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redsymbol
neom
I recently had to charge back $20k of ads because meta said no, in spite of the fact that a support person went on a webex with me, did a screenshare and saw that their ads dashboard is so totally broken that these mystical ads that ran are nowhere to be found, I mean maybe buried in the pages that would literally fail to load half the content, then producing internal app modals spewing incomprehensible errors, buttons that lead to nothing, and don't get me started on if someone happens to start an ad-hoc campaign in IG directly. LinkedIn are the only platform with a half decent ads manager, X is well built but I trust the results from it near zero.
redsymbol
It's an interesting situation. I think that despite the issues, Meta is the best (and fastest-learning) platform for mass-market purchase conversions. Linkedin has powerful targeting options, but the fact that it's tied to GMT drives me nuts. For LI, typically I use manual bids so I can easily dial down delivery at off times (e.g. if the ad objective is booking a sales call).
All in all, these ad platforms are tremendously complex software systems, and as someone who has been a fulltime software engineer I have a lot of sympathy. But with so much money is on the line, the standards are high.
neom
I agree with you. I think meta is fine if you have a very very clear value prop to a very very clear ICP that is already repeatably converting and is generally b2c in nature. If you are trying to do anything specialized or b2b message testing on meta, I find their algo really expensive, maybe I'm just shitty at targeting or don't use the platform well but hiring a task rabbit to stand outside a conference or event and hand out fliers seems to be cheaper and higher preforming than anything I've gotten out of meta, and I can still do it from my basement.
These platforms are quite complex, but I feel they are more complex than they need to be, using them, they really feel like they were built out of hybrid consulting discovery to enterprise, with a result that doesn't translate down well to SMB.
charintstr
Having experience inside Metas culture, it is extremely metrics driven, sometimes without regard to side effects of optimizing a primary goal. So if someone was measuring their job performance on optimizing site-links then it’s very likely this could be happening.
bradlys
A lot of people are also assuming intentional malice here when incompetence/lack-of-care is the main issue.
If people saw how things are done at Meta, you wouldn’t be surprised. A lot of the stuff is functionally broken due to a lack of care from the top level. Your VPs and above just do not give a shit about quality whatsoever. This thing fucking prints money like crazy. Also, preventing loss of revenue and/or customer satisfaction is not a top level priority.
I think people also don’t understand how much bigger companies spend. They absolutely dwarf all the smaller businesses out there and Meta doesn’t have a ton of interest in spending time on customers who are just as likely to go out of business next year as they are to increase their budget a tiny bit.
And the top businesses have a completely different flow. These guys are spending hundreds of millions to billions - not a 100k over several years lol.
jfil
No, Meta doesn't get a pass on this one after "Jedi Blue" and faking video viewing metrics. These guys are criminals.
Generally, media buyers/advertisers are clueless when it comes to ad fraud. The big platforms have made a lot of money by abusing this fact. (I have over 15 years of experience in online marketing, on the advertiser, publisher and ad-network side. )
blargey
Lack of care is malice, though. Hanlon's razor only applies if they would aspire to do better but lack the awareness/capability, not if they'd happily accept the tradeoff.
algo_trader
can you spare 5 minutes for a quick email/chat about bidding/campaigns?
its rare to find a technically proficient media buyer ;/
(I am not a FB employee or a lawyer.. ) I will send you a DM on twitter
redsymbol
Sure, happy to chat. @redsymbol on twitter, or my email is in my HN about page
immibis
Why class action? Sounds like you think you could sue individually. I'm not convinced, but you are.
toss1
A major benefit of a class action, especially for complex cases, is that the costs of prosecuting the lawsuit are spread over many plaintiffs. Pursuing an individual lawsuit in federal court can cost well into six figures, which is not a good bet if your potential recovery as a single plaintiff is in the same range. And that is assuming the large corp you are suing doesn't do the usual tactic of burying you in papers, spurious motions, and every trick in the book to run up your costs in money and time.
Class actions bundle those costs for 'all plaintiffs who are similarly situated' and the judgements are also for all plaintiffs at once, so class actions are where large companies can be properly stung.
