<story><title>Facebook Has Been Showing Military Gear Ads Next to “Insurrection” Posts</title><url>https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-profits-military-gear-ads-capitol-riot</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ocdtrekkie</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s why the solution is liability: Companies will keep leaving unchecked algorithms responsible for this until they can go to jail for doing so.&lt;p&gt;Adtech is a cancer and it&amp;#x27;s time to cut it out using every legislative and regulatory option we have.&lt;p&gt;Put Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai behind bars and the problem will correct after that.</text></item><item><author>brundolf</author><text>The unintuitive thing here (for the general population at least, possibly not the HN crowd) is that almost certainly nobody at Facebook saw, and approved (much less designed) this marketing strategy. It naturally emerged from the goals the system has been given. That doesn&amp;#x27;t excuse it: in fact, it indicts automated targeted-advertisement as a category.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;This software is working exactly as it was designed to.&lt;/i&gt; I&amp;#x27;m sure somebody could (and probably will, now that it&amp;#x27;s made the news) add a rule that makes an exception in this case. But this is going to keep happening, and keep happening, and keep happening, as long as we continue allowing systems to automate our content-feeds, optimized for getting us to spend money.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>manigandham</author><text>Liability for what exactly? How about people who actually commit bad acts are the ones responsible for it?&lt;p&gt;It seems like you haven&amp;#x27;t really thought about this and are just personally against adtech and those companies. That&amp;#x27;s not how rights and legislation should be decided.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook Has Been Showing Military Gear Ads Next to “Insurrection” Posts</title><url>https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-profits-military-gear-ads-capitol-riot</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ocdtrekkie</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s why the solution is liability: Companies will keep leaving unchecked algorithms responsible for this until they can go to jail for doing so.&lt;p&gt;Adtech is a cancer and it&amp;#x27;s time to cut it out using every legislative and regulatory option we have.&lt;p&gt;Put Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai behind bars and the problem will correct after that.</text></item><item><author>brundolf</author><text>The unintuitive thing here (for the general population at least, possibly not the HN crowd) is that almost certainly nobody at Facebook saw, and approved (much less designed) this marketing strategy. It naturally emerged from the goals the system has been given. That doesn&amp;#x27;t excuse it: in fact, it indicts automated targeted-advertisement as a category.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;This software is working exactly as it was designed to.&lt;/i&gt; I&amp;#x27;m sure somebody could (and probably will, now that it&amp;#x27;s made the news) add a rule that makes an exception in this case. But this is going to keep happening, and keep happening, and keep happening, as long as we continue allowing systems to automate our content-feeds, optimized for getting us to spend money.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>newacct583</author><text>For clarity: liability solutions are civil and aren&amp;#x27;t going to put anyone behind bars.&lt;p&gt;But yes, that&amp;#x27;s absolutely part of the puzzle.  Companies who made money by peddling armor and ammo and gear into an extremist community they were simultaneously trying to moderate need to be held partially responsible.&lt;p&gt;And that goes for the apocalyptic end-times mess that has infested the gun and gun-peripheral industries too.  If you spend your advertising budget telling your customers they need your products to &amp;quot;protect their freedoms&amp;quot; then you don&amp;#x27;t get a pass if they end up sacking congress to do it.</text></comment>