Meta Now Banning Ads That Promote Feminism: "We have given social media unlimited power and every day we can see how dangerous this is."
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/meta-banning-ads-virginia-woolf-facebook-instagram-feminismOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
201 replies
Meta wants to be the global town square, but apparently Virginia Woolf and feminism are too dangerous for its ad system. Meanwhile the company keeps asking us to trust its algorithms with billions of people’s speech. If Meta can’t distinguish feminist literature from prohibited content, maybe it shouldn’t be the internet’s self appointed censor.
While allowing scam and porn ads on there that harm millions of people
It’s amazing how blantly they allow scam ads. I reported ads for stolen credit cards and counterfeit money and meta closed my reports stating there was nothing wrong with the ads. What is this? The dark web?
They're directly incentivized to allow scams, since over 10% of their total revenue comes from scams
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/11/bombshell-report-exposes-how-meta-relied-on-scam-ad-profits-to-fund-ai/
Honestly, I think the dark web is a safer concept than X or Meta. The legitimacy of society's most powerful people is far more insidious than backstreet markets and courtesans: they don't make laws or support evil institutions across entire nations, nor able to leverage them as a club.
The ordinary pickpocket just wants money. A wealthy elite considers other humans to be decorative, to be used and disposed of.
It’s a catastrophe in double standards.
No one should be the World Wide Web’s self appointed censor!
You misunderstand... Feminist literature is the prohibited content. I'm not making a joke here. That's literally their policy!
"Stop being political!" say the people running the manufactured hate machine.
"stop saying things we dont like" is what they mean
*brainwashing machine
Meanwhile, literal scams and porn:
CP as well.
Wall to wall gambling ads
Meanwhile they promote misogynistic vitriol that enables violence against women.
Fuck Meta. They're a terrorist organization and should be treated as much.
It’s not going to stop at Meta just like it did not stop at Roe v Wade being overturned.
I’m sick of men telling me that I’m overreacting about these issues.
There is no over-reaction to actual censorship.
Absolutely. It's not just the censorship though - it's the attack on women's rights that I'm referencing.
The ones telling you that you're over reacting are the ones who have a vested interest in your downfall
I don’t take that shit from no man. They can think whatever the fuck that want of me. I don’t need anyone let alone a fucking little bitch of a man acting as if he’s better than me.
Hell yes.
I’m going to keep telling men that they’re wrong as long as they want to tell me I’m overreacting. I’m not scared of doing so.
I’m just sick of it.
And what is really gross is that they will place it at the level of social/corporate discourse. Continuing the facade that they are a "publisher" and not town square.
Meaning there will be no legal option to prevent groups like meta/FB and Twitter from throttling down real social issues. While turning the volume up on "state approved rebellion".
The United States and its most powerful corporations now fully and openly embrace fascism. Revolution is our only hope now, there is no one coming to save us but ourselves. Join your local socialist group and start training now. Don’t wait for the mass arrests to begin.
It is always that deep.
Yepppp, where meta goes rightwards other social media sites follow. And many of them are run by misogynists
STOP.
USING.
FACEBOOK.
The problem is that this isn't like Microsoft Office > LibreOffice/OnlyOffice/whatever. You're not on Facebook for Facebook, you're on Facebook for the people there. It's why I have a lot of issues getting off of YouTube. I'm not on YouTube because their interface is nice, I'm on YouTube because the people I want to watch don't post shit elsewhere. It's a cycle, to get users we need stuff, and for stuff we need creators, and for creators we need users. When it comes to online platforms we don't need an alternative to YouTube, we need an alternative to Markiplier, which is harder to come up with.
If you can get your friends, and family onto Friendica that would help quite a bit. The problem is that using a new server is hard for the end user (I would know, all of my fediverse presence is on servers I host), and telling someone "Use Friendica" is like telling someone to "Use email". Get a Friendica/Mastodon/Whatever server, and keep it in your back pocket. Give them a link to that server, not to Friendica/Mastodon/Whatever as a whole.
