As a long-time user of paid Facebook ads used to advertise our business to Facebook users, I am accustomed to Facebook regulation and frequent rules changes. There are numerous things you cannot do on Facebook, even though it is commonly done elsewhere. An example is before-and-after photos showing fitness results. While anyone can post their own before and after photos, and while some companies do the same in Facebook ads, the rules prohibit advertisers from doing so. The ones you see in paid ads are the ones that slip through the cracks before they are later taken down.
At least until recently, first and foremost in Facebook's priorities is keeping users engaged on Facebook. The more time a user spends on Facebook the better. The greater number of people on Facebook the better. That gives Facebook an audience to sell to people like me who are willing to pay Facebook to advertise my products to certain users. You have no doubt seen this in action. Go on Facebook and ask your friends to tell you what the last good movie they saw was. Almost instantly, you will see ads for movies show up in your Facebook feed.
To make it attractive for me to spend my advertising money on Facebook, Facebook uses its algorithms to display my paid ads to particular users who are known to be particularly interested in my products and services; health and fitness in my case. If you live near our gym and go on Facebook and ask your friends for a restaurant or dentist recommendation, you will not see our gym ads. But if you tell your friends that 2021 is your year to lose weight, you will almost certainty see our gym ads. For an advertiser, this is a wonderful service. I know every dime I spend on Facebook ads is targeted to people who are most likely to be interested in my services.
Facebook accomplishes this targeting by monitoring your online behavior. Facebook has over 250,000 data points on you. That information is used to profile you for the purpose of ad targeting and promoting your increased Facebook use. They know what you write about. They know what kind of videos you click on. They know what videos you watch to completion. They know what ads you respond to. They know what posts by others you like and don't like. They know what time of day you are on Facebook and what your prime time is for clicking on certain links. And with the cooperation of advertisers who put certain code in their websites, Facebook often knows what you do elsewhere on the internet. Additionally, Facebook has partnerships with other marketing services. They enhance their profile on you by learning your voter file, neighborhood demographics, and even the product buying behavior of your Facebook friends, and your neighbors who may not even be on Facebook.
Facebook knows what you believe about God, politics, your brother-in-law and cars. There are cases told in marketing circles where Facebook or other entities that use this technology correctly know someone is pregnant even before the pregnant person knows. The story is about the father who and teen daughter who learned she was pregnant after they started receiving baby related ads in the family snail mail. It seems pregnant people exhibit certain behaviors online that non-pregnant people do not.
This same technology was touted by Qualcomm when Diane and I heard it at a trucking trade show. I don't know what came of it, if anything, but that Qualcomm sales rep told me they can monitor a driver's behavior well enough to predict what the driver will do next. They said this is very valuable to a motor carrier because the carrier can shut the driver down before he or she has the accident the software predicts is about to happen.
As an advertiser, I love this service. At any given time, a certain number of people within a 3 mile radius of our gym are thinking about joining a gym. Facebook gives me the ability to reach these people at the very moment they are searching for gyms online or are known to be thinking about their health and fitness. I am willing to give Facebook a fair amount of money each month to reach and build my target audience in this way.
So is Donald Trump and most other politicians. National candidates happily give Facebook hundreds of millions of dollars to buy access to the Facebook users they are most interested in reaching.
I'm glad the election season is over. Facebook sells its ad space by auction method. Because millions and millions of dollars were being spent by the politicians for Facebook ads, my price for space went up because that space was in higher demand. The price has declined to normal levels now that the politicians have stopped buying ads, and the Christmas-rush retail ad spending is also over.
To encourage continuing and expanding Facebook use, Facebook constantly changes its rules. If Facebook determines that before-and-after ads turn people off more than they turn people on, advertisers are prohibited from using them. If Facebook determines John and Jane Doe has interests similar to Bruno, Facebook will display content to both that makes it likely the two will connect; and because of that connection, they will likely spend more time on Facebook itself.
In that sense, we are all Facebook advertisers. Anytime we use the service, we are generating data Facebook uses to connect us with like-minded people.
It is not uncommon for paying advertisers to be put in Facebook jail. The rules change all the time based on what Facebook decides is beneficial or detrimental to overall platform use. You get out of jail by modifying your content to what is then allowed by Facebook. For Facebook advertisers, censorship is total. You are not free to express yourself. You are free only to say what Facebook allows.
With the ban of Trump and certain others by Facebook and other big-tech entities, we have clearly entered a new phase in how these private entities regulate their users. Those who decry these restrictions on free-speech grounds, would do well to remember that these are private entities. Just as you would not be allowed to stand in a McDonald's parking lot with a sign advertising your burger place down the street, you are not allowed to do what any privately owned social media platform says you are not allowed to do.
As a Facebook advertiser, I made that bargain long ago. If I wish to play in the Facebook sandbox, I have no choice but to play by their rules. The First Amendment does not apply to Facebook any more than it applies in a McDonald's parking lot.
So too with EO's rules. If you can't play by the EO rules, you can't play here. EO has created a valuable audience that is attractive to many people. But that does not obligate EO to grant unrestricted access to everyone on free-speech grounds. This forum is a private sandbox, like Facebook, like AWS, Google Play and Apple's App Store. Their sandbox. Their rules.
