Facebook blocks Signal for transparent advertising

The Signal team wanted to run ads showing how personalized Facebook ads work. The advertising account was deactivated.

The team of the messenger Signal tried to place ads on Facebook platforms such as Instagram and wanted to disclose the personalization of the ads. As those involved now write in the Signal blog, however, they were excluded from Facebook's advertising network for this.

The announcement says: "Companies like Facebook don't build technology for you, they build technology for your data. They collect everything they can from Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp to sell insights into people and their lives." And while that's no secret, exactly how it works remains unclear to many, he said.

So now Signal wanted to showcase how ad personalization works based on the data it collects, even through ads. "Facebook's own tools have the potential to reveal what otherwise remains unseen. (...) We wanted to use those same tools to directly show how most of the technologies work. We wanted to buy some Instagram ads," the Signal blog states simply.

Transparent advertising with Facebook's resources

As for the specific plan, the team writes, "We created a variant-targeted ad that would show you the personal data Facebook collects about you and sells access to it. The ad would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer that the ad platform uses. Facebook was not fond of the idea."

The ads now unveiled and planned by Signal, for example, directly displayed the occupation, relationship status, location, as well as various interests of the person who should have ultimately seen the ad. One of the ads now featured on the Signal blog reads, "You're seeing this ad because you're a newly married Pilates instructor and crazy about cartoons. This ad uses your location to know you're in La Jolla. You're interested in parenting blogs and thinking about LGBTQ adoption."

On being deactivated as a Facebook ad partner, the Signal team writes, "Being transparent about how ads use people's data is apparently enough to get you banned; in Facebook's world, the only acceptable use is to hide what you're doing from your audience."

Facebook disagrees

In a statement, Facebook basically contradicts Signal's account. According to the statement, Signal's advertising account was indeed suspended for a few days in early March, but due to an "unrelated payment issue."

In addition, according to Facebook, Signal never tried to run the described ads through the ad network, so they could never have been rejected by Facebook. In addition, Signal's advertising account is still active and could be used for other advertising.

However, the Signal team continues to say that it tried to run the described ads on Facebook, but they were rejected. The Register magazine also points out that Facebook's advertising guidelines prohibit content that shows or implies personal characteristics.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chrome targeted by criminals: Why users need to update quickly now

A security vulnerability in Google Chrome is currently being exploited by cyber criminals. Malware could land on your PC through it. Read here how you can protect yourself. The Google Chrome browser is currently struggling with some security vulnerabilities. In a blog post , Google warns about a total of seven vulnerabilities, with the majority of these gaps being classified as a "high" threat to users. The vulnerabilities have been fixed in the latest version of Chrome for Windows, Linux and macOS. If you have Chrome version 90.0.4430.85 installed, it can no longer be exploited. If you have an older version of the browser installed, you should update urgently. You can find the download of the new version below these lines. Smartphone users do not have to be afraid of the security vulnerability. Google has not had to take any security measures here for the time being. The security vulnerability probably remained undiscovered by cyber criminals for the time being. So far, noth...
Read more

Face and voice recognition: Why TikTok wants to be allowed to collect biometric data in the USA

TikTok's privacy policy for the US now mentions the collection of biometric data from faces and voices. The background is likely to be a legal dispute that cost the company $92 million. Neue Datenschutzbestimmungen sind oft eher etwas für Juristen, doch die jüngste Aktualisierung von TikTok sollte alle Nutzerinnen und Nutzer in den USA aufhorchen lassen. Denn in den am 2. Juni aktualisierten Datenschutzbestimmungen für die USA ist ein Abschnitt enthalten, den es zuvor nicht gab. Er lautet übersetzt: »Wir sammeln möglicherweise biometrische Identifikationsmerkmale und biometrische Informationen, wie sie im US-Recht definiert sind, wie etwa von deinem Gesicht und deiner Stimme, aus deinen Inhalten.« Im englischsprachigen Original ist von »faceprint« und »voiceprint« die Rede. »Bevor wir damit anfangen«, frage man jedoch nach dem Einverständnis, wenn dies gesetzlich nötig sei, fügte noch TikTok hinzu. In response to an initial inquiry from "TechCrunch" about the ba...
Read more

Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WebEx: Berlin authority warns against popular video systems

After an initial data protection audit, some video service providers have made improvements to their offerings. But the Berlin data protection commissioner still sees serious shortcomings. The State Commissioner for Data Protection in Berlin (Germany), Maja Smoltczyk, advises against using leading video conferencing systems such as Microsoft Teams, Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, GoToMeeting, Teamviewer and Cisco WebEx. The reason is a retest of various offerings. After a number of services had already failed a test of data protection requirements last year, a new test of the major providers did not reveal any substantial improvement. Smoltczyk said that she was pleased "that our comments had persuaded so many providers to improve their offerings, in some cases very significantly, in terms of data protection". There are now enough legally compliant services for a wide range of purposes that there is no reason to break data protection law for video conferencing. However, if a provid...
Read more