-dollars worth of people are happy to pay them, so something somewhere must be working, but I still don't understand...
...who the hell buys anything from Facebook ads? I never have, no-one I know ever has. Is my bubble seriously that strong?
I admit, I do click on Facebook ads every so often. This likely means Meta gets paid, and also some number somewhere goes up which means I get shown more of the kind of things I click on. This is how I end up seeing adverts for hi-vis vests for poultry, radioactive pendants (sturdy titanium, reliably glows for 25 years!), tungsten cubes and so on; because I see them and I think "what the actual..." and I click, because you can comment on Facebook adverts and maybe there is some kind of sanity to be found; and, as expected, the comments are full of confused people saying "what the actual..." none of whom are any more likely to buy the product than me.
Has anyone here, but especially of the people considering using Facebook to advertise their product/service, ever bought anything from a Facebook ad? What was it?
I know two people who have sold on FB Marketplace, so apparently it works. I login to FB about 3 times a year and get icked out almost immediately. I refuse to install FB on my phone, because Zuck snoops on the people you share phone calls with.
Craiglist has served me well in the past.
Stop using Facebook. It's really that simple.
Found the guy who's never heard of "shadow profiles."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile
They didn't say delete your FB account. They just said to stop using it.
You use Facebook whether you use Facebook, or not. That's how shadow profiles work.
This has nothing to do with deleting accounts.
I agree shadow profiles are a huge problem, but I suspect they're not worth much to Meta in terms of revenue. You can't show ads to a shadow profile, for example. Best way to hurt them financially is to just log off.
I suspect they're not worth much to Meta in terms of revenue.
I think they're probably worth quite a bit, or Meta wouldn't spend billions acquiring and maintaining the data.
And as we know, in the valley there are always more and more customers for data, personal and otherwise.
This is what the EU has: https://www.eu-digital-services-act.com/Digital_Services_Act...