Facebook is bombarding rightwing users with ads for combat gear. See for yourself

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Robert Young Pelton
@RYP__
Facebook is designed to automatically, instantly and overwhelming pander to the worst desires and fantasies of humans. Tactical gear is not bad in itself but pitching the tactisexual look to Meal Team 6 is just plain mean. XXXXL Is not a rank

Facebook is bombarding rightwing users with ads for combat gear. See for yourself | Igor Vamos
Facebook announced that it will be temporarily banning some ads for gun accessories and body armor. It’s not enough
theguardian.com
1:59 PM · Jan 31, 2021

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/26/facebook-ads-combat-gear-rightwing-users

[Solly Mack]

1. And as they can control the ads on their platform, it is deliberate marketing.

Companies want to advertise on Facebook, giving Facebook the leverage for product placement. Facebook can control where those ads pop up or if they pop up at all.

They could alter the algorithm.

Course, they could just plain not accept the advertising.

[Squinch]

2. But this can't be true. I learned on DU that Facebook is completely benign! Hmmmm.....

[luv2fly]

3. *chuckle*

The defenders are all over DU, and thus far not one argument makes sense to me but so be it... FB enables and promotes insurrectionists.

[Renew Deal]

5. Facebook doesn't buy the ads, they sell them.

Someone else feels that these people would be interested. I'm not sure Facebook should stop them.

[Progressive Jones]

6. LOL. I'm FAR from right wing, and I get bombarded by those ads. nt

[mike_c]

7. I often read the comments about Facebook articles and visit commenters Facebook pages.

It doesn't take much time to identify trollbots, at least tentatively. But even more eye opening are the Facebook pages of real, conservative right wingers. Their Facebooks look nothing like mine. Even though I rarely post political or religious stuff on my Facebook, it is nonetheless filled with politically liberal news, memes, photos, and other such stuff. My politics are instantly apparent from the information Facebook pushes out to me.

The same is true of the conservative right wingers whose Facebooks I've visited, but with the content shifted to the polar opposite of my Facebook. Lots of news feed content focused on right wing concerns, gun rights, culture war, political grievances, religious memes, white nationalism, hatred of liberal Americans and democrats, etc.

You wouldn't know we live in the same country based on the content Facebook doles out to us. They never see balanced reporting or discussion about liberal concerns-- only anger and derision-- and I likewise never receive balanced treatment of their issues. We effectively don't live in the same country since we see that country through completely different social media lenses.

I think this is terribly dangerous. We're each living in our own social media echo chambers, fed steady diets of divisive perspectives that encourage distrust and extreme partisanship. It's a fact that there is a wide political gulf between liberals and conservatives, yet for all the calls for destruction of one political party or the other, effective national government requires them to work together toward shared objectives. Congress has been so badly gridlocked by partisan posturing that it barely functions.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

10. K&R for truth. Thank you.

We now live in a two bubble nation with each main bubble (left/right) having sub-bubbles.

Russia and the massive cabal of wealthy plutocrats have us right where they want us: highly divided with heads spinning from a flood of bullshit every day, thereby making us easy to control like lemmings and sheep.

KY.......

[crickets]

13. Nailed it. You've eloquently explained why Facebook is such a cancer.

Sure, with some effort, users can turn it into a benign spot where they keep track of family and friends and nothing more. The problem is that many don't make that effort, and the algorithms keep feeding and focusing their biases and hatreds well beyond a normal 'marketing' level. I don't know the solution, but something needs to be done.

[Initech]

8. I'm convinced you could literally sell anything to militia douchebags...

If you slap the word "tactical" on it and it comes in brown and green colors. Buy these new tactical adult diapers - now in camouflage color and extra leakage protection!

[Srkdqltr]

9. You get the ads because you expressed an interest in something linked to stuff like that.

I never get those things. I get home food fabric stuff . YOU do it to yourself then complain.

[Ilsa]

11. Scarborough was saying the other day that

Ammo and guns are selling like crazy. The RW is all worked up.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

12. Perhaps the only silver lining is they will have less money to send to the GOP.

Who among us wouldn't want to spend a grand or so on Chinese-made survivalist and militant garb just to show our ass to like-minded shit-for-brain boyz that will eventually wind up on eBay or Goodwill.......

GOP politicians across the nation are enabling this insanity with their inflammatory language.

I watched an interesting interview on YouTube CNN with Rep. Marjorie Greene's opponent she beat during the 2020 election. The guy is a neurosurgeon and family man but in his rhetoric there was the parroted inflammatory language that triggers the wingnut gun humpers.

Being brainwashed for thirty or forty years, they just can't seem to help themselves....