About Facebook ads always seeming to be scams?

[itsabongthing]

It really annoys me when they have obviously being trying to improve their image with the campaign with Mumsnet.

It seems every single ad that comes up on my Facebook is misleading or a scam, they sound too good to be true and if you read the comments sure enough, people are warning that it’s not genuine.

Examples from the last couple of days include massive climbing frames for £65 or so, with people in the comments warning that they have had their bank accounts wiped after ordering; something saying ‘don’t buy life insurance until you have read this’ which apparently takes you to a life insurance website with misleading content.

It’s just become a bit of a joke because even if there was something genuine advertised I would not trust it!

If they want the platform to be trustworthy they need to sort this out.

Can't you report them to Facebook? and fewer of those types of ads will appear in your feed? I report everything I don't like now, pretty much the only ads I see now are for charities and good causes

Yes I do report every time

I’ve seen this a lot in the last few weeks, particularly with “sponsored” links.

Mine all seem to be National Trust, English Heritage, Boating in Norfolk, See Wales etc

You can block them

It's difficult to get these ads removed from Facebook. Removing an ad directly affects Facebook's revenue received for hosting the ad. You can report but it's unlikely they will remove it; they are Facebook's customers, not us.

Remember: If it's free, you're probably the commodity.

A sponsored link means a business has paid or the ad to be seen.

Businesses can post and only their followers would see it. But not Facebook have changed their algorithms so our posts are barely even shown to our followers because they want business to pay for any and all content we want seen. Sponsored means paid for... it’s not some nefarious thing. And when you create an ad, you need to give parameters for who sees it like women aged 18-35 with interests in Art Deco and jewellery etc etc. So those people will be shown the ad.

I’m a jeweller, independent small business. I have thousands of followers, a few years ago I would post something and my reach would be 3 or 4 thousand. Now I post things, and my reach is only 500 to 1000. Because Facebook are limiting who sees posts unless I pay.

I’m not scamming anyone.

@TheInvestigator

An awful lot of the sponsored posts I see at the moment are, in my opinion, purely scams. Pages that have been set up recently, selling this seasons “must have” item at a dramatic discount. A few of these I have googled and the searches have yielded no results. I would have no issue seeing your page as a sponsored link, as you are a genuine business.

If I find any examples today I’ll screenshot them and post.