Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg
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Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, got into a public dispute with the communication app Signal this week over an advertising campaign.
The encrypted messaging service – a nonprofit that competes with Facebook’s WhatsApp – said on a blog Tuesday that Facebook had blocked one of its advertising campaigns on Instagram owned by Facebook.
The campaign was designed to show Instagram users the amount of data that Instagram and parent company Facebook collect about users.
“We created a multi-variant, targeted ad that shows you the personal information that Facebook collects about you and that access is sold to,” wrote Signal. “The ad only shows some of the information collected about the viewer that is used by the advertising platform.”
Signal used Instagram’s adtech tools to target its ads to users. Here is sample text for one of Signal’s ads: “You received this ad because you are a teacher, but more importantly, you are a Leo (and a single). This ad used your location to see that you’re in Moscow. You love to support sketch comedy, and this ad thinks you’re pulling. ”
Signal said Facebook “wasn’t into that idea,” claiming that its ad account had been disabled as a result.
“It seems enough to be transparent about how ads use people’s data to get blocked,” wrote Signal. “In the world of Facebook, the only acceptable use is to hide your activity from your audience.”
Facebook described the ad campaign as a stunt, claiming Signal never tried to run the Instagram campaign.
“This is a stunt by Signal who has never tried to actually run these ads – and we didn’t close their ad account because we tried,” a Facebook spokesman told CNBC on Thursday.
“If Signal tried to run the ads, some of them would have been rejected because our advertising policies prohibit ads that claim you have a certain disease or sexual orientation, as Signal should know. But of course, the ads went. ” never their goal – it was about advertising. “
Signal countered on Twitter that it “absolutely” tried to run the ads. “The ads have been disapproved and Facebook has disabled our ad account. These are real screenshots, as Facebook should know.”
Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesperson, responded on Twitter Wednesday that the screenshots were from early March, “when the ad account was temporarily disabled for a few days due to an unrelated payment problem”.
Osborne added, “The ads themselves were never disapproved because Signal never set them to run. The ad account has been available since early March and the ads that don’t violate our policies may have been running since then.”
Signal is funded by Brian Acton, the entrepreneur who sold WhatsApp to Facebook for $ 22 billion, making himself a billionaire several times.
Acton left Facebook and WhatsApp in 2017, later claiming that Facebook laid the foundation for serving targeted ads and making commercial messaging easier on WhatsApp.
After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Acton tweeted, “It’s time. #Deletefacebook.”
Venture capitalist Bill Gurley said Thursday that the Signal vs. Facebook story was “remarkable”.
“The biggest threat to Facebook is a nonprofit funded by WhatsApp founders,” he said. “Such a great story. What was the Facebook argument for banning these ads? Too much transparency? My favorite price war.”
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