back to article Facebook tells users to report crappy customer service from advertisers

Facebook may be hiring thousands of people to police content, but it's asking users to volunteer to monitor advertisers. The social media giant wants citizens of Facebookistan to report their experiences purchasing items pitched through Facebook or Instagram ads, so that it can encourage merchants to do better and block the …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Threatens to ban ads from businesses with low marks"

    Unsure if you took the term "mark" in the same way I did. (US, informal)

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What could possibly go wrong?

    So what's this going to play out as: Diss Your Competitor As A Service (DYCASAS)? At least Amazon goes to the trouble of making reviews as being from a Verified Purchase.

  3. djstardust

    Interesting this

    Especially since so many non legitimate businesses use Facebook to advertise for free.

    There is one in our area (Gardens, landscaping, roofing, tree surgeons surprise surprise) who constantly have "competitions" no-one wins except the business owner's sister. They are also known for overpriced and incomplete work but literally hundreds of people have reported their page and Facebook just refuse to do anything about it.

    As far as I am concerned Facebook are complicit in their illegal activities by giving them a free advertising platform.

  4. Christopher E. Stith
    FAIL

    Where do I report the RNC, DNC, and the Clinton and Trump campaigns?

    Does this count for political ads, too? The US got sold bills of goods in the primaries and generals that both proved defective. So far Congress isn't helping on the return and recall front. We need some customer service.

    1. Mark 85
      Devil

      Re: Where do I report the RNC, DNC, and the Clinton and Trump campaigns?

      You forgot the Russians and assorted "special" interest groups.

  5. JWLong

    Delete themselves

    One can only hope Facebook will delete themselves.

    1. teknopaul

      Re: Delete themselves

      Word. Facebook is the epitome of a faceless corp that refuses any contact from consumers.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'Outright bans are not likely / not in the interest of Facebook or legitimate businesses'

    ...You don't say.... Bet those same advertisers have to PAY MORE to be on Facebook though. That's kind of useful discovery right there... Paid for once again by Facebook users who are just mules working as free labor:

    https://xkcd.com/1897/

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    firms getting low marks

    Facebook's ad team, we're told, intends to work with firms getting low marks. An email will be sent, notifying advertisers that customers aren't happy. If nothing has improved within a month, then the ad rate reduction will be imposed. A complete ban would only happen if a merchant continues to get bad reviews from customers and does nothing to address complaints for several months

    Time to spam the dislike button until all the invasive tracking ads are deleted.

  8. israel_hands

    Reading between the lines this seems like a pretty pointless exercise in pretending they give a shit.

    From the article it says users can only provide feedback on ads they've clicked. The most obvious spammy abusive bullshit ads won't get clicked so the option of providing feedback isn't there. The only feedback they'll gather will be from people who willingly clicked an ad and the feedback is just going to be sold to the advertisers to help them "target their ads better". Facebook are dressing it up as a service for the users but as with everything they do, it's all aimed fellating their real customers while pretending to give a shit about what a toxic abscess their entire platform is.

    Fuck Facebook. Glad I've never used it.

  9. Jedit Silver badge
    Mushroom

    So, we'll be clicking all ads then

    Because all Facebook ads are spam, except the ones that are scams. And as with spam, if I see an ad for your company on Facebook then you have LOST my potential future business because good businesses don't need to spam.

    Incidentally, if you try reporting one of Facebook's own pages to them you get a "Whoops, something went wrong!" message.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    facebook

    are not advertisers themselves, perchance?

  11. Giovani Tapini

    Sounds like a perfect way

    For random citizens to take corporates offline - I can see it now - start negative rumour about [insert corporate of choice here] get pals to downvote and pass it on. in a few hours the target will have hundreds of thousands of downvotes taking them off the planet.

    Great fun, and entirely counterproductive for all involved.

    its like paying coders by the number of lines of code they write (mines the one in machine code...)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sounds like a perfect way

      Errrrr... you can pay dubious companies in Third World countries ridiculously small amounts to do exactly that. No need to pass it on.

      That's precisely why the model is broken in the first place.

  12. ukgnome

    But that would mean taking notice of the adverts

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hang on!

    ... You mean, people actually click ads? How stupid is that?

    In a couple of years' time I hope we'll be able to repost this, replacing the phrase 'click ads' with 'use social media'...

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Will this work for politicians?

    They'll never get higher than about a two star rating out of five - and that's if their party fully supports them. So ideally we should stop seeing political ads if we rate all our politicians with one star!

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Plugin update

    Will Ad-nauseum get an update to downvote the "clicked" ads?

  16. Meerkatdorg

    Apps too please

    Can we have the same with crap apps. Should get Facebook out of the app store pretty sharpish.

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