
I Have Cancer. Now My Facebook Feed Is Full of ‘Alternative Care’ Ads - cma
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/opinion/facebook-cancer-ads.html
======
harry8
Dump facebook. Make the effort. Get non-facebook contact details from anyone
you want to stay in touch with. Advertise you're going to do it a few times
then just pull the plug.

Life is significantly better without it. Really.

~~~
chongli
As a counterpoint, Facebook also happens to be a great tool to organize people
in times like this. Just today I saw a post in my feed where some
acquaintances had organized to raise money for a girl they know who was
diagnosed with cancer. They managed to raise about $38,000 for her. That’s a
big deal.

~~~
moron4hire
Plenty of other tools exist

~~~
chongli
Yes, plenty of other tools exist. However, Facebook is the one that everyone
is already on.

So if you want to raise some money for a friend who has cancer you can start a
GoFundMe campaign and spread the word via email. It's going to be more work,
though, and I bet you won't get as big of a response due to the friction of
the medium.

------
dfdz
“Last week, I posted about my breast cancer diagnosis on Facebook. Since then,
my Facebook feed has featured ads for “alternative cancer care.””

In my experience, cookies and browsing history influences facebook ads more
than the text in posts. For example any links sent via messenger or whatsapp
or products on amazon.

Could it be the case that the authors browsing history is actually what is
driving these ads? For example, if the author is an expert on pseudo science
it seems natural that they would research fake cures at some point.

~~~
celadevra_
I am unemployed for 6 months now, and I watch YouTube from time to time, and
search for all kinds of things. From a human viewer perspective, the ads were
more related to my YouTube watching behaviour than my browsing history. I use
DuckDuckGo but let Google Analytics see me.

Recently I decide to start doing video essays. I searched for a ton of
medieval history stuff and watched a ton of related clips. I notice that
YouTube began to show ads of at least 2 "I get rich from millions in debt"
self-help workshops/courses to me, which I've never shown any interest in.

I have watched audio equipment review videos as well, and that's the only
possible connection I can establish between the ads and my online behaviour.
Are a lot of unemployed people seeking to enter audio/video making? Or are the
snake oil ads showing on many people's screens because of the dire economic
situation many of us are in?

~~~
perl4ever
I'm sure someone will tell me why this isn't happening, but I perceive a
correlation between anything I type into FB Messenger (or HN) and subsequent
ads. And I mean quickly.

So, my question for you is have you been making comments or sending messages
online about debt, money, wealth, etc? Then again, maybe Skynet just knows
you're unemployed and that's what makes you a target for get-rich-quick.

~~~
celadevra_
I seldom talk about my financial status online. But I have been searching for
jobs on Glassdoor and talked with people on WeChat and a few social networks
in China regarding my job seeking.

Thinking that just that could make me a target of these crooks ... wow, just
wow.

On large, generic platforms like Facebook and YouTube, I sense the possibility
that these ads that are essentially spam can drive a much higher conversion
than the legal businesses' ads, and eventually drive out other types of ads.
Those are not nigeria princes asking you for "hlep", you can tell the guys
behind it put in a lot of efforts and serious money, some made it like a
trailer of _The Pursuit of Happyness_. There's no way Google or Facebook's AI
could tell that they are suspicious schemes.

------
neixidbeksoxyd
I have a family member with a mental illness and they think they can talk to
animals through telepathy. I was worried it was a sign of schizophrenia and
tried to convince them that they needed help. Unfortunately when you google
"animal telepathy" or any other query to get information on telepathic
communication with animals, the top results are all absolute batshit crazy
sites that confirm people can do that. Now I see how someone can start to
believe all kinds of crazy things. Since Google probably optimizes for some
type of engagement under the hood, all sorts of alternative medicine and crazy
ideas end up as top results. I really think the whole "let's make all
information/speech available with no filters except for sex because clearly
sex is evil" approach from SV companies is causing huge harm. Most people
don't grow up thinking they need to read several scientific, peer reviewed,
reproducible papers to believe new ideas.

~~~
pastrami_panda
I knew a guy that suddenly in his thirties started believing the earth was
flat. His friends ignored it and tried to play it off. I tried talking to him
to no avail.

One night I couldn't sleep and thought about how an average guy like him could
do a 180 like that. I googled just to see what arguments the 'movement' tried
to lean on. The following weeks I was bombarded with suggestions of more flat
earth content, even after downvoting it YouTube kept recommending it for weeks
if not months.

Who knows how many minds have been eroded already.

