Um, Really?

Despite its penchant for privacy invasion and time-wasting, I have found Facebook to be a valuable tool since the pandemic began, allowing a streaming platform for our church's services and a means of keeping in touch with our people. As well as being a kind of substitute newsletter for folks to see what's going on.

However, every now and again Facebook feels a need to remind us that it is stupid. Recently small ads have begun appearing on the right-hand side of the page when one checks one's newsfeed. These ads are, like most of the ads the platform runs, dumb. A rough estimate suggests more than four-fifths of them are bogus, designed to lure a reader primarily through thumbnail photos of attractive and mostly undressed women who have nothing to do with what is supposedly being advertised.

As it does with the ads that clutter its feed, Facebook offers us the chance to hide these ads too. And as it does with the other ads, you are given a list of choices about why you want to hide the ad in question. I always choose "Irrelevant" as my response, since "fake cash grab and pack of lies" is not one of the options. For some reason, the order of the responses changes around, so that rather than be in the same place according to alphabetical or some other order my preferred choice migrates. Perhaps FB designers think that I will not see it and I will choose one of the other answers, which will probably give the algorithm data to use in pushing an entirely different sets of ads on me. This is stupid.

After I have clicked on "irrelevant," a second dialog box opens up that asks me if I would like to learn more about this advertiser. Yes, I certainly would like to see other advertising from a source that I have labeled irrelevant. Whoops! No, I wouldn't. And the question is stupid.

If Mrs. Gump was right, stupid is as stupid does. Which is why Facebook is, despite its utility in certain areas, stupid.