This is also why so many companies put clauses in their contracts that you agree to forego any possibility of participating in a class action.
So, if you are subject to a systematic malfeasance by a company, the best route is a class action; they've already got it setup that you'll almost certainly fail trying an individual action, unless you have very deep pockets and close to a decade of free time.
DannyBee
This savings is mostly for lawyers, since almost any of these cases would be taken on contingency. You are not paying up front.
It therefore mostly affects case valuation
clove
How are you profiting from this?
chuckadams
> Three advertisers also said they'd encountered a problem where Meta automatically switched those toggles to "on," even when they'd explicitly turned them off — meaning they inadvertently spent their budgets on AI-generated ads they didn't intend to run.
Goodness, such uncharacteristic behavior for Facebook apps :-|
x0x0
We tried these AI-produced ads. They produced gibberish. Random mutations of our existing ads with nonsensical words and the desired actions just permutated.
Terr_
One of the enshittification patterns: Abuse the middleman formerly applied just one side eventually gets applied to the other as well.
rchaud
Used to be that only the consumer was exploited this way. Manually turn off notifications and permissions in an app, only to have them turned back on after an app update. This is why I block app updates across the board. My bank app will tell me when i need to update to continue using it, and that's good enough for me. Most app updates tend to make the experience worse these days.
Terr_
Yeah, as much as some software updates need to be automatic for security reasons, others need to be opt-in because the publisher can't be trusted.
Not just in the sense of downgrading the software, but also when the publisher—sometimes under new management—decides to add things that invade your privacy or are straight-up malware.
hapticmonkey
It’s the third stage in the process. First the platform is good to users. Then it’s bad to users but good to business customers. Third, and finally, it’s bad to both users and business customers. Now it’s only the shareholders that are winning.
naet
I'm a big fan of podcasts; this year I've heard multiple podcasts that I listen to say that the bottom fell out of podcast ad sponsorship money and they lost a lot of funding. Many were looking for alternative ways to fund their podcasts like selling monthly subscriptions.
I wonder if the ad market will start to drop out for other stuff like websites too. AI might cannibalize search engine traffic... if google can basically scrape your site and then front-run you in the search results with an AI summary, you might not be able to make some money off the content you produce with online ads. Some will say good riddance to the SEO spam type of websites that are stuffed with horrible ads, but there are also people making legitimately good or well intentioned content that live off ad spend. I know I personally enjoy reading certain web comics that seem to be largely funded with online ads. I certainly don't like ads, but sometimes I'd rather see something for free with an ad instead of paying for it.
--
On a different note, I sometimes use Instagram and recently I have seen a ton of ads for a local tech event... but the event already passed a good while ago, so every time I see the ad it's completely pointless. Someone out there is getting screwed on their ad spend. I think a lot of companies are probably losing money on bad metrics reported for ad views, ads shown to the wrong audience, fake clicks, etc. I'm not saying ads are completely worthless or can't drive sales and conversions but I do think it's easy to get fooled into thinking they are doing more than they are.
gs17
> On a different note, I sometimes use Instagram and recently I have seen a ton of ads for a local tech event... but the event already passed a good while ago, so every time I see the ad it's completely pointless.
I get a lot of these for elections which already took place... in places I don't even live. It seems like these are mistakes on the part of the people placing the ads, it's hard to imagine they're seeing the view metrics from after the event and deciding to keep spending.
randycupertino
> I'm a big fan of podcasts; this year I've heard multiple podcasts that I listen to say that the bottom fell out of podcast ad sponsorship money and they lost a lot of funding. Many were looking for alternative ways to fund their podcasts like selling monthly subscriptions.
This has happened to a bunch of youtubers I follow recently as well! They mentioned youtube funding all but dried up as advertising dollars moved to more short-form content. I've heard maybe 5-8 of them mention it.
cortesoft
Seems like your description of what is happening would HELP podcast ad revenue, though? If web sites are no longer a good source of eyeballs (since people are just getting their info from AI summaries and aren't visiting web site), wouldn't that shift MORE ad spend to podcasts, where you will be more likely to reach an audience?
