It seems as soon as you’ve started looking around you find strange things around you happening everywhere. I was browsing through my facebook-account cause I was looking for a friend who had left Berlin some years ago (Hey Lotta, if you’re out threre, give me a call!).
Now Facebook employs something called “social ads”, which are social, because
Instead of random messages from advertisers, we’ve launched Social Ads. Social Ads provide advertisements alongside related actions your friends have taken on the site.
Calling anything having to do with marketing “social” makes me want to puke already but things get better, and there is only that much a man can eat a day.
So while I was unsuspectingly browsing profiles galore, this is what facebook thought was the right offer for a middle-aged german: find out wether he’s maybe jewish.
And I wonder wether any of the young happy marketing people of facebook.de did never wonder wether such an ad might evokate certain memories of Germans digging up their ancestry for jewish ancestors. It might be less despicable in other countries, but such an ad in Germany simply stinks.
The most freakish thing, though, is the idea that they – to quote facebook again – “want Facebook to reflect and enhance all your real-world relationships”. Now if I had a black friend, would the ad ask me to find out wether I had black ancestors?
Not very social, if you ask me.