Admittedly I don't know how hard it is to stop using Facebook because I stopped using Facebook right after they took away the chronological timeline, and stopped using Messenger a few years ago. But spending some time to get a timeline together that you can boost will help any new users you recruit. Crucially, to promote viable alternatives, you need to be part of the viable alternatives, otherwise you're just someone telling someone to jump into something new with 0 guidance, which is a good way to have them leave.
Don't know. When YouTube started, there were creators, but no users and no way to monetize. Problem is, we are so used to the high production value on YouTube, where people can (and more often than not hope to) make money, so we don't give the poor production value videos a chance anymore. But we watched that 140p video back then, because there was nothing else and it was interesting.
The viable alternative is nothing.
Because no one gives a shit about you (general you, not specific at BitsAndBites), or about what you say. You use it cause you're addicted to performing for people you dont even talk to or like, because no one can actually maintain hundreds, if not thousands of connections like you collect on facebook, most of whom don't even give a shit about you. its just a mutual masturbation session, only instead of jerking each others dicks off, your jerking eachother off with pointless likes.
All social media is, is a means of generating profit from mental illness, and manufacturing mental illness for profit.
Holy shit send them a text ask them how they're doing, maybe even a phone call. You don't have to choose to give mark zuckerberg a monopoly on your family's stories and memories.
All of them. At once. Facebook is where older people share updates that they don't want to have to share with every single person in their life individually.
I already have individualized communications.
Alright man that's your choice then to give zuckerberg a monopoly on mass announcements to your family
Facebook to Friendica
Twitter/Threads to Mastodon/Euclavd
Instagram to Pixelfed/Vernissage
Tiktok to Loops
YouTube to PeerTube
Anything else?
Edit:
Whatsapp to Signal/Delta Chat/Cwtch/Briar
Reddit to Lemmy/Piefed/Pylova
Reddit to Lemmy / PieFed / PyLova
Facebook marketplace?
Offer up, but it's kinda same same, just without zuck.
Believe it or not, Craigslist
Now do whatsapp, the default messaging platform for the majority of the world.
Signal or threema i got both never used WhatsApp ever. There's also sms, samsung and apple chat which are about as secure as WhatsApp is
Now which of those is available worldwide?
There are parts of the world where you can get online and on Facebook/whatsapp without even having "internet". If you pay for Internet, you get access to other websites as well.
Not one of those but XMPP (once upon a time called Jabber) is available worldwide.
So is Matrix.
How does WhatsApp work without Internet?
Some places you get internet, but you're limited to 3-4 "basic" sites unless you pay for it. Facebook/Whatsapp is often one of those basic sites. Or was.
I wish every content creator would post on both TikTok AND Loops, because Loops could definitely replace TikTok. It has a really solid basis and a lot of potential(although I wish I didn't have to pause before scrolling off of a video).
I am really glad to see someone mention Loops, and if I could choose to view someone's content on Loops instead of TikTok, I would.
Edit: Oh, and https://loops.video/ if anyone is wondering what we're talking about.
I stopped using Facebook years ago.
Before there were viable alternatives.
The idea that you need Facebook because there aren't significant alternatives is just not true.
"Let's have tacos tonight." "Nah Im not feeling tacos." "OK let's get Chinese food." "Nah i don't want Chinese food." "..ok.. let's make soup. " "Nah I don't want soup tonight."
This made me thoughtful and laugh at the same time, thank you.
You're right, of course. People prefer centralized platforms, and we "nerds" prefer decentralized ones.
There are no alternatives.
No alternative is viable if no one uses it.
The network effect is real, and it's what lets these fascism pushers stay top of mind at all times.
the problem is people are so addicted to it, at least in my province. They don't want to hear about any alternative that would require the smallest effort. In the 80's, Dead Kennedys made an album called "Give me convenience or give me death". I took me decades to realize how accurate this title was for depicting the world we live in.
Big liZard in my back yard! Heh thanks I haven't thought of them in a while
quick correction- that's Dead Milkmen
Crap...wrong dead people. Got a vibe for weekend music now though. Thanks.
