Misinformation As The Core Brand Proposition - Facebook Ads Volume 2
This is the second in a series of articles we’re doing featuring misinformation found on Facebook as sponsored content. Not just posts by your garden variety loon, but stuff that Facebook allows people to increase the reach of using advertisement. These ads were collected on a fake Facebook account I created that follows every conspiracy theory page I can possibly find and from a couple great folks who submitted their own screen shots. Collected from July 26th through August 31st.
Be sure to check out the first article in this series too!
if the images appear too small to read on your device, just click/tap them to enlarge
These images above are probably the worst of the lot, and I was seeing this every day. This “Spooky 2” device, a Mr. Wizard looking thing that they claim cures all manner of ailments. The people in the lab coats would never lie to you now, would they? These items are clearly a scam. And this is targeting people who are sick. Some of whom have a very bad prognosis and might be inclined to take desperate measures to save their own life or the life of a loved one. This is unconscionable. The fact that these pages even exist on Facebook would be bad enough, but that’s not what we’re even talking about here. What we have here is Facebook giving reach to this clearly fraudulent organization to prey on the most vulnerable among us. This is incredibly unethical and I believe you should be furious about this. I know I am.
In the first article, there was one ad for an anti-5g pendant. This time we found 2 and we had a follower of ours submit 1. This is just a straight up scam. These pendants do not protect you from any kind of radiation, they’re just a piece of jewelry. Nothing wrong with selling trippy pendants, but it is wrong to scam people by telling them it protects you from something. This is far less harmful than the machine in our first set of images, but it’s still snake oil.
Along the same lines as the pendant, here’s a sticker that you put on your phone to make it not fry your brain. A sticker.
This one appeared in our last article on this matter. Was still being run as late as mid August.
Here are 2 ads, sent to us by one of our followers. First one is translated, second one is in the original Spanish language of the post. This is for MMS. This is diluted industrial bleach. Do not drink industrial bleach. And a you should probably not let people advertise it on your website. Okay not probably. Don’t let people advertise it on your website.
And if you want to do your own industrial bleach scam, this ad has you covered. You can create your own branded line of scam products and market them on Facebook! Hooray!
These 2 are Covid 19 misinformation. On the left is some long winded word salad. On the right is Prager U complaining that the demon sperm “doctor” was censored. Prager U, which always always always gets massive reach through sponsored posts complains a lot about being censored. Whatever.
Didn’t click this ad, but eating a burnt cashew to make you poop better seems a little off, if that is indeed what’s going on here.
Wanna detox the deep state right out of yourself? Well, here’s an ad with the ever abused “Red Pill” wording. Not quite QAnon advertising, but not quite not QAnon advertising.
This is definitely some QAnon garbage, seen as a sponsored post well after Facebook claimed they were gonna do something about the spread of this internet death cult on their platform.
This one is kinda funny, but only kinda. It’s also pretty bigoted. Not sure what they mean about the rubber spine, but maybe we’ll get clarification in a new ad soon?
And uhhh… this one isn’t funny at all. Taking ad money from folks spreading misinformation about the tragic events in Kenosha, are we, Zuck? Keep it classy.
We reshare examples of misinformation on our Facebook page because we cover misinformation on Facebook. Of course their system can’t tell the difference. And their new layout also kinda sucks and cuts off a bunch of the text telling us we’ve been very very bad. But hey, at least none of my accounts are in Facebook Jail right now. Gotta take the small victories where we can get them I guess.
I am still collecting screen shots and you can expect more of these articles periodically, hopefully monthly. As the election nears, I fear that the number ads containing misinformation on the Facebook platform will increase dramatically, especially ads that misinform about the current global pandemic. If you see these kinds of ads and want to help me with this project, please feel free to email them to echo@echoplexmedia.com or drop them in our Discord. If you’d like credit, just mention that you want your name or the name of your organization to be noted in the article and we’ll put it right under the picture so everyone knows you’re the lucky person who had your feed polluted.