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by anf 2941 days ago
As someone who left Facebook awhile ago mostly because life got busy, those ads seem to solidify an (alternative?) narrative of why I left rather than urge me to come back.
2 comments

Fake News / Facebook's impact on the 2016 election is only part of why I avoid it now. I also believe the site caused / causes instagrammification of people's lives. Which is sort of like Fake News of personality or false lifestyle chasing meaningless likes.

I believe other institutions have caused people to live out false lives prior to Facebook as well. But I can actually damage facebook by _not_ posting content and not sharing my life there. I don't even have to encourage others not to. I just have to avoid resolving the domain.

I don't think likes are meaningless — they tap into a very primal need for social status and peer approval. It's a stupid game, but like many other stupid games, it's effective!
They miss out on the social status a dislike can give. To be against something is easier for many then to be for something.
I grant you that, it is effective at getting page views and ad revenue.
That too. I saw the ad for the first time yesterday during the Warriors game, as we don’t watch live TV, only stream. Two observations:

1) as you said there was nothing in that ad that would make me come back, rather if I had not already been aware of it I would have searched about it to learn - the Streisand effect.

2) there was another similar ad, from another company, about breaking trust, Wells Fargo bank -> nuff said.

Uber is running the same sort of ads, featuring the new CEO talking about doing right by customers