You don't have to tell this to me. You have to tell this to my entire extended elderly family.
No, you have to tell them. And then not be on facebook for them to reach you there.
How do I tell them if I'm not on Facebook? That's where they are.
Theyre somewhere on planet earth, you can choose not to give mark zuckerberg a monopoly on your family's communications.
That's not how monopolies work.
Wdym? You literally have one company you can use to connect to your family apparently. That's a monopoly on your family communications.
And also Instagram and whatever other Zuck products are in your life. I'm happy they wasted so many billions of dollars setting of virtual Mii meetings lmao...
Oh so they are capable of banning the ones they don't like, just not the ones that are actively harmful and illegal?
Fuck off meta. Really wish more people would stop using their shit. Shun those who work for them while you are at it. You work for the nonce glasses company? Eww
"After reaching out to Meta about why the promo campaign had been stomped out, the company replied that “any mention of civil rights, feminism or social reform are usually classified as ‘social topics’ by our automatic system,” and therefore rejected."
Wow.
God forbid you talk about social topics on SOCIAL media…
Sounds like you need some reeducation.
advertisements shouldn't look like actual content, not like that stopped them before but ads really shouldn't look like real content
not that i'm a meta fan, I fucking hate that company, but this swings both ways. Imagine your local coffee shop is boosting posts about traditional marriage and pro-life themes. They get blocked as well.
I just don't go to that coffee shop. Problem solved. They can say whatever they want. If I don't support it I don't go. I don't see how the coffee shop argument hold up. And if enough people hold the same views they close.
Meta however is too big to fail. Which gives them a free pass to pass their cancerous views onto society while knowing no matter how much the general public hates them and their shitty views they will continue to use the platform because their friends and family still use it. Enshittification. If my coffee shop enshittifies I tell them to pound sand.
good for you.
There are other options. Friendica? People have no boundaries. Society deserves what they get at this point.
There's no way to get around "any mention of civil rights" though. That covers all humans.
They do pay "content creators" who have views on the opposite side of the political aisle and when caught paying far-right activists, they said:
While PAYING to advertise a book with feminism as a theme is not OK. They're clearly pushing an agenda.
wouldn't doubt it
Maybe. This was an advertisement for a book that had those themes.
Personally, I don't want either to be excluded.
We going to ban Churches from showing the cross next?
ya bro, we're going to ban churches from showing crosses next. you got it.
So they can actively steer and/or block ad content. Judges of the world, please take note.
We’ve known this for 20 years, but because money they’re allowed to spread literal child porn
while promoting or ignoring CSAM, and possibly SA.
what the actual fuck. almost every week I hear about Meta failing to remove scams, child porn or hateful shit from their platforms, and now this..?
enormous amounts of people are hanging in a Nazi bar everyday but they're just too comfortably addicted to do otherwise. it's sick
I see incredibly violent and bigoted content all the time on Meta platforms and always report it. Rarely does anything get taken down. But feminism bad I suppose.
That was last week
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/meta-caught-paying-nazis-to-post-on-facebook
Yet "social topics" they don't agree with are banned lol
Also
I'm actually glad it's invitation-only because there are some subjects on which I could write great informative content that would likely have great engagement from the people interested in those niches, but this way I'm not even tempted to log in and start posting lol
Nazi? Fine. Hate? No problem. Scams? That's free speech.
Women? Oh it's time to do something!
Racism? Yeah, that's cool.
Wishing racists were dead? That's a banning.
feminism is a contradiction to toxic manosphere thats why, and meta needs a conservative voting base to stay alive.
It creates the illusion of socializing while using the Fox News formula of alternating between titillation and fear. That and youtube idiots and podcast bros have ruined so many people's lives.
FB was always pushing russian back propaganda since 2016, alot of boomers and gen-xers use it, and millneals
This..
Advertising is social by its very nature and I can't imagine any sort of serious ad that wouldn't fall under that "social" umbrella.