~~~
Spooky23
I worked with a guy in a position of considerable responsibility who seriously
believes that reptilian aliens under the Denver airport are controlling the US
government.

~~~
netsec_burn
He's been brainwashed. Everyone knows the United States government doesn't
exist. /s

------
harry8
Wouldn't it be nice if facebook took proper responsibility for what they
publish in exchange for money.

When snake-oil damages someone when it was advertised by facebook, facebook,
who took the money to diseminate the harm are liable for that.

The other thing worth noting is that the hugely successful internet
advertising campaigns, eg Tesla, who have a brand now comparable to Mercedes,
paid facebook, google et al. precisely $0 to achieve that. Unless you are
selling snake-oil, it would seem internet advertising is something to avoid.

I think if everyone had to take direct responsibility for the advertising they
publish, quality newspapers would be more profitable and facebook & google
very, very much less dominant. Would it make the world a nicer, kinder place?
Dunno. I say it's worth running the experiment.

~~~
voisin
> The other thing worth noting is that the hugely successful internet
> advertising campaigns, eg Tesla, who have a brand now comparable to
> Mercedes, paid facebook, google et al. precisely $0 to achieve that.

How?

~~~
xingyzt
They don't do ads per se, but do spend quite a lot in other forms of marketing
-- Discounts & perks for referrals, high-quality press photos, events,
livestreams, etc.

------
johnpowell
While not nearly as bad as what is in the article. Predictive text in Messages
on iOS now suggests "cancer" when I type "can" and "chemotheteropy" when I
type "ch". And to really rub it in "ma" brings up "magnesium". The magnesium
one being the worst because if I type it that means they are doing a magnesium
infusion and that means I am going to feel like I have been hit by a truck for
the next two days.

A lot of the times it is actually picking the right word but somethings you
don't want to be constantly reminded of.

~~~
lalos
You should check this out if you're not aware of this feature:
[https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/iphone/how-remove-words-
fr...](https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/iphone/how-remove-words-from-iphone-
predictive-text-3642859/)

------
orwin
I use to not care about conspiracy theories and pseudoscience. I found it
funny even, until my mother got breast cancer and some heartless guys tried to
sell her lithoterapy (stone you put in water before drinking that water, stone
you have to wear to sleep and all this stuff).

Well as this "therapy" was really dangerous, there were a lot of articles on
the danger and that and my insistence managed to keep her from that. She has
now recovered with chirugucal operation and hormone therapy.

I then followed up on that, discovered something called zététique[0],
basically applying scientific method to all claims. It worked quite well for
me.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%A9t%C3%A9tique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%A9t%C3%A9tique)

~~~
aaomidi
Unfortunately not everyone has the support group to help them navigate through
this. Or the personality to rely on a support group.

When you're in a situation like cancer you're extremely vulnerable. You think
to yourself what's the point of me keeping this money if I'm just going to die
so vulture companies decide to use this vulnerable state to destroy you.

As a society we should stop turning a blind eye towards this. Yes they're an
adult and should know better, but maybe that view isn't always correct? Maybe
sometimes adults can't consent to stuff properly because of the situation
they're in.

~~~
dlp211
> Yes they're an adult and should know better

Why should they know better? Why are adults expected to be experts in all
things? Certainly if it was bad the government would stop it or they wouldn't
make enough money to advertise to lowly old me is likely what most of them
think.

------
fiblye
It's not just Facebook. It's everywhere.

If I'm feeling a little sick and decide to look up the symptoms, half the
results are "alternative cures" that involve drinking olive oil, applying tea
tree oil, drinking green tea (I think these people think tea tree and tea tea
are the same) and BOOM cured. Just this week I was looking up a couple animal
videos, and Youtube's sidebar recommendations were absolutely full of "natural
cures" for various pet ailments. Of course, every single one mentioned olive
oil in the title.

I can't even look up basic recipes or info about specific ingredients or even
simple gardening info without half the results being things like spinach being
some miracle food that helps treat/cure syphilis and cancer.

I'm sick of it. I'm not exactly in favor of deplatforming, but these people
are spreading actively dangerous and outright wrong information. And for what?
I know there are people out there seeking to profit by selling fake cures, but
there are people out there legitimately saying you should just go to the store
and buy olive oil (and it's always olive oil) and eat a few oranges and your
diseases will go away--they don't get any direct benefit from the deception.
WHY are there so many people out there saying this bizarre shit?

------
quyleanh
Sometimes when I'm planning to buy something. I'm sure I haven't searched
about them, and just talked with my friend verbally. Few hours later, ads
shows in my feeds. I ask my friend about this, many of them confirm and still
don't know what happened.

~~~
gregable
I've seen instances of this before, but never one that couldn't possibly be
explained in any other way. For example, getting an ad for an HBO show that I
talked about. Well, HBO is pushing said show among my demographic, could
easily be a coincidence.

