Comment by zaphar
6 hours ago
The original reuters article quotes Meta as claiming that making them harder to find by removing them from the system. This article doesn't offer any evidence to suggest that Meta is lying. This is lazy and poor reporting as far as I'm concerned.
Reuters: Restaurant hides unsanitary waste from food inspectors by hiding it in dumpster.
Restaurant seen throwing waste in dumpster after removing it from food inspector's plate. Insists there's no other waste on other plates, apparently without checking.
What proportion of the scam ads do you think this approach caught?
I'm not sure, but starting with the ads that appear with most popular searches isn't a bad idea per se. It's a bit like sending law enforcement to protect popular areas.
>Restaurant seen throwing waste in dumpster after removing it from food inspector's plate. Insists there's no other waste on other plates, apparently without checking.
That seems... kinda reasonable?
Health inspector: "hey it looks like your ice machine is dirty, and you're not keeping foods at a hot enough temperature"
Restaurant: "ok we'll clean our ice machines more carefully and install thermometers to monitor the temperature of our hot trays"
Journalist: "Restaurant made health violations harder to find instead of removing them!"
Would it be better if the restaurant was proactively fixing issues before the health inspector brought it up? Yes. Does it make sense to imply that the restaurant was acting maliciously by making health violations "harder to find"? No.
That sounds funny, until you realize that there are people who pull ingredients from the waste bin if they still look "good enough". At least one restaurant chain owner in germany was banned from entering his own restaurants after he was caught on camera instructing his staff to do just that, apparently only one instance of a long chain of food safety violations his "frugal" business practices caused.
The issue as I see it is that these searches are run when testers look for them, not on a regular basis. If Facebook can detect them, why let them be displayed in the first place?