Facebook Ads

 I feel like the ads in Facebook are getting increasingly sketchy recently.

First off, I used to scroll through Facebook and see mostly posts from friends with a few ads mixed in. Nowadays, when I scroll through, about 50% of the posts are from groups I’m a member of. I don’t enjoy most of these posts because people have strong opinions and argue with each other. Another 40% of the posts are either ads or inspirational videos from things that I never signed up for. Finally, maybe about 10% of posts are from friends (mostly the same 5-10 friends who regularly post on Facebook).

Today I saw this ad which I was very troubled about:

 

The whole thing is dubious. The fact that they are selling stamps at that steep of a discount. The “U. S Postal Service” at the top. The URL “USPSSTAMAPS.COM” (why STAMAPS and not STAMPS?). The “ONLY $39.9!” price. I googled the site and it said the domain USPSSTAMAPS.COM was just purchased a few days ago! But there were many comments on the post with “people” saying they received their stamps and they were great. No way I’m ordering from these clowns.

Then a minute later I see this:

 

Same concept, completely different trashy URL. “TODAYIS LIMITED TIME”. Yikes.

I’ve heard that Facebook is really suffering because Apple and Android are both implementing policies that block Facebook from getting everyone’s data by default. Apparently their ad revenues are plummeting. I don’t know if this is related, but after seeing this I am extremely leery about ordering anything I see advertised on Facebook.

I think it’s sad what happened to Facebook because many people have all of their contacts in Facebook and nowhere else. Even if another site came along that was not evil like Facebook, I doubt most people would be willing to go through that exercise again to connect to all their friends.