I have had a Facebook account since 2006 when it first opened to the public. Like many others, I have found the Facebook experience increasingly frustrating and rife with AI junk and fake ads.
For example:
Photos of celebrities and some catchy headlines. Clarke Gayford used to be a popular choice.
Some fake sites claim to have great discounts from last year or have excess inventory. Fake Pak’nSave sites have been rampant for a while.
Facebook’s terms and conditions are very clear on many issues. “Ads may not promote products, services, programs, or offers using methods that have been identified as deceptive or misleading, including methods designed to trick people into giving up their money or personal information.” Facebook also has corresponding procedures. You can report these scam ads because they clearly violate Facebook’s advertising standards.
In most cases, you submit a report and don’t get a response. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll get a notification a few days later and be directed to a “support inbox” where there’s a response to your report. But the basic answer is “no, everything is fine.”
I have reported illegal ads dozens of times and most of them ended up like this. Many of the responses to the reports were basically six days and twelve hours after I reported them.
It appears that Harvey Norman isn’t actually selling TVs for $3 a pop. The ad violated several of Facebook’s advertising standards, but after 6 days and 12 hours since I reported the post, Facebook has decided not to take any action.
A similar page called “Laptops Elimination” was created on July 18th and started running ads that same day. Now, weeks later, that page is still live. I reported the ads I saw on that page but have not received a response. I have also reported that page as a scam but have not received a response.
The support inbox is cluttered and difficult to navigate. Most of the ad reports are grouped under “Other,” but there’s no easy way to check the status of any report or see if it’s been updated. There’s no documentation on what’s reported.
I regularly get messages from Facebook that my report failed and they don’t know how to identify what the report is and ask me to resubmit the report.
