Summary
Thousands of Facebook and Instagram ads have illegally marketed gun silencers disguised as “fuel filters,” violating U.S. federal law and Meta’s ad policies.
These devices, linked to a Chinese drop-shipping network, are sold for as little as $50 and promoted using recycled videos and stolen content.
Despite some ad removals, new campaigns quickly reappear, targeting niche audiences, including military personnel.
The ads have sparked legal, cybersecurity, and national security concerns, with critics citing Meta’s insufficient transparency and moderation tools.
If tech platforms are too large to properly police their endorsed content, then the only reasonable solution is to shut them down.
Please don’t forget that advertising on these platforms could be moderated if they so chose - it simply isn’t moderated for profitability reasons.
Don’t allow fucks like Meta to push a narrative that they’re simply unable to moderate content while making buckets full of money running a service business that doesn’t even need to exist.
Right, it’s not that they can’t, it’s that they don’t want to because if they actually cut all the grift they probably wouldn’t be profitable. Especially Meta, since no one gives a fuck about the Metaverse and they just had to pull their AI profiles because of bad response to them. Seriously adding fake profiles to their services because they need to pump engagement numbers, that means they’re failing if they’re turning to these absurd kind of tricks to keep engagement afloat. Being forced to regulate them would likely put them out of business.
Here’s an example from Ed Zitron:
100% this.
There’s no cosmic law that says you must build a sprawling social network. If you can’t build it safely, then don’t build it.
If someone build a very profitable machine in the town square that shot out rusty nails and killed people every so often, people would shut it down. Well, hopefully.
Wait, if they can’t get huge how are we going to get our most brilliant people like Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Theil the sorts of money they need to pull the levers of power?
I think the advertising is moderated and that’s one reason why these things are being called fuel filters. It isn’t reasonable to expect Facebook moderators to distinguish a filter from a silencer that looks like a filter. I doubt I could do it myself, especially if it wasn’t specifically what I was looking for.
Fuck that; of course we can! If the current mods are incompetent then Meta can fucking PAY MORE to hire competent ones. There is NO excuse.
it’s to get around the shitty automated moderation that facebook has, which seems to be all that is there, this fools no one with a pulse