An ad that suggested "Stay home and do nothing" would still be a case of one human being reaching out to another human being.
I know my reasoning isn't going to make Meta crumble, but I do want to make it clear how dishonest and craven this is.
I'm online and I don't really play as many games but I watch reviews and stuff about the gaming community every now and again (I just bought a Steam Frame 🤦 though ...). The number of these damned gaming commentators complaining about "woke in games" is exhausting. So you have to see what these guys consider "social topics" and it'll unsurprisingly show you their (right leaning) world view. By the way, these commentators just forgive death threats online and say things like "it's all apart of the Internet" but hey ... The new Wolverine game isn't any good because of woke and DEI though.
I just don't see why they had to make X Men woke? Why does everything have to be about a persecuted minority group finding its standing in a society that fears it?
(tee hee)
"but why are there so many people concerned about getting diversity in an X-Men game?? why can't it just be fun??"
It's really annoying because you know none of this is grounded in reality. They think The Wolverine game isn't any good because they hire someone with a six figure salary to count genders.
Anyone complaining about politics in their video games is waving a huge red flag.
Anita Sarkeesian on notice.
Alternatives exist. There's a guy I listen to named Felix Biederman who has done exhaustive rundowns of Metal Gear Solid and Dark Souls. He manages to get out 4+ hours of content an episode without worrying about "Woke" even once. Then you've got classics like PennyArcade which remain a bastion of politics-neutral gaming content and coverage.
But if you're just cruising on the back of the algorithm... yeah. Your Asmongolds and Pewdiepies, who go full Hitler because it got attention through negative reaction, are predictably toxic. And then you've got the Mr. Beast style of producer who has turned slopifying the algorithm into a passion project.
PennyArcade is not "politics neutral", especially if you read the posts.
Penny Arcade isn't neutral. At least it wasn't when I was reading it.
Who can forget the hard-nosed political analysis of the PA Comics from the early 2000s?
Two genders, male and political.
Stay home, do nothing is a strike.
Yeah, I think they want boring ads like "our product is the shit. Buy it because this is what you've seen most and became familiar with."
It's just an excuse to promote Fuckerberg's incel worldview
I don't get why Instagram is still so incredibly popular in 2026.
They've made it addicting. Its constant dopamine.
Heroin is addicting too but only a moron does it... More than once
It's also illegal to produce, trade, own and in some places to use.
I think most people don't actually care about anything for some reason. Instagram could execute a small child randomly on the planet every time you "like" a post, and people would still use it, so long as it doesn't directly affect them
Because it was designed to hook kids and they knew it. It's what some of the recent lawsuits are about.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-26/meta-instagram-facebook-lawsuit-settlement-safety-feature/107080166
Lol. Feminism should be the standard. Everything else is simply sexism.
This is the problem with social media. Outrage drives clicks, so "feminism" is portrayed as a caricature of brightly died hair, "ugly" women, feeble men, and the stereotype of unemployed art students.
It's exactly what we were warned about in books like 1984 and animal farm. The media controls thoughts, who controls the media?
Nah. It's more that feminism started as equal rights, which everyone agrees with. But now it's a hostile movement that doesn't respect men and masculinity at all. Anyone can see that but they think it's OK. Who needs masculinity anymore right? :)
Feminism is not single coherent ideology with a linear development. It’s a movement with numerous offshoots who disagree vehemently with each other. There are anti-trans feminists, and there are feminists that are indeed hostile towards men.
The vast majority of feminists I’ve encountered in my actual life - not online - just want rights for women in a world in which the global majority are still denied basic autonomy.
I think its different in different countries too, so this topic will definently divide people. Depending on where your country is on the feminism scale, it may just have started fighting for equal rights, or it may have gone way too far in the female direction, and started attacking masculinity and pushing down men for doing ordinary masculine things like watching a woman or talking to a woman.
Women don't stop wanting more control over men's behavior once they have equal rights. It becomes about controlling men's behavior so it suits the woman. Things like thinking guys are creeps for watching a woman (unless he is attractive, then its fine). The woman decides if he is attractive and therefore if he is a creep or not.
