March 1st, 2009
What is Facebook Thinking?
Facebook has taken a lot of heat lately. First it was the “change of terms” controversy, and lately the focus has moved to the flood of ads for dubious sites selling government grant kits, make cash on Google offers, and teeth whitening blogs.
They said they removed the ads weeks ago.
Yet casual browsing of Facebook on Feb 25-26 yielded almost nothing BUT these seedy ads. And there is a new batch of ads that point to familiar LOOKING sites, but with strange new url’s… all of them ending with the head-scratching .tf domain. I had to look that one up, which turns out to be the “French Southern” domain, if that clears anything up. Here are a few that I ran across over that two-day period, found by clicking ads on Facebook:
earneasymoneyhome.edu.tf
earnonline.int.tf
earnonline.ru.tf
earnonline-page.us.tf
earnonlinesite.ch.tf
freeonlinejobs.int.tf
freeonlinejobsplanet.cz.tf
internetearnonline.int.tf
makemoneyonline.ru.tf
makeonlinemoneynet.at.tf
Almost all of these had the exact same content, which mirrored kevinsmoneytree.org, a familiar scam peddling ways to make money on Google or by government grants.
I have a hard time believing that Facebook is helpless. Someone is approving these ads. How can they accept advertising and then claim to have no control over it? I remember advertising in newspapers as late as the 1990’s, having to fill out credit applications, place deposits, and submitting ads for approval. I recall conference calls debating if a single word in an ad we submitted was acceptable. Apparently those days are long-gone, and anyone can advertise anything now.
Facebook says the community helps police the ads. Doesn’t it stand to reason that the scammers also have Facebook accounts and probably click the “thumbs up” approval of their own ads?
The Facebook community deserves better than this. If a third party organization is responsible for these ads, Facebook should find a new advertising partner. If Facebook accepts ads firsthand, they must consider a better approval system.
Their credibility as a legitimate advertising avenue is disintegrating every time one of these ads appears. Which is nonstop.
And just when I thought that was as far as they could sink… Late 2/28 I saw an ad for Mail Order Russian Brides!
Below is a screenshot of an ad that I saw on Facebook at 10:54pm on 2/28/09.
Shame on Facebook for ever letting such an ad run, regardless of where it came from.
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:43 am
Another crappy Facebook ‘make money with Google’ ad here: http://www.dreamsystemsmedia.com/blog/index.php/facebook-ads-crappy-relevance/#comment-894
Interesting quote from Facebook in this newspaper article: “And while Twitter’s money-making potential has been under closer scrutiny, Facebook too is focused on ‘improving its product’ rather than ‘doing a MySpace’ and flooding the site with ads. If it did that, Thiel said, it could make as much as $1bn a year from advertising if it “turned on all the dials”.”
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/mar/02/twitter-facebook
Would like to know how Facebook thinks these seedy scammy ads are “improving it’s product” and would hate to think what Facebook would look like if it “turned on all the dials”!!
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Hey Not Kevin – Facebook has taken the high road, so they claim. They only have a couple of unintrusive ads on the side… with Obama holding up a check or for mail order brides. If that’s the best they can do, they may as well turn on all the dials and make that billion while they can.
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I totally agree, Waffles – have been blogging about it in a rage today. The trouble is that the people with the power to do something about this don’t begin to understand what’s going on.
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:23 pm
I click the thumbs-down on the Facebook ads. When it asks for the reason, I click “other” and enter:
“Scam!” followed by the URL of the relevant page on this blog. Thanks for your diligent work in the public interest!
March 6th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Interesting article here by one of the CPA ad networks giving tips to their publishers/affilaites on how to get ads onto Facebook: http://www.convert2media.com/blog/2008/06/24/tip-tuesday-using-social-media-as-an-advertising-source/
Yes, this is one of those CPA networks who promotes the acai trial offers etc:
http://www.convert2media.com/blog/2008/12/15/6-new-offers-and-33-email-submits/
http://www.convert2media.com/forum/index.php?topic=70.0
And the grant scams, and the teeth whitening:
http://www.convert2media.com/forum/index.php?topic=108.0
And this explains the flood of ads on Facebook:
“Facebook has lifted a lot of restrictions allowing Affiliates to flourish right now so I want to get some ideas over to you.”
http://www.convert2media.com/forum/index.php?topic=98.0
Not to mention our old favourites:
Google Money System
Google Money Tree
Earn Cash From Google
http://www.convert2media.com/forum/index.php?topic=111.0
and many more, including the fake IQ quiz:
http://www.convert2media.com/forum/index.php?board=5.0
March 6th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Hey Not Kevin – I too have read those convert2media boards. What strikes me is that they don’t even seem to care how the money is made… It’s as if they disassociate themselves from the actual scam part of it and just consider themselves affiliates making money. Sort of like the guys who drop bombs from airplanes and never really see the damage they cause.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:32 am
These offers are pretty scammy. The fine print of the weight loss trials and teeth whitening stipulate that you will be charged somewhere in the neighborhood of $90 per month after your 15 day trial is over. Even consumers that call have a terrible time canceling orders.
The practice is called credit cramming, I found an interesting article about it here: http://www.creditchimp.com/2009/04/credit-card-disasters-cramming-companies/