There are a number of disturbing elements to the Russian election hacking scandal — most notably the fact that a foreign entity was somehow able to use Facebook and other social networks to influence an already stressful U.
S. election.But what has baffled me most about the hacking scandal is that the Russians were able to proceed with their agenda with such ease, while my influencer marketing agency (which has no interest in nefarious global domination) struggles on a daily basis to do even the most basic tasks on the platform.
As the Wall Street Journal noted recently, “Relying on AI can lead to false positives, as when [a] company pulls down legitimate content that its algorithms think might be offensive.”
My firm does a high volume of work on Facebook to amplify our influencers’ content. Brands often hire us to create programs with quick turnarounds and tight deadlines, such as a one-day event or a short-term giveaway. Having that (legitimate) content pulled down because an algorithm suspects it is offensive can throw an entire program off the rails.
We have had to develop an entire document to detail the various “watch-outs” we need to keep in mind in order to take advantage of Facebook’s reach without raising the ire of its finicky and overly critical computer algorithms. These trigger-happy software programs can be incredibly problematic. It has been our experience that Facebook’s software doesn’t hesitate to remove content first and ask questions later.
VentureBeat reached out to Facebook on this, and Facebook maintains that it’s not the case that it will remove content before properly reviewing it. It said it reviews all advertisements before they go live, as per the ad review process posted on its site and that, for other content, it will only pull something down if violates Facebook policies.”
It has been my firm’s experience that while non-ad content can be posted without review, it will indeed get automatically pulled if it flags the algorithm. It will then often be re-posted following an appeal. We’ve seen the same thing on Facebook-owned Instagram. An influencer we work with once had her entire Instagram account shut down following the posting of a piece of sponsored content. It was reinstated after a couple of weeks of desperate emails and phone calls to Instagram headquarters.
You can find the full list of Facebook’s prohibited content here. While the vast majority of these restrictions are understandable — certainly we don’t want people posting ads that promote illegal activities, discrimination, or weapons — many are not that clear cut. The machinations our team goes through in order to get clients’ brands boosted on Facebook are borderline overwhelming. Let’s look at a couple of…
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