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Twitter Advertising Social Networks The Almighty Buck

Twitter Ran Ads For Human Organs Because Money Is Money (gizmodo.com) 54

Posted by BeauHD from the broken-ass-system dept.
Earlier this week, freelance journalist Tyler Coats had an organ-buying service appear on his feed in the form of a promoted tweet. Gizmodo has the details: The fact that this cropped up in front of his face to begin with is indicative of how badly these ads are targeted in the first place. "Despite my cold, dead heart, I am not in the market for new organs," Coates later told Gizmodo. Understanding how broken Twitter's system is requires a bit of context. Since being pressured to juice its promoted content roughly half a decade ago, Twitter's been, shall we say, "experimenting" with new ways to push that content in front of its user base and milk those eyeballs for profit. At the same time, it's been gradually limiting the ways advertisers can target the people who might want to see that content in the first place. The result? Weird promoted tweets -- about organs or otherwise -- flooding people's feeds.

Though the account running the human organ ads has since been suspended, it looks like the same person created another account under a similar name (which was also suspended). And they will likely just keep going. In a statement to Gizmodo, a Twitter spokesperson said that this particular tweet violated the company's Unacceptable Business Practices policy and Inappropriate Content policy. "In general we have both humans and machines that review our content for policy compliance," they added. "And, of course, we're constantly investing in both our automated and human review processes and systems."
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Twitter Ran Ads For Human Organs Because Money Is Money More

Twitter Ran Ads For Human Organs Because Money Is Money

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  • No such thing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Saturday February 15, 2020 @02:22AM (#59730422) Journal

    "Despite my cold, dead heart, I am not in the market for new organs," Coates later told Gizmodo.

    I'd like to point out that unless you grew them from stem cells, no transplanted organ is 'new', by definition they're all 'used', or perhaps 'pre-owned' if that term makes you feel better about the matter.

    • Ask Stephen King, He said: I have the heart of a little boy - in a jar on my desk.

      • Re:No such thing (Score:4, Informative)

        by thomst ( 1640045 ) on Saturday February 15, 2020 @05:13AM (#59730580) Homepage

        flyingfsck noted:

        Ask Stephen King, He said: I have the heart of a little boy - in a jar on my desk.

        It's a funny line - and it was just as funny when Robert Bloch [wikipedia.org] (who, among many, many other wonderful things, wrote the screenplay to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho) said it, back when Stephen King was in grade school ...

    • I'd like to point out that unless you grew them from stem cells, no transplanted organ is 'new', by definition they're all 'used', or perhaps 'pre-owned' if that term makes you feel better about the matter.

      I assume it's used as "new to me". Like you'd say "hey check out my new car" and it's not necessarily a 2020 vehicle.

      Likewise, you could say "just got my new [to me] kidney, we should go celebrate with a drink!".

      • Granted, it was droll humor on my part, but apparently it fell flat on it's face because nobody else seems to think it's funny. :-(

  • Must be out of China (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Saturday February 15, 2020 @02:24AM (#59730426) Journal
    All kidding aside, I'd bet cash money that the 'service' is ultimately being run out of China, and the organs for sale are from convicts.
    Before any of you China shills mod me down, there are legit news stories about convicts being broken up for spare parts.

    • Re:Must be out of China (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kot-begemot-uk ( 6104030 ) on Saturday February 15, 2020 @02:56AM (#59730450) Homepage
      Not any more.

      The most common source is not China any more, but conflict zones.

      First it was the KLA in Kosovo: https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]

      Now it is the "rebels" in Syria. We are covering it up the same way we were covering up the KLA. After all, they are "democratic darlings" which need our protection.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The guys in the photo look Asian (Pakistani/Indian/Bangladeshi), although there are people of that ethnicity in China too.

      China doesn't really export the organs it steals anyway, it's not that brazen about it.

      • Basing the idea on how much under-the-table shit goes on in China, really.

    • There was a case this side of the Atlantic of an organ trafficking network that was run by a network of 5 Orthodox Rabbis, and 3 New Jersey mayors [nytimes.com].

      The person selling the organ would get $10,000, but the person receiving it would pay $150,000.

      More background on Jews and organ donation [slate.com].

      • That's both damned shocking and not totally unexpected. :-/

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Considering the psychological impact, advertising human organs for sale, also advertises the profit in humans organs and of course buying human organs. Anyone selling human organs has to be buying the, so they can advertise their ability to buy organs by advertising their ability to sell them. It is extremely dangerous for this to happen.

        This highlights that laws are required to make those who display ads, liable for that add, they are displaying it for profit and should be law be required to check that ad

  • I wonder if this means they'll not be willing to run Planned Parenthood ads after this?

