How Flat Earthers Nearly Derailed a Space Photo Book (nytimes.com) 167
An anonymous reader writes: A photographer trying to raise money for a self-published book of historical space artifacts had his Facebook ads repeatedly removed by Facebook because flat-Earthers and Moon hoax conspiracy theorists were offended. About 24 hours after the ads were approved, he got a notification telling him the ad had been removed. He resubmitted it. It was accepted -- and then removed again -- 15 or 20 times, he said. The explanation given: He had run "misleading ads that resulted in high negative feedback."
He understood that it was Facebook's algorithm that rejected the ads, not a person. Getting additional answers proved difficult, a common complaint with advertising on Facebook. The best clues he could find came in the comments under the ads, which he and his colleagues captured in screenshots before they were removed and in responses to other posts about the project: There were phrases such as "The original moon landing was faking" and "It's all a show," along with memes mocking space technology. Some comments were hard to gauge, with users insisting that the earth was flat but that they'd buy the book anyway.
Mr. Redgrove didn't entirely blame the commenters. If these were their beliefs, then of course they were going to be annoyed by the ads. But how these individuals had ended up with the power to derail his campaign perplexed him. "They don't really have their systems in place to protect people," Mr. Redgrove said of Facebook. Facebook said it could not immediately comment on what had gone wrong. On Thursday, after the publication of this article, a representative for the company said it had investigated the issue and had confirmed that, as Mr. Redgrove had said, all the ads were originally approved.
He understood that it was Facebook's algorithm that rejected the ads, not a person. Getting additional answers proved difficult, a common complaint with advertising on Facebook. The best clues he could find came in the comments under the ads, which he and his colleagues captured in screenshots before they were removed and in responses to other posts about the project: There were phrases such as "The original moon landing was faking" and "It's all a show," along with memes mocking space technology. Some comments were hard to gauge, with users insisting that the earth was flat but that they'd buy the book anyway.
Mr. Redgrove didn't entirely blame the commenters. If these were their beliefs, then of course they were going to be annoyed by the ads. But how these individuals had ended up with the power to derail his campaign perplexed him. "They don't really have their systems in place to protect people," Mr. Redgrove said of Facebook. Facebook said it could not immediately comment on what had gone wrong. On Thursday, after the publication of this article, a representative for the company said it had investigated the issue and had confirmed that, as Mr. Redgrove had said, all the ads were originally approved.
Welcome to the 21st Century (Score:5, Interesting)
Welcome to the 21st Century, where the opinions of kooks and conspiracy nuts drives the public media to decide what we can see and can't see.
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Shhh... don't wake the anti-vaxxers, there's already enough conspiracy nutjobs involved.
Re:Welcome to the 21st Century (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the 21st Century, where the opinions of kooks and conspiracy nuts drives the public media to decide what we can see and can't see.
This drives politics, too. The loudest message wins, right or wrong.
It's just an extension of the pulpit and tv. Back in the stone age, the preacher would say, and the flock would nod assent. Heretics would be burned at the stake.
Then came TV, the talking heads say, and the flock would nod assent. Dissenters would be ostracised.
And now the same's happened to the 'net. "influencers," "personalities" and other made-up bullshit say, and all the lemmings and parrots nod assent. Dissenters are shamed into silence.
Fuck it all, I loathe it all with a burning passion.
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Back in the stone age, the preacher would say
You win the anachronism of the day.
Heretics would be burned at the stake.
Shifting randomly through time, your cause-therefore-effect applied, oh, around .001% of the time. In the alternative, back to the stone age again, more like 10% of the time one hominid would bash in another's skull for no better reason than he wanted his fruit or mate.
I'm often morbidly curious of how people like you think you even got here. It isn't religion from your perspective, and evolution works only by being an absolute bloodbath. Did you spring up from a sw
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Welcome to the 21st Century, where the opinions of kooks and conspiracy nuts drives the public media to decide what we can see and can't see.
That and as a number of YouTubers find out 'copyright owners' are almost always given the benefit of the doubt, even if they are wrong or lying. Surely so called copyright owners should receive strikes for dubious or invalid claims?
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The way the MPAA and RIAA wrote the rules, it's too dangerous to penalize those making frivolous claims.
They could, however, require that they submit proof of identity, and provide that to whoever they're suppressing. Some of them might have enough money to interest a lawyer in what should often be a simple case.
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They could, however, require that they submit proof of identity, and provide that to whoever they're suppressing. Some of them might have enough money to interest a lawyer in what should often be a simple case.