__loam
Something that annoys me about all the AI hype is that it's breaking a bunch of systems that seemed like they were chugging along just fine. Fundamentally all those podcasts probably have the same listeners as before, why is it necessary to totally rethink how we advertise to those people? Seems like we're causing a lot of pain by breaking things to make a bet on something that's totally unproven.
gedy
I don't have a reference handy but I think another factor was Apple (at least) started to exclude the automatic podcast downloads as a "listen", which caused a large drop in podcast listener counts for ad purposes.
redsymbol
> I sometimes use Instagram and recently I have seen a ton of ads for a local tech event... but the event already passed a good while ago
As someone who buys ads on IG: this is almost certainly because the advertiser has misconfigured their settings for that ad campaign.
chistev
Why are podcasts being affected?
nyrikki
Much of the podcast problems were due to Honey leaking any promo code to the world, including employee discounts and customer specific discounts.
When Intuit is scraping every browser tab, there is no way to link a podcast campaign with engagement, so the way they were paid for driving traffic is lost.
Basically Honey copied the Ashley Madison model, unconstrained addition with a pay for delete. Ashley Madison had no email verification fyi, any bot or angry neighbor could sign you up for an account, then they wanted payment to delete.
Honey would extract any promo code they could find, then try to make you pay to remove it.
naet
I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's partly because a couple of large ad companies decided to stop backing podcasts which took a large amount of money out of the ecosystem.
Podcasts are much harder to get analytics on since the ecosystem is made up of a bunch of different podcast platforms and services, and I bet that plays into part of it. You might not be able to tell if people are downloading your podcast (a copy might be cached by a podcast provider), you might not know if people are listening or listening all the way through, if people are skipping over your ad, etc.
Ad marketers love statistics.
rchaud
As a podcast listener, I can think of a few reasons:
- 10-20 companies focused on Direct to Customer (DTC) products seem to make up the majority of advertisers for a lot of podcasts: VPNs, mattresses, personal grooming products, discount code providers, online courses, etc. If their ad budgets are reduced in the current economic climate, podcast earnings will fall. It's also possible that they've collected enough data to know that ROI in this medium isn't great, and growth of podcast creation is slowing.
- A lot of top podcasts have been being acquired by Spotify and Apple as exclusives over the past few years, where a lot of this ad spending was concentrated . This reduces the total pool of advertising money available.
- Programmatic advertising (where ads are spliced into the downloaded file, varying by geographical location) has lowered the cost of advertising, so the money paid out to podcast owners is less.
slumberlust
When Spotify picked up podcasts they could now offer way more information and targeting to the ad buyers. Podcasts they just know if you played their podcast can't compete.
lukev
Putting AI in the primary loop for optimizing ads (or anything) is risky... because you can only optimize what you have metrics for. Any implicit or unstated values will go ignored.
There was an article going around a few years ago how if you just "optimized" without any constraints, you'd invariably iterate towards just selling porn.
This feels kind of like that.
sfink
iron crab porn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_peak
https://biologyinsights.com/why-do-things-keep-evolving-into...
yencabulator
Ah, the site formerly known as ftp.warez.org.
ffuxlpff
We are all waiting for plot twist that these actually work better than human made ads and the weirder they get the worse humans can compete with them.
doctorpangloss
this plot twist happened years ago.
anyway, the main theory of better ad performance from generated ads isn't about, being weird or whatever. it's that few ads on social media are matching with intent to buy, i.e., they are the opposite of google search ads. so there's a much higher diversity of creatives. like, "saturation", like you see the ad so much, you are psychologically going to choose whatever product it is hawking when it finally comes time for you to buy a thing in the category it belongs to. generative ads are merely delivering ad creative development work that SMBs (40% of Meta's revenue) are too unsophisticated to use.
atrus
Honestly? They might. A game I play (Torn.com) started using AI and over dramatic ads, and they outperformed (higher signups, and higher retention) the more traditional and even player created ads.