    I mean, I read the Congressional report on that investigation and it basically said they were engaged in what Twitter says is unacceptable, so... I wonder.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      I'd suggest that you actually read the Congressional report, which found that the video you watched was extremely heavily altered to the point where answers to one question were made to appear a response to an entirely different one. Investigators actually called it 'fraud'.

      • So you read someone's reporting on the report but not the report itself, huh?

        This is the actual report on Planned Parenthood. [archive.org] Yes, that's via the Wayback machine since it seems to have been quietly scrubbed at some point and the House Democrats put up their own summary page without any apparent link to the actual report that I could find. Odd thing to do with a report you say called the videos a "fraud", no?

        Feel free to point out these investigators called something in the videos a "fraud" in the linked r

  • ... there's a buyer.

    Personally I don't consume offal, but would in a survival situation. So if someone's selling it as long as it's USDA inspected... what's the problem?

  • Slashdot Runs Ad For Human Organs Because Sick is (Score:3)

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    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      This. I doubt a human approved this add, someone just set up an account and found a way past the filters. That's what happens when you are too cheap to properly vet each advert.

      FWIW I find blocking advertisers works quite well on Twitter. Any time I see a promoted tweet I just block the account and as a result see barely any ads. I was thinking of putting the block list in a git repo so others can import it or add other advertisers to it.

      • This. I doubt a human approved this add, someone just set up an account and found a way past the filters. That's what happens when you are too cheap to properly vet each advert...

        Think of it as deviant artvertisement.
        --
        If money is the root of all evil, and money is power... well, you do the math.

      • Any time I see a promoted tweet I just block the account and as a result see barely any ads. I was thinking of putting the block list in a git repo so others can import it or add other advertisers to it.

        Nice idea. It does create a new attack surface, though.

  • This is sick (Score:3, Insightful)

    by paralumina01 ( 6276944 ) on Saturday February 15, 2020 @04:58AM (#59730546)
    The problem is not these ads. They are only the symptom. What it shows is how sick our consumerist society has become. That is the problem. Everything is a commodity. Nothing is sacred. Everything must be raped to feed greed. Nothing is preserved or cherished to enrich our lives and the lives of the generations after ours. We live in a time of instant gratification which eliminates all planning and conscious development. We don't need laws to make these kinds of ads illegal; we need laws to support society naturally and healthfully so problems are not resolved retroactively but are methodically predicted in order to prepare handy, capable solutions.
    • Once again, someone is taking a single news story about Twitter - already known as a filthy cesspool for bluecheck elites to engage in the ugliest rhetoric - and blowing it out of proportion, making conclusions about all of society that don't fit the data. You write several sentences in a row that are completely false.

    • In this case including people, in other cases your personal private data, your DNA, your voice, your image.

      Dystopian science fiction is looking less and less improbable and increasingly predictive.

    • It’s no more sick than it ever was, just a lot more honest. Please enlighten me as to a group of people or a time in history where humans weren’t largely self-serving little shits. Quit looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses or believing some kind of noble savage myth. Modern society has only become increasingly good at giving people exactly what they wanted all along. If that’s dispelling some utopia notions you have about humanity, then that’s just too bad for you.

  • Ok, sounds like I might want to favor investing in google rather than twitter but besides learning that twitter *might* not be doing a good job maximizing ad revenue (or maybe not if someone just paid a bunch for impressions) what's the big deal.

    Yup, if you have money you get to run ads for any dumb shit you want. TV stations will even sell Tom Steyer ads for his presidential campaign. Other than questions about whether twitter could have earned more with a better targeted ad why does anyone care? Given

    • "TV stations will even sell Tom Steyer ads"

      Wow! A billionaire Democrat financial speculator, who advocates disarming the common people, is allowed to speak on television? We truly ARE free here in Soviet America!!

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Any ad network's going to have bad ads that get through. As long as Twitter has a reasonable method for reporting and removing ads like this, I don't see a problem.

      This is not to say Twitter doesn't do other things that perhaps should land them in hot water, but those would be unrelated to the topic of bad ads.
  • Currently, if you are an organ donor, the people receiving the organ will pay a fee to get the organ harvested, but the owner of the organ doesn't see a dime. If I die and have viable organs, my family should be allowed to sell my organs to make some extra cash.

  • I used to read a lot pulp sci-fi when I was younger were it was common for the stories to explore the shortcoming of dystopia. I never expected to be part of the business sector that would bring it about.

  • ...So long as the organs come from Republicans.

  • Modification of a previous post. This is the internal memo that should be sent to all Twitter employees:

    Dear Twitter employees. There have been some misconceptions going around recently about what we do and why we do it. So, upper management wants to clarify a few things. Read this carefully. We are a company. Therefore, we are driven by profit, profit, profit and NOTHING else. We make almost all of our profit by selling ads. At our core, we are an ADVERTISING company. Never forget that. This is what w

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