Submit proof of identity to who? None of these companies want to pay people to review submissions. That's why they have "AI" taking down advertisements to begin with.
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I think things will get better once people realize the actual meaning of "AI" is Artificial Incompetence.
Re: Welcome to the 21st Century (Score:2)
I doubt the powers that be will allow people to realize that. Too much potential control in making people trust -them- the ''AI''s they control
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I agree they don't. I just believe they should be required to. With legally enforceable penalties if they don't. (Certainly damages plus legal fees including court costs.)
Bad guys are discovering this 1 very weird trick! (Score:5, Funny)
Need to beat up a restrained suspect who is in your custody and can't fight back,
but worried a camera somewhere is still rolling even after you made sure the CCTV system "malfunctioned". Put on some RIAA music, and play MPAA content!
Need to discuss how you plan on fucking over millions of your customers but worried somebody is recording the conversation? Play RIAA music in the background!
Are you a dirty politician ready to accept a 'gift' of millions of dollars in exchange for a company being allowed to dump toxic waste behind an elementary school?...RIAA music!
This will help to keep those videos from being spread, because the copyright Lord, God, and Master will them down because Justin Beiber can he heard in the background.
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Mod this up - +6 funny because its true
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This will help to keep those videos from being spread, because the copyright Lord, God, and Master will them down because Justin Beiber can he heard in the background.
There are numerous programs that can strip out or muddle music playing while leaving dialogue intact. I've seen that done plenty of times on Youtube with folks posting stuff that has legally-encumbered songs playing in the background.
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Welcome to the 21st Century, where the opinions of kooks and conspiracy nuts drives the public media to decide what we can see and can't see.
Do you actually think most Flat Earthers believe that shit? I mean, there's always one in every crowd, but the whole "movement" is just trolls trolling trolls. Once you understand that it's just a bunch* of trolls, mass-reporting of ads is completely expected.
* We must come up with a good collective noun for trolls. I propose "a chan of trolls".
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I'd prefer "a slime of trolls".
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"a slime of trolls"? I think you just broke Moria.
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Or "a pointless of trolls"
Re:Welcome to the 21st Century (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Welcome to the 21st Century (Score:5, Interesting)
Yip, I was going to say the same thing. I know a couple of flat earthers and believe me, they are not trolling. They believe. And it fits perfectly into their spiritual beliefs - e.g they are at the centre of the universe and definitely not an insignificant spec in a vast universe. Flat earthism is anti-science spiritualism.
Flatism has come a long way in a short time.
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Flat earthism is anti-science spiritualism.
501(c)(3), babe...
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It goes hand-in-hand with antivax... which has also made "great" strides in a relatively short time.
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I think "trolly" works fine. Or should we save that one for trollops?
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Do you actually think most Flat Earthers believe that shit? I mean, there's always one in every crowd, but the whole "movement" is just trolls trolling trolls. Once you understand that it's just a bunch* of trolls, mass-reporting of ads is completely expected.
There's a documentary on Netflix called "Behind the Curve." It's about flat-Earthers. It's frightening. They actually believe the earth is flat. They are not trolling.
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Yes. Yes, there are actually a lot of flat earthers who do fully believe the bull. Take a look around YouTube and you will find people who are either incredibly good at playing a dimwit or ... well, they needn't play one.
There are, as far as I can tell, three kinds of flat earthers:
1) The smart one who found out that he can sell bullshit to idiots. These usually wrote some books that they sell at insane prices or have a huge YouTube channel with actually not that bad production values and a huge following o
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Welcome to the 21st Century, where the opinions of kooks and conspiracy nuts drives the public media to decide what we can see and can't see.
Just what we can see? The same people also have veto power over what we can even have:
https://www.mnn.com/earth-matt... [mnn.com]
Small wonder that China is eating our lunch. If China decides it wants to have something, they just fucking build it. No decades of vainly trying to satisfy every special interest.
There's more too it then just nut jobs (Score:3)
Basically we've been building on that mountain for decades with little or no regard to the local environment or community. Lots of messes left behind, lots of hassles from the construction, relatively few jobs for the locals (probably net job losses since the construction might have negatively affected tourism in the area). They've had repeated promises that this time it'll be difference or that this telescope's the last one, etc, etc. It's not surprising they're
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All of the astronomy on this mountaintop, which is larger than Rhode Island, is limited to one small reserve area near the summit. Because of the high altitude, nobody lives there and only a few hikers even visit (I was one of them, going up in 1968 to see the first of the current 13 observatories under construction). But it does have a small amount of tourist traffic today, for specialized tours of the observatory complex. Yes, specialized nerd tourism on Maunakea began with the telescope complex. The "loc
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This had no bearing on what you could or couldn't see. This was on Facebook. And it was an ad. It was an ad on Facebook. Relevancy to real life: 0.