The owner expressed surprise and frustration over it, because it kinda sucks that's what works.
lawlessone
Could we(AI ads) be hitting this? "Supernormal Stimulus"
hollerith
Newspapers and cheap gin were already supernormal stimuli 200 years ago.
redsymbol
Yeah, as someone who spends a lot of money every month buying Meta ads, I had that thought looking at some of the article's examples.
But in its current form, I think that may happen mostly for very direct-response ads, while creating branding problems that would be expensive for many companies in the long run.
Also, some of the AI-generated creatives and copy that Meta has suggested to me actually misleads or flat-out lies about what is being advertised. Which makes me wonder if the American FTC will go after some companies for running misleading ads at some point, if they are not careful about what suggestions they accept (the ad manager UI currently makes it extremely easy to accidentally approve something you shouldn't).
smallmancontrov
Elsagate is back, and this time she's after boomer gold.
xthe
That’s a bit risky. When AI starts swapping proven ads, you often end up with more volume but lower quality lots of junk leads. If something is already working, replacing it automatically can hurt real results, not just the metrics.
smallmancontrov
But just think of how much money Meta could make by slopping fetish-bait over your brand and charging you for every click!
copx
Don't give them ideas.
haskellandrust
Proven ads? The dirty not-so-secret is that proven ads don’t exist. That’s why these companies employ PHDs to think of new and interesting ways to modify your behavior and influence your future. This is just another step in that evolution
agumonkey
there will be a chapter some day on the link or limit between human involvement and emotion, and the economic value of something
for 2000 years we removed some hardship to improve everything but everything automated seems like an economic blackhole
design2203
Because there is an obsession re. Financial wealth as opposed to the creation of real wealth.
The two are not the same. The connection between the two has seemingly been lost.
neom
Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcomes as they say. Hyper consumerism, status symbols, a fundamentally pack/tribal species? what could possibly go wrong?
immibis
The way around this, by the way, is to create some kind of alternative exchange system that only admits real-for-real exchange and makes hoarding money impossible.
danaris
No; the way around this, as it always has been, is redistribution.
I know it's considered a dirty word in many circles nowadays, but by far the most effective means we know of disincentivizing a singleminded focus on the accumulation of wealth is to make that number something you can't keep pushing up after a certain point.
No human being will ever be genuinely discouraged from making a better product or making themselves better at doing something because they couldn't turn their (personal, not company) $30 million/year into $300 million/year. Because a) at those numbers, the only material difference is the number; your lifestyle won't change appreciably, and b) if you actually cared about making a better product or making yourself better at doing a thing in the first place, that kind of extra money (or lack thereof) wouldn't be important enough to change that.
atomic128
Poison Fountain https://rnsaffn.com/poison3/
agumonkey
interesting, i didn't know about this effort
ben_w
To the main topic: I am so not surprised.
I like GenAI, I use it, but even in the best case I don't want to publish stuff it made without checking the results for weirdness.
As an aside: I find the linked page reloading randomly as I read it, and eventually crashing (iOS, Safari). Anyone else getting this problem?
latexr
> As an aside: I find the linked page reloading randomly as I read it, and eventually crashing (iOS, Safari). Anyone else getting this problem?
Yes, Business Insider and (if I recall) Bloomberg (both shared on HN on occasion) both do that to me.
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alex1138
I apologize for the somewhat low-effort comment but across the board Meta is the single most malicious tech company I can think of
I'm no fan of Google but at least Google didn't use your 2FA for ads https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16378888, or for example you can actually contact people via gmail https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433
It's why a CEO being on record as saying "dumb fucks" matters, joking or not. And I don't think he was joking or else "trying to make a point". He does not care about you. When people show you who they are believe them
nmfisher
For what it’s worth, I unequivocally agree with you.
But if you spent any time with the older generation over the holiday break, it’s immediately obvious why it makes no difference. They sit there and scroll Facebook and Instagram advertising slop for multiple hours literally every single day.
