[PaulHoule]

To their credit I did get this message from them today:

    We reviewed the ad you reported and found that it goes against 
    our Advertising Standards. We let the advertiser know that we 
    removed the ad, but not who reported it.

    Thank you for letting us know. Reports like yours help us to 
    improve the integrity and relevance of advertising on Facebook.

But mine was an absolutely open and shut case.

[curio_Pol_curio]

Ads on the FB & goog network (this includes phys.org btw) are NOT paper tigers, in the sense that

  they are a reliable anti-signal

(to short, not to buy, to look at rising competitors, to look into reasons why a product might be failing, to sus out the lack of foresight in their investors, to extract other high cost channels/signals that they are still using ntless

As an example of the last one, I just learnt about an ISO standard.. )

YMMV depending on how much the network knows [it doesn't know] about you ofc ;)

[PaulHoule]

Well you do know YOShInOn and I frequently find an article on phys.org that we think is interesting but will substitute a link to the paper that is referenced if it is open access. I respect their selection of topics and articles and, looking at alternatives, frequently their article on the topic is really the best. But damn their ads are awful. It's a conversation I have with them and sometimes with their advertisers ("did you know the adversarial design of that site made me click on your ad by mistake and wasted your spend?")

Maybe I should draw a firmer line for some of my values but in terms of my other values ScienceX is the best popular science publisher today by far. (compare Universe Today or Scientific American.)