If Facebook is in control of your life, then there's something I need to warn you about: Facebook is in control of your life, and I wonder whose decision that was. It may be that even Facebook isn't the problem with Facebook being a problem.
Re:Welcome to the 21st Century (Score:4, Interesting)
My wife advertises on Facebook. Why? Because it works. It brings in business. If she gets banned, she can find other ways to advertise, but they are not as efficient. Like it or not, many small, local businesses are in the same predicament.
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It many cases, "the public media" IS the kooks and conspiracy nuts.
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Now, as the Universe, in it's infinite perversity, is attempting to balance things out with the Age of Stupidity.
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Pretty please?
I'm dead serious. It's time to clean up the gene pool from that pond scum.
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Yes, but public TV ensured that people cannot discern between fact and fiction, news and opinion, anymore. It's become synonymous. Now add the increasing sensationalism where TV itself started to discredit itself by claiming that everyone is lying and only they are still telling you the truth, with more and more outlandish claims and more and more sensationalist reporting, and you can easily see how people who are unable to test and verify anything they see and hear get confused, thanks to a school system t
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Common sense is sadly not very common. Especially among people who supposedly rely on it a lot.
Protect People?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook's algorithms are designed to protect FB. I thought that was obvious. The negative feedback indicates unhappy users, and unhappy users are bad for FB's bottom line. The algorithm made what I would consider the rational choice. Of course, such algorithms are ignorant of the larger context, so their decisions are often wrong from a more objective perspective. But, given their limitations, their decisions are perfectly rational.
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I agree, I mean I find it a little funny that it's not widely understood fact that people consuming and using social media are in fact the product.
Then again I was quite taken back by the apparent shock and surprise with the Cambridge nonsense. And I'll probably be taken back a little more when people realize all their internet connected fridges, toasters, slow cookers, doorbells, thermostats, light switches etc are spying on them (whether because an evil corporation willed it, or a smart person took advan
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Now why in hell would we want an Internet-connect pressure coo -
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Honestly, I have no idea, who or why anybody thought most of these things should be connected to the internet and talking to each other...
but I do think early adopters of internet connected pressure cookers will likely also be proud owners of internet connected home security systems, and I for one plan on stocking up on popcorn when leaked video footage hits YouTube during the next subsequent election....
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I couldn't say, but if you want one, it's $149.99. https://www.amazon.com/Instant... [amazon.com]
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Facebook's algorithms are designed to protect FB.
Yes, but:
a) If that adverts had already been approved by humans then how can they be removed by a machine with no questions asked? Wouldn't that mean the people who originally reviewed them are doing something wrong?
b) After it's happened 15 times with the same adverts then the machine is broken. It's not 'protecting' anything, it's broken.
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Because the implementation didn't have an override. Its input is probably an ad and the feedback. It doesn't know the ad was approved by a person 13 times before.
Bad Marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Worth keeping in mind if you're thinking of wasting money on Facebook ads.
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Every ad I see that I can report (i.e. adsense) I either mark as seen too often or offensive if I see it more than twice
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Interesting (Score:2)
I wonder if thereâ(TM)s a way we could use this to our advantage - get these automated bots to somehow remove Facebook itself if we could come up with the right thing to be offended by.
Flat Earthers Unite! (Score:5, Funny)
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That makes them what... flat with rounded corners?
They'd better not cross Apple then!
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Shouldn't that be "planar movement"?
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They still ride the short bus
What, are they afraid they'll get high-centered?
Fanatics offended at "heretical" views (Score:3)
What else is new? Fanatics have no place for differing views in their world and will fight them will all means available (that they can identify). They will claim to have absolute truth, and any kind of "proof" offered will have been an after-the-fact construction. For some most demented examples, look at all the "proofs" that "God" exists. The smarter ones are circular, the dumber ones do not even have a sound chain of reasoning at all, no matter the anchor point for that chain.
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What else is new? Fanatics have no place for differing views in their world and will fight them will all means available (that they can identify).
Yes, I am a fanatic, in that I find all ads on Facebook and many other services to be objectionable. The only flag that seems to have any effect is "objectionable", and that's what I honestly mark every ad that I bother to report.
