[redsymbol]

I'm a software engineer who is also a media buyer, which is the term for someone who purchases and configures advertising campaigns. I have spent over $100k of my own funds on Meta ads the past several years, which makes me moderately experienced. I spend a lot of time in the "ad manager", i.e. the webapp that Meta has for configuring these ads, allocating budget, and so on.

I think the current UX of the ad manager will make Meta the target of a class action lawsuit, and there is nothing they can do to avoid that now.

Why: many aspects of the ad manager UI will activate settings that had previously been disabled. The details vary over time, but right now three specific examples come to mind:

1. Promo codes 2. Site links 3. Related media

I won't explain these here (you can ask a media buyer and/or an llm). But these are features of Meta's ad system that are useful in certain situations, but for many types of ads, it is better to disable them.

The problem: If you disable them, and then edit the ad creative (i.e. change the image or video), in many contexts they are silently re-enabled.

This is not noticeable unless you navigate through the complex web interface to check, and disable them again. I now have a detailed checklist, but before that, I would often find I had activated ads with these accidentally active.

The outcome is to increase the cost of the intended result of the ad campaign. In other words, it makes the ads more expensive.

It has certainly caused many media buyers to spend significantly more than they otherwise would to get the same results from their ad campaigns.

These three specific examples have been happening for many months, maybe all of 2025. If they disabled the auto-enable right now, that is still a potentially massive amount of ad spend which has been wasted by many companies around the world.

That is why I say a class action lawsuit is inevitable at this point. There is simply too much money on the table for that not to happen.

Why did this happen? My best guess is poorly thought out internal incentives. I.e., someone in some layer of management has their compensation tied to the percentage of running ads with site links activated, for example. So that person(s) is forcing the design/engineering teams to implement a UX that inflates those metrics. That is the best explanation I can imagine for what I am seeing.

[neom]

I recently had to charge back $20k of ads because meta said no, in spite of the fact that a support person went on a webex with me, did a screenshare and saw that their ads dashboard is so totally broken that these mystical ads that ran are nowhere to be found, I mean maybe buried in the pages that would literally fail to load half the content, then producing internal app modals spewing incomprehensible errors, buttons that lead to nothing, and don't get me started on if someone happens to start an ad-hoc campaign in IG directly. LinkedIn are the only platform with a half decent ads manager, X is well built but I trust the results from it near zero.

[redsymbol]

It's an interesting situation. I think that despite the issues, Meta is the best (and fastest-learning) platform for mass-market purchase conversions. Linkedin has powerful targeting options, but the fact that it's tied to GMT drives me nuts. For LI, typically I use manual bids so I can easily dial down delivery at off times (e.g. if the ad objective is booking a sales call).

All in all, these ad platforms are tremendously complex software systems, and as someone who has been a fulltime software engineer I have a lot of sympathy. But with so much money is on the line, the standards are high.

[neom]

I agree with you. I think meta is fine if you have a very very clear value prop to a very very clear ICP that is already repeatably converting and is generally b2c in nature. If you are trying to do anything specialized or b2b message testing on meta, I find their algo really expensive, maybe I'm just shitty at targeting or don't use the platform well but hiring a task rabbit to stand outside a conference or event and hand out fliers seems to be cheaper and higher preforming than anything I've gotten out of meta, and I can still do it from my basement.

These platforms are quite complex, but I feel they are more complex than they need to be, using them, they really feel like they were built out of hybrid consulting discovery to enterprise, with a result that doesn't translate down well to SMB.

[charintstr]

Having experience inside Metas culture, it is extremely metrics driven, sometimes without regard to side effects of optimizing a primary goal. So if someone was measuring their job performance on optimizing site-links then it’s very likely this could be happening.

[bradlys]

A lot of people are also assuming intentional malice here when incompetence/lack-of-care is the main issue.

If people saw how things are done at Meta, you wouldn’t be surprised. A lot of the stuff is functionally broken due to a lack of care from the top level. Your VPs and above just do not give a shit about quality whatsoever. This thing fucking prints money like crazy. Also, preventing loss of revenue and/or customer satisfaction is not a top level priority.

I think people also don’t understand how much bigger companies spend. They absolutely dwarf all the smaller businesses out there and Meta doesn’t have a ton of interest in spending time on customers who are just as likely to go out of business next year as they are to increase their budget a tiny bit.