Facebook will keep hoovering up cash until at least that generation dies off (and possibly the one after that too).
alex1138
Oh sure but a) people don't realize the scandals or magnitude of them and b) they literally captured every network effect
Myspace was a hot mess but they got everyone that was there at the start of the internet where if I'm on it, you join, because you're on it Alice joins and Bob then follows
Facebook has rigged the game by forcing everyone there using very underhanded tactics and the internet is still young so they're able to succeed in doing so
realitydrift
Meta’s “AI ads going rogue” is the Optimization Trap made literal. Once the system can only see measurable metrics, it starts evolving creative toward whatever spikes them. The granny ad is a semantic fidelity collapse in miniature, as brand meaning gets compressed into click through proxies, and the output drifts into uncanny nonsense that can still perform. The scary part is the UX layer quietly re-enabling toggles, because internal incentives reward feature adoption and spend, not advertiser intent or customer trust. You end up paying for a black box feedback loop that generates plausible slop, burns goodwill, and leaves you doing more manual oversight than before.
SunshineTheCat
Ads are one of those things that are pretty much universally hated by every person on the planet and yet companies/platforms continue to find innovative ways to make them more insufferable.
bondarchuk
If they were universally hated it would be easy to outlaw them through democratic means. Yet bring this up to the average person and they'll quickly find 500 reasons why it shouldn't be done. The only reasonable conclusion (sad as it may be) is most people don't actually hate ads.
silisili
I'm always baffled by this. The only exposure I have to video ads at all anymore are the 3 or so football games I might watch per year OTA. Each time, I'm always absolutely blown away by both the amount of and content of the ads and how maddening they are.
I always wonder if people who watch regularly are just used to it as part of life, like some weird advertising Stockholm syndrome.
dylan604
haha, you seem to think laws a democratically created. we should all by now know that most laws are written by others that donate the most to the congress critters that just attach their names to them.
esseph
Everybody hates daylight savings time but we still have it.
54% of people are creeped out by targeted ads, 79% of mobile and 73% of desktop users are "frustrated" by the current ad load, and 70% of customers across the board find digital advertising "annoying and unpleasant".
(I have a self-held theory that roughly 30% of people are... interesting to say the least.)
BenjiWiebe
I hate time change but I love daylight savings time.
I'll put up with the switch if that's the only way to get DST.
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I'm a software engineer who is also a media buyer, which is the term for someone who purchases and configures advertising campaigns. I have spent over $100k of my own funds on Meta ads the past several years, which makes me moderately experienced. I spend a lot of time in the "ad manager", i.e. the webapp that Meta has for configuring these ads, allocating budget, and so on.
I think the current UX of the ad manager will make Meta the target of a class action lawsuit, and there is nothing they can do to avoid that now.
Why: many aspects of the ad manager UI will activate settings that had previously been disabled. The details vary over time, but right now three specific examples come to mind:
1. Promo codes 2. Site links 3. Related media
I won't explain these here (you can ask a media buyer and/or an llm). But these are features of Meta's ad system that are useful in certain situations, but for many types of ads, it is better to disable them.
The problem: If you disable them, and then edit the ad creative (i.e. change the image or video), in many contexts they are silently re-enabled.
This is not noticeable unless you navigate through the complex web interface to check, and disable them again. I now have a detailed checklist, but before that, I would often find I had activated ads with these accidentally active.
The outcome is to increase the cost of the intended result of the ad campaign. In other words, it makes the ads more expensive.
It has certainly caused many media buyers to spend significantly more than they otherwise would to get the same results from their ad campaigns.
These three specific examples have been happening for many months, maybe all of 2025. If they disabled the auto-enable right now, that is still a potentially massive amount of ad spend which has been wasted by many companies around the world.
That is why I say a class action lawsuit is inevitable at this point. There is simply too much money on the table for that not to happen.
Why did this happen? My best guess is poorly thought out internal incentives. I.e., someone in some layer of management has their compensation tied to the percentage of running ads with site links activated, for example. So that person(s) is forcing the design/engineering teams to implement a UX that inflates those metrics. That is the best explanation I can imagine for what I am seeing.