It has nothing to do with "flat earth" or any other political/sociological agenda. It's purely anti-ad. I'm sorry this offends you enough you feel the need to rant about it. And to extend it to an anti-religion rant, well, that's just ... objectionable.
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You shouldn't object to ads on facebook a free service from an advertising and marketing company designed for advertising.
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If you hate all ads, then why are you on Facebook? They will never stop showing you ads because that is how they make money. You are the product, not the customer. Reporting all their ads is like tilting at windmills.
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If you hate all ads, then why are you on Facebook?
For the things that aren't ads? Seems obvious.
Reporting all their ads is like tilting at windmills.
Yes, and? Why do you have a problem if the few times I go there I tell them that the ads are objectionable?
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Because he is a cheapskate, hypocrite, and pretty dim human being.
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And how does this speak to the point, which is that ads being reported as objectionable has nothing to do with flat earthers or any other political or religious agenda?
Of course, you didn't intend to speak to the point, you saw a chance to insult and you lept upon it.
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Your objection to ads isn't the issue. The issue is you are a leeching slimeball.
If you had any integrity at all, you simply wouldn't participate.
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Oh look, dumb ass moron gets mad
Oh look, dumbass moron can't read and comprehend a sentence written in standard English. Show me where "mad" has anything to do with anything. Also, show me where I said that I do this on a regular, or even semi-regular basis.
Fuck you,
Thus spake my personal troll. Thanks for participating and making it obvious.
Wish social media would weight complaints (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing that seems to be missing from all these complaint mechanisms, is they never seem to weight the person making the complaint.
That is to say, if people are making more than a handful of complaints that are eventually being rejected, eventually the system should just ignore or only take into accounts complaints if many other people are also making them.
After maybe five times the people complaining about this guy should essentially never have been allowed to lodge complaints again, at least against him though I'd even argue the scope should be pretty broad.
This is going to be a huge problem if we keep treating every complaint to systems as equally valid.
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The problem is, it's not useful to downgrade people for making complaints that turn out to be bogus, because they're using cut-outs. The complaints never come from the same apparent source twice.
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Complaint need a written reason, and any written reason that matches another written reason for the same complain within 90% should be discarded.
Or, charge a nickle per complaint.
Morons in large groups (Score:5, Insightful)
That's how Trump became prez... (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of stupid people, who believe Russian Propaganda, fed to them by FaceBook.
It blows me away what people will believe these days, lol.
Global warming is fake, Guns don't cause mass shootings, eating laundry soap is cool; but HRC is running a child porn ring out of the basement of a pizzaria is True!!
When you have 8 different people spouting the same drivel, you know it comes from their FB feed; I've tried to run down where it was coming from, but that just pisses off the brainwashed people.
I've given up t
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Guns don't cause mass shootings
To be fair, they don't. They just make it very easy for them to happen.
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Because you are an idiot,. I'll try to keep it simple.
Guns are killing tools, used by humans.
They are trivial to abused, and loead to priming and escalation.
So guns don't kill people, people kill people. Therefor people shouldn't have guns.
That's LITERRALLY the logical conclusion form that statment.
* Pencils don't make other people have spelling mistakes.
* What is it with you people and the inaccurate car analogies?
* Spoons don't make other people fat.
When was the last drive by misspelling? When was the las
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When was the last drive by misspelling? When was the last time someone wen't into a school and shoved spoons into kids mouths?
Like a true believer, you miss the point. The object is inanimate, incapable of taking any action at all without being used by a humant.
Does a gun shoot people on its own? Sounds to me like you think / feel it does.
The PERSON holding the pencil wrote the words wrong.
The PERSON holding the spoon CHOSE to stuff their face full of Rocky Road.
The PERSON holding the gun chose to use it for evil.
It is the PERSON committing the transgression who must be punished. Blaming and banning the object is just batshit c
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So we should probably outlaw people.
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Lots of stupid people, who believe Russian Propaganda, fed to them by FaceBook.
And the conspiracy theories continue.
Has that guy who changed his vote based on a Facebook meme been found yet?
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Tyranny of the masses at work. (Score:2)
Tyranny of the stupid masses, in this case
Seeing the earth's curvature (Score:3)
Recently, I had the good fortune of being able to actually experience the curvature of the earth from a boat in the Great Lakes.
We took a small boat out for about a couple-hour excursion near the north end of Green Bay. As we travelled, you could actually watch the trees in the north drop below the horizon as we went south and then re-appear back above the horizon as we headed back north. Likewise, we saw features in the south appear, then later disappear. It was clear that they weren't just shrinking down to not visible, but actually becoming lower on the horizon.