And the top businesses have a completely different flow. These guys are spending hundreds of millions to billions - not a 100k over several years lol.

[jfil]

No, Meta doesn't get a pass on this one after "Jedi Blue" and faking video viewing metrics. These guys are criminals.

Generally, media buyers/advertisers are clueless when it comes to ad fraud. The big platforms have made a lot of money by abusing this fact. (I have over 15 years of experience in online marketing, on the advertiser, publisher and ad-network side. )

[blargey]

Lack of care is malice, though. Hanlon's razor only applies if they would aspire to do better but lack the awareness/capability, not if they'd happily accept the tradeoff.

[singleshot_]

> Lack of care is malice

These words have pretty specific meanings and this ain’t it.

[algo_trader]

can you spare 5 minutes for a quick email/chat about bidding/campaigns?

its rare to find a technically proficient media buyer ;/

(I am not a FB employee or a lawyer.. ) I will send you a DM on twitter

[redsymbol]

Sure, happy to chat. @redsymbol on twitter, or my email is in my HN about page

[immibis]

Why class action? Sounds like you think you could sue individually. I'm not convinced, but you are.

[toss1]

A major benefit of a class action, especially for complex cases, is that the costs of prosecuting the lawsuit are spread over many plaintiffs. Pursuing an individual lawsuit in federal court can cost well into six figures, which is not a good bet if your potential recovery as a single plaintiff is in the same range. And that is assuming the large corp you are suing doesn't do the usual tactic of burying you in papers, spurious motions, and every trick in the book to run up your costs in money and time.

Class actions bundle those costs for 'all plaintiffs who are similarly situated' and the judgements are also for all plaintiffs at once, so class actions are where large companies can be properly stung.

This is also why so many companies put clauses in their contracts that you agree to forego any possibility of participating in a class action.

So, if you are subject to a systematic malfeasance by a company, the best route is a class action; they've already got it setup that you'll almost certainly fail trying an individual action, unless you have very deep pockets and close to a decade of free time.

[DannyBee]

This savings is mostly for lawyers, since almost any of these cases would be taken on contingency. You are not paying up front.

It therefore mostly affects case valuation

[toss1]

Contingency is not always an option.

Of course attorneys can take on individual cases on contingency and make viable a case where the plaintiff lacks the spare six-figures of costs to even start the case.

That does NOT mean there is no effect beyond "case valuation".

Attorneys cannot simply take every case on contingency, and when the [potential reward]/[cost] ratio is not sufficient, the attorney must pass, and no suit will be filed.

Class Action literally makes it POSSIBLE

This is especially true where small-dollar harms are being done, but at scale of millions, where ripping off consumers is systematic, or where harms such as pollution affected many.

[DannyBee]

"This is especially true where small-dollar harms are being done, but at scale of millions, where ripping off consumers is systematic, or where harms such as pollution affected many."

All of these particular things seem exactly like the job of a state AG, or other form of regulator, vs private lawyers.

Political dysfunction aside, of course.

I'd personally rather the state AG and various consumer-friendly regulators of, say, california, have the billions of dollars going to the class action attorneys in that state.

Remember that class actions were not created to enable any of the things you cite. They were judiciary-created as a means of simple judicial efficiency (and requiring all affected plaintiffs to be grouped together). As such, outside of "they were there", it's not obvious why they are a particularly good way to solve the problems you give.

In case you think i'm particularly anti-consumer, i actually think LLC's should not exist and shareholders should be responsible for harms again. Which would likely obviate a lot of the practices class actions were suing over in the first place.

[toss1]

>>seem exactly like the job of a state AG, or other form of regulator, vs private lawyers. ...Political dysfunction aside, of course.

And there's the rub — most regulators and AGs will have some political leaning, and ALL of them have limited resources and will be unable to pursue every case, so many cases with great merit will go un-prosecuted.

For all of warts of class actions, that is an overwhelming benefit — a private class action, or latent threat thereof, can bring pressure where an AG or regulator will choose not to, or just lacks the budget and/or bandwidth to pursue.

And yes, making it easier to 'pierce the corporate veil' and create a stronger direct liability, including jail time, for officers, directors, and shareholders for intentional actions and omissions could do a lot to reduce harm of corporations.

[clove]

How are you profiting from this?