DNHeadlines Blog

I should preface this by mentioning that I do actually enjoy Facebook. I quite enjoy the product they offer, but hate some of the little problems I encounter. It’s quite a polarizing experience actually.

Today I logged into Facebook to check out some ads I have running, but somehow got caught up in some silly little application that I have on my account.

I accidentally clicked on an ad - I was moving the mouse across the screen and some finger muscles flexed and the pointer was right on top of an ad, and it all went downhill from there, and cost me about thirty minutes out of my day.

The glimse that I had of the ad right before the screen refreshed, and before I could hit the browser’s stop button, consisted of the same graphic design elements as emplyoed by Facebook itself, more out of an attempt to fool people than to actually be compelling in it’s own right. This is not something new, and honestly, there are some truly impressively deceptive integrations.

In this particularily rediculous situation, I ended up on some SMS relationship-based website which, from what I could tell, wanted to send relationship advice to my cellphone for only $5 / week. “What a bargain, much better than the usual $2 / SMS screwing that I see on other applications” I thought, when reading the fine print of course. But I digress.

The point to this is that I couldnt leave the page - it trapped me in this wicked loop where the only “successful” path was the one that moved forward, further into the bowels of the monster which undoubtedly traps hundreds of unsuspecting teenagers, or worse, tweens, without the sense of how to get out but yet have somehow managed to score a cellphone and don’t read the fine print. On Facebook, that must be a huge demographic.

The site wouldn’t let me close the browser, close the tab or go back, and just when I had my morning tabs open to all the pages I need to use throughout my day too. Suffice to say I was really ticked off, and armed with the facebook guidelines which clearly states that an ad “cannot utilize ‘mouse trapping’ whereby the advertiser does not allow users to use their browser ‘back button’ and traps them on their site and/or present additional/unexpected behavior (for example: another ad or page).”

As I was giving my computer the three-fingered salute, I was already formulating in my head the scathing letter to Facebook about how lazy their employees are at verifying the ads in their network, and filling my cannon with some choice words for Mr. Chamath Palihapitiya. But Facebook outsmarted me. They have created a complete inability to source an appropriate email address that, by the time you do find something even remotely on target, the anger has subsided and you are left wondering why you are spending so much time to complain about it. I had developed content blindness after just a few minutes and ended up spamming info@ and privacy@ to let them know of my frustations. It isn’t my fault, they don’t have a Contact Us section.

It then occurred to me that maybe the ad was delivered through the application. Since Facebook has not able to deliver on the kind of successful advertising model they hope for, they either overlook this abuse or simply dont have a mechanism by which they can monitor it. Either way, it can only be seen as one of willful disregard and lack of due diligence. I suppose that in an effort to increase / bolster the perception that it is, in fact, possible to develope successful Facebook apps, that they have to let a few things slide surrounding ad revenue generation.

In the mean time, I stay away from application ads. Not that I ever click on them in the first place, but I now make a concerted effort to manipulate my mouse in a more calculated fashion when using the site. I eagerly await a response to my complaint.

Having said this, the last time I complained about an ad which was deceiving users into submitting their cell phone numbers, they banned me from the system for two days. But that is another story for another post, when they really piss me off…again.