That last sentence speaks volumes as to your character
And it is wanting.
You're kinda stupid, huh?
this is not true
Nobody needs meta. Just stop using any of their products.
I can't think of the last time I used Facebook or anything related to it, my life is better for it.
Just leave them behind.
I went on there to figure out how to advertise my business and turns out that’s where fucking local culture went! So if you’re not on there you don’t know what the fuck is going on.
but the META android wants to know everything about humanity.
@Cocodapuf @eicker easier said than done if you own a quest 3 headset
Nah that's easy too, it goes in the bin when youbdeleye the account.
At one point we had the quest 2.
We traded it for basketball cards.
But hardcore porn is perfectly fine.
hardcore child porn, to be exact.
Let’s start some feminist Friendica and Pixelfed instances 👩💻
Also don't forget about [email protected] and [email protected]
I know you specifically meant an entire platform similar to meta but, thought these were worth mentioning
Yet half of the ads on Mega platforms are literal scams
Fuck zuck. Of course a pathetic man like him would fight feminism as soon as he felt comfortable doing so
Did you know, if you use uBlock origin, you can add these to your "My Filters" custom filter list:
And you'll never accidentally surf to one of those again?
Sadly some restaurants use Facebook for their menu or specials...
Those are the restaurants I walk back out of.
That's a shame. Businesses gotta market themselves and sadly social media is often used.
Theres a bbq spot near me with the best ribs/brisket in the area. Standard web menu with ecommerce. With weekly specials on Facebook. I'd never have ordered a brisket bomb sandwich without the FB image.
If I had to describe that meal in a word. Mouthgasm
Hate the platform. Not the restaurant.
this is not a shame, this is a rational decision.
I used fetchrss.com to create an RSS feed for my favorite TTRPG store that uses Facebook as their website. I haven't had a Facebook account in like 15 years, but I can still see when they post something now.
"Women ruin everything" In the olden days it was so much better. Women! Know your place! [edit - this is satire]
Upvote to recognize the obvious satire
Downvote if you didn't and take this literally
Satire. Sometimes easy to forget to /s a comment
There place is right beside anyone else, anyone is just another humon. And most of them already know it, it mostly the other side that does not want to accept this it seems?
Just in case, my comment was harsh satire. Not the rantings of one of those morons.
The fact that these morons are destroying the world with impunity, openly, and no one is even attempting to regulate it is the wildest part of this timeline. They've brainwashed how many countries now? And people are just watching and waiting to be picked off.
This is fine under section 230.
Be careful, we don’t want to get rid of section 230.
Best thing to do is get as many people off meta sites as possible.
This the actual solution. Just stop using their services.
People still use meta shit and twitter. My fellow american citizens are too fucking dumb to know how to protest. However this excludes black woman though. Target will never recover.
I think it's less that theyre stupid and more that it's literally been designed to be an addiction machine. And the average person isn't consuming media from other sources because at one point, things posted on the addiction machine came from multiple sources. They just missed the subtle changes over time. It's by design and it's evil.
Same principles as gambling.
Did dude say that was over, he he he?
This is fine regardless of section 230, no law generally prohibits any removal of information you're hosting. In USA that rule only means that talking some actions of removal doesn't incur liability for that which you failed to remove.
So would promoting a play about how great capitalism is get filtered out I wonder?
I'm fortunate to be of the age where I've grown out of Facebook so never bothered to setup Instagram.
Moving on from WhatsApp is hard though 😡
Use Signal instead.
I forced my family and all my friends onto it many many years ago. Fuck Zuck.
I do, most of my direct friends are on signal. But if you're part of any social group, Sunday league football, wherever you can't move all those people.
I wonder if they would allow TERF ads. Or is that still too feminist for them?
thankfully TERFs are never about the F part, they're mostly just TERs.
They only react with cis isomeric alkenes?
lol.
