So early last week The Christian Left (website; blog; Facebook page) took out this Facebook ad:
Yesterday Facebook sent TCL an email, which in part read:
Thanks for advertising with Facebook. We have reviewed your ad(s) and determined that the one or more of them do not meet our guidelines … .
Reason(s):
· The text of this ad contains language that is not suitable for display on Facebook. …
· This ad has been disapproved due to negative user feedback concerning the ad’s content. In general, ads that receive negative user feedback contain offensive content or are targeted improperly. …
Facebook pulled the ad!
The bummer is that at least a dozen members of the TCL Facebook page volunteered funds to pay for the ad (which cost $25 dollars a day; the plan was to run it for seven days). And for the days the ad did run, it brought TCL 25 new Facebook page members a day.
Volunteers stepping forward to literally pay for an idea that worked. Sweet, right?
And then … bam. Sweetness abort.
It’s easy to get a FB ad pulled; all you have to do is hit the little “X” in the upper right hand corner an ad, and then choose from the list of given reasons why you want that ad to go away. One of those reasons is “Offensive.” Enough people click that choice, and I’m sure Facebook just automatically suspends the ad.
So I guess it’s not that big a deal that this ad got yanked.
Still, it’s kind of scary to think that there are Christians out there so angry, and so reactionary, that they would actually go through the little process of hitting the buttons they know will do the most damage possible to an ad as innocuous as this.
Then again, why would I be even slightly surprised by anyone doing that? I get hate mail all the time from crazy right-wing Christians.
Ah, life. How great would it be if everyone just got one already?
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