This is, of course, more or less the same way that the ancient greeks knew that the earth was round, and using this observation, some careful measurement, and a bit of geometry, they even managed to get a pretty good estimate of the size of the earth.
So, yeah, flat earthers are dumb.
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Recently, I had the good fortune of being able to actually experience the curvature of the earth from a boat in the Great Lakes.
Geez; you don't need to convince us.
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We took a small boat out for about a couple-hour excursion near the north end of Green Bay. As we travelled, you could actually watch the trees in the north drop below the horizon as we went south and then re-appear back above the horizon as we headed back north. Likewise, we saw features in the south appear, then later disappear. It was clear that they weren't just shrinking down to not visible, but actually becoming lower on the horizon.
You saw something interesting, and came to the complete wrong conclusion. The state was flat, there's just a water-bulge in the middle of the lake.
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And here we are in the 21st century, and things are so bad I can't tel if you are being serious or joking.
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Why would you care? Just roll with it.
In case you're interested, here's the real deal with flat earthers [charitynavigator.org].
The trolls fucking with Facebook are hilarious.
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Spherical*, not round.
The flat earthers think the worked is round , like a disk.
Why is it important? because idiots thrive on bad verbiage.
*oblate spheroid... barely.
Facebook offends me (Score:2)
A good lesson here (Score:3)
It's easy to look at something and say "I disagree/don't like that, so it should be removed." But it's very hard to come up with objective standards which can be applied universally and achieve similar results. Especially if you've got a bunch of hot-headed people exclaiming "why haven't you removed this crap yet?!?" at you all the while. The founding fathers wisely realized this, and tried to set up a system which erred on the side of being too permissive (free speech) rather than too restrictive. Unfortunately, what I see today is lots of people advocating we err on the side of being too restrictive just to get quicker results. The danger of doing that is that you can get into a situation where the restrictions actually prevent news of the system being too restrictive from getting to The People, thus compromising their ability to even judge that the system has become too restrictive.
This is what hacking looks like (Score:2)
Clearly, no human being at Facebook is paying attention to stuff like this. Same with Youtube and Twitter. People with nothing better to do with their time have realized that they can bork other people's livelihood by hacking the social media algorithms. So, the solution might be to charge these people with criminal hacking.
Just gas them (Score:2)
Bloody trolls.
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Can't we just drop them off the edge?
Of course they are to blame (Score:2)
"Mr. Redgrove didn't entirely blame the commenters. If these were their beliefs,"
belief doesn't absolve anyone from blame.
You should 100% blame those fucking idiots, all of whom should be removed from the internet, and shunned when in public.
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> There are people out there who believe some obnoxiously stupid things. We don't do them any good by saying anything other than "that's a stupid idea".
Counterpoint: It's important to refute their claims, no matter how banal or idiotic, to help anyone else who might be present know those ideas are at least challenged, if not demonstrably wrong.
People can easily consider a lack of opposition to being correct, or at least having a compelling argument. You will probably never convince the person making the
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"Counterpoint: It's important to refute their claims, no matter how banal or idiotic, to help anyone else who might be present know those ideas are at least challenged, if not demonstrably wrong."
You can't refute the claims of true believers. Once people believe they have THE ONE TRUTH, they cannot be persuaded. They will reject all ideas and evidence with religious zeal.
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"Counterpoint: It's important to refute their claims, no matter how banal or idiotic, to help anyone else who might be present know those ideas are at least challenged, if not demonstrably wrong."
You can't refute the claims of true believers. Once people believe they have THE ONE TRUTH, they cannot be persuaded. They will reject all ideas and evidence with religious zeal.
Of course the True Believers are (nearly) a lost cause. That's why the GP said that it's important to refute false claims "to help anyone else who might be present know those ideas are at least challenged, if not demonstrably wrong."
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It's not about the believer, it's about all the onlookers.
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Easy to say; impossible to implement. The volume on social media is so huge that algorithms are the only way the content can be curated. Doing it by hand is simply out of the question.
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"I report ads as "offensive" all the time too."
You're a fucking disgrace and a bad human.
"Because ads are offensive in general."
but somehow not so offence you don't mind enjoying things for free.
If the idea of selling ads in order to get you content is so offensive, STOP FUCKING PARTICIPATING.
And yes, there are a lot of real flat earthers who aren't trolls. Literally want school curriculum changed, and thing the scientific community on the entire planet is lying.