I'm down with trying all kinds of chemicals and see what reacts and what doesn't.
I'm sure they would, until the terfs are no longer useful to them
Lol, lmao even. What about all the russian bots spewing political propaganda 24/7, just to name one of the millions of glaring examples?
Obvious to anyone with two braincells to rub together that this is further capiulation to the american fascist pants-shitter in chief. And money. Same thing anyways.
When do we put zuckyberg through the hague?
Thank GOD! The ONLY Ads I want to see on Meta are Child Porn Apps and Political Ads!
-Facebook users apparently!
"Quit shoving your woke agenda down our throats!
And let me get back to deep-throating all the fascist right-wing propaganda you have!!!!!"
People realise they can just stop viewing social feeds and the quality of life either doesn't change or sometimes improves?
I know I did
No they don't unfortunately. Social media and any other institution only has as much power as we give it. For some reasons people just can't quit social media even while they actively protest it.
Once again, Zuck the suck.
back to the 1850s you go, but now with nukes and mind control.
When I read the first 4 words I had a hope...
I haven't been on Facebook in years. And I plan to keep it that way. Last time I was on there it was filled with AI generated content and advertisements and I couldn't even see my friends posts. What's the point then?
It's where Grandma is.
The CIA via its VC fund InQTel is the architect of today's information landscape. All of this is very much on purpose.
what did you read to learn this? i wanna read it too
It’s the same company behind the Pokémon Go app that was actually a cover by the CIA to map entire places around the world.
Honestly lots of different things. A good start would be https://gizmodo.com/larry-ellisons-oracle-started-as-a-cia-project-1636592238
This is about how Oracle was initially a CIA project headed by Ellison.
I'm not even remotely shocked. Make no mistake, I'm still very mad about it.
As shitty as Meta is, I really don't like the reductive nature of this headline. Here is the original Guardian article:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/21/meta-ban-virginia-woolf-a-room-of-ones-own-barcelona-teatre-raval
"Meta bans ads for Virginia Woolf play in Spain because they relate to feminism"
This turned into "Meta Now Banning Ads That Promote Feminism", with a quote from the showrunner to make it sound even more scary. Frankly, either of them can barely be called journalism, because they can't be bothered to write more than a page on the subject.
They literally said that “any mention of civil rights, feminism or social reform are usually classified as ‘social topics’ by our automatic system,” and therefore rejected.
So how the fuck is it reductive?
Look at that. Someone claiming that people are overreacting to this clear censorship of feminism.
What a surprise.
I don't think the headline is reductive at all, in fact, you could take it a step further and say Facefuck has banned all social activism in advertising.
It seems like that in the Guardian's article, but there is more to it. Meta told them why and how to go around the censorship. Meta only fixed it after media attention. I trust that you are resourceful enough to translate what is below
The article of La Vanguardia
Wow. I didnt think they were actually serious about going after women.
How? They were quite clear and not subtle
Regulating Meta which is truly accountable nowhere is like trying to find a good place to store radioactive waste for tens of thousands of years. Everyone outside the US should just ban them.
Get out of here with your pro-oil propaganda.
Are you drunk? Solar and wind is better now and eventually fusion will be.
Walk away.
What kind of Feminism?
A Virginia Woolf play
As if they are going to check every ad.
They never did and never will.
So go ahead and order as many feminist ads as you want.
They have ai for that.
Oh man, your comments history. Are you a parasitic NEET troll, or are you just insufferable?
Oh - are you one of THOSE people?
certainly
I like to read people's comments. But I will never judge them based on them. 1 - I don't want to read through the threads to get the context to make sure I actually understand what they are saying and 2 - we all have our funny niche. Just cause you like some kinky/weirdly stuff doesn't make my kinky/weirdly stuff any better.
Give people a little slack.
awesome, censorship on lemmy, and they have the gall to get mad at the censorship on other platforms. 😂
lol
First and second wave are decent.
Third wave is where things went off the rails.
It is a good thing.
Haha I think so too but Lemmy won't agree. :)