Facebook Loves Porn, Hates Health Advice

Facebook Loves Porn, Hates Health Advice

Yep, hands up, that’s a bit of a link-bait title. But I make no bones about it, after reading an article in the Toronto Star today on how Facebook is saying no to a testicular cancer ad byToronto Public Health for being too “threatening”.

The ad in question is the one at the top of this post (or a version of it).

Seems a great ad, no? It’s provocative in a fun way – always good for catching eyeballs. And it also shares an important message for a disease that can affect a large percentage of the male population, especially younger men. So, win-win all round.

Except Facebook doesn’t agree.

According to the story in the Toronto Star and HealthZone.ca, Facebook won’t approve the ad because it’s not deemed suitable for their audience. According to an email from Facebook ad employee Roger Lu:

The image must not focus on a specific body part, particularly a man’s crotch, and the “Check Your Package” headline was unacceptable.

Facebook also called the use of the phrase “Men 18-35 are at risk” threatening, as well as being against Facebook’s ad policy of not calling out ages. Which seems kind of ironic, considering part of Facebook ad audience targeting is choosing which age demographic you want to reach.

So, cut a long story short, Facebook seems to be against the Toronto Public Health ad because it shows a guy’s groin and has some questionable wording.

This could probably be a bit more understandable if it was a sexual ad with provocative language. But it’s not – it’s a health ad with some startling but real statistics.

To gauge how idiotic the Facebook stance appears to be, I did a little searching on Facebook pages and profiles. Here are some profile pics and page images that popped up, according to the search terms.

These are a couple of the tamer ones, both from the profiles and the search results themselves.

So, it appears Facebook is pretty happy having full-on and open sex pictures, with some pretty funky descriptions, but not a health ad that could save a ton of lives amongst many of Facebook’s users.

My friend Christina Kingston shared a post about Facebook’s contradictory stance, but I can’t find the link unfortunately. It was another example of Facebook having an issue with something harmless while okaying – or seeming to okay – something that could be more “harmful”, depending on the viewer.

I don’t know about you, but seems they have a bit of a mixed up approach, no?

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