Sophos Cloud Optix
Facebook has announced yet more slants to its constant ad fiddling.
Namely, it says it’s going to do two things to try to avoid users clicking that dreaded “hide” option on the ads in our newsfeeds.
First: after we tell Facebook that we don’t want to see an ad, it will ask us to explain ourselves.
“Help us understand the problem,” it will ask in its best Freudian accent as we stretch out on the couch and it grabs a notepad.
The choices for why we don’t want to see ads will include:
- It’s not relevant to me
- I keep seeing this
- It’s offensive or inappropriate
- It’s spam
- Something else
When testing the feature, Facebook says that it used the results of this particular update to stop showing bad ads that were offensive or inappropriate and thus saw a “significant decrease” in the number of ads people reported as offensive or inappropriate.
That’s nicer for all, Facebook said:
This means we were able to take signals from a small number of people on a small number of particularly bad ads to improve the ads everyone sees on Facebook.
The second ad move Facebook’s making is to pay more attention to feedback from quiet people: i.e., those who don’t often hide ads.
Because they don’t hide ads much, when they do hide them, those ads must be ultra bad, the thinking goes.
If someone hides things very rarely, we’ll consider that when we choose what to show them. If we think there is even a small chance they might hide an ad, we won’t show it to them. This affects the type of ads we show everyone, but has a bigger impact for people who don’t often hide ads.
When Facebook tested the “listen closely to quiet people” update, it saw that people who rarely hide ads ended up hiding 30 percent fewer ads with the change.
Facebook took that to mean that by listening carefully, it can show better ads – even to those who aren’t very vocal.
But who knows? Maybe the quiet ones have slipped further still into advertising-induced comas.
To keep up with all things Zuckerberg and beyond, consider liking Naked Security’s page on Facebook.
How’s this for a motto: We don’t target ads; we eyeball the targeters!
Image of Facebook courtesy of Shutterstock.
I recommend using the FB purity extension, it strips all of the junk adverts and “stories” forced into the newsfeed,it removes unwanted changes from Facebook (no instant play video!) and makes it a useable site again
How about a “we don’t want to see any ads!” option?
I ignore ads that are irrelevant to what I’m doing and even the ones that are relevent are rarely even looked at, let alone clicked on!
I agree ads
rarely looked at. Just get rid of all the ads. They are not needed. Always trying to sell you something. I get on here to get away from that.
Facebook can take a hike to never never knowing, ads are a pain, most of them are of no use to me on a personal level
Adblock Plus perhaps, seems to do the trick, never seen an add on fb.
I like to mark them all as offencive
Wouldn’t mind ads if the current news feed didn’t suck
Yahoo and Google recently made it easier to report malicious adds. Its still not easy in some places. I have been leaving comments in the feedback on Google searches for allowing fake site results and av ads.
I doubt I had an impact but I am sure I’m not the only one who has trolled them for this behavior on their social pages. Its nice to see a change that may affect our security for the better.
I know this is not worded right, but i hope you all got my point
Like a lot of people, before I got FBP, Adblock, script block, and any other thing block for Facebook I totally messed up their advertising knowledge in a sense. I simply marked everything from toothpaste to children’s DVD, train sets to sports equipment as Sexually Explicit or Offensive. I did notice a fall in some ads then.
I think everyone on Facebook who sees ads should just mark every single advert as Offensive and see what happens. I admit I have a similar view to Advertising and Marketing as the late great Bill Hicks (Check Youtube for that). If advertisers have to push their product at me then I obviously don’t need it. If I needed it I;d already have bought it. If I actually need an item like a TV I’ll read and unbiased review in ‘Which’ magazine and pick the best one for my needs. Advertising is lost on me. It’s like ‘Look at the item you don’t own’.. umm yes I know I don’t own it, That’s because I don’t want it.
Facebook should go back to it’s roots as Social Networking instead of advertising space before every one just gives up on it entirely.
They’ve been doing this for over a year now.
Hmm, so Facebook will give your complaint more weight if you look at a lot of ads, but only report a small fraction of them?
So if I write a script to reload facebook every 30 seconds, 16 hour a day, like some obsessive teenager, does that mean that any ads I complain about will get suppressed hard because of all the thousands of ads my script downloaded (but I did not see)?
Time to get coding!
On second thoughts perhaps not, as I only look at Facebook for a few minutes each week, so not worth the effort.
If I click ”hide” on an advert it means I don’t wish to see it. As per my reasons why….. it’s NONE of fb’s godamn business. I think ‘Shiny’s” idea is awesome though, mark every ad as ”sexually explicit or offensive” But even then I highly doubt fb would take any notice and would still continue to force feed us utter drivel.