Facebook Ads are cynical, often misleading and largely exploitative

Here’s a good example.  Look closely – it’s a little puzzle that challenges you to solve it.  “Find out instantly if your answer is correct” it says.

So I clicked on it.

Did I find an answer?  No.  Just a sign-up screen for a ridiculously expensive, trashy ‘service’ of the kind that would appeal to desperate 13 year olds or people with seriously impaired mental function.

What really pisses me off about this is that this kind of advertising is the norm.

I watched a TED presentation yesterday from a young internet artist / geek – all about modelling ‘feeling’ data as extracted from the world of blogs.  One of the most chilling moments was when the presenter mentioned that his data showed him all the women who had typed (among other things) the words ‘I feel addicted…’ in their blogs.

His pet project ‘I Feel Fine’ not only collects all these ‘feeling’ statements, but presents them in a way that allows links back to the original blog material. Excellent.  So now I know where I can go spam with my latest MLM ‘home business opportunity’.

Nowhere in this guy’s presentation was there any critical view about what this data invites people to do.

And I’m still waiting to hear somebody (anybody) raise the issue of the kind of advertising that Facebook breeds.  It’s a desperate, needy platform marketing addictive-style products to addictive people.  Don’t like the sound of that?

Go look at the ads.  I’ll take them apart for you one by one if I have to.  They’re all aimed at people trying to fix themselves with something that will – hopefully – make them feel better.

It might seem trivial to you, but the fact that IQTest.am can promise something in its ad and completely fail to deliver it shows online marketing for what it really is: exploitative, misleading and apparently unregulated.