~~~
tylermenezes
I started getting tons of ads for elder law immediately after I started
watching Better Call Saul. I watched them on VLC on Arch Linux and _acquired_
the files over a year earlier. I hadn't Googled it, visited any related pages
or posted about watching it. A little while after I uninstalled the Facebook
app they stopped.

I was very much on the "there must be another explanation" train, especially
since it should be possible to notice a ton of bandwidth if they were
streaming conversation audio.

But I've really never been able to figure that one out. If you've got an
explanation for me I'd be really interested.

------
KyleSanderson
What's the latest method for ads? Incognito, uBlock Origin, everything all
still render a block page here.

~~~
gruez
Article loads fine with ublock

~~~
Balgair
Make sure you have the 'annoyances' filters checked in uBlock.

'Options' from your browser's extensions settings > 'Filter Lists' tab >
'Annoyances' about 1/2 way down.

Gets rid of many soft paywalls too.

------
jolux
I struggle with depression and anxiety and receive a mix of ads on Facebook
for various antidepressants and therapy services as well as bullshit
unlicensed medical devices and other crap.

It's pretty depressing itself. I'm not going to be susceptible to these
suggestions but I'm sure some desperate, suffering people are. It's sick.

------
TwoNineFive
The take on Facebook profiting from the advertising of deplorable
pseudoscience is interesting, and this is a good story, but what struck me was
the idea that the author recognized that they were being manipulated when
these ads appeared.

What is interesting to me is that they did not believe they were being
manipulated and lied to before.

------
lalos
This is so nasty in multiple levels, not only targeting (ok, Facebook prefers
the verb 'connecting') possibly desperate people with false medical promises
but also the fact that if a user clicks on the ad, the receiving website now
for sure knows of your medical condition and can do as they please with that
info.

------
Balgair
If anyone would like to get rid of such ads, here's an old comment of mine
linking to uBlock Origin's browser downloads for most common browsers:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23771585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23771585)

Any other suggestions would be helpful!

------
mirimir
> But I’ve witnessed the false promises of these companies. I’ve spoken to
> someone who flew to that beach clinic, only to return home and discover that
> her tumor was inoperable. The evidence is clear: Death rates are much higher
> for people with cancer who choose alternative therapies instead of standard
> care.

I wondered if Facebook etc might have any liability here. But no, they don't,
under US law.[0] Maybe they should, however.

0)
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/54](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/54)

~~~
th0ma5
Reading that quote I instantly thought of Steve Jobs.

------
wdr1
Not that this excuses it, but I wonder if it had anything to do with his FB
post versus remarketing. My suspicion is that, following his diagnouses, he
visited a website that is being a bit shady with its userlists.

~~~
koheripbal
It's possible. I wouldn't blame someone for running a Google search on xyz
cancer therapy and clicking on random top results.

------
catalogia
This seems like a particularly egregious aspect of a larger problem; that we
allow medical advertising at all. From what I understand some of European
countries don't allow advertising for legitimate medicines, let alone
snakeoil. That makes a lot of sense to me; the ads for legitimate medicines
all seem emotionally manipulative; designed to make people pressure their
doctors into writing subscriptions they might not actually need. If facebook
adopted a strict "no medicine" policy, they wouldn't have to sort the wheat
from the chaff.

------
vkou
If advertising changes consumer behaviour, as Facebook insists (to
advertisers), it is quite literally killing people, by allowing these ads on
their platform.

------
ralmidani
I recently deleted Facebook from my phone, and convinced my wife to do the
same. We still have our accounts, but will only access FB via a web browser.
Getting off WhatsApp will prove trickier, because we both have relatives
overseas.

------
ramoz
This is the perspective of a recent diagnosis, and someone with privileged
healthcare. While I completely, very tangibly, empathize with much of the
article (especially isolated treatment & urgent care), it is attacking the
wrong thing.

Inadequate healthcare is the real problem. It is foundational. That fact that
these companies exist is a problem, yet really we need to focus on the fact
that social media and alternative care is the only "welcoming" experience for
so many who either can't afford, or who can, & meet critical treatment with a
slap of reality and a world of so much uncertainty and direction that THEY
ultimately have to navigate with only the general guidance of whoever's care
they land in.

"Delete Facebook" ... no, I disagree. Embrace social-care and find others in
similar situations.

------
eiji
Fwiw, I always found the "Hide Ad" functionality within fb and other places
working okay. I do that for a few minutes in 5-10 ads and things get better
quick.

------
u801e
I started using the Facebook container extension for Firefox to prevent things
like this from happening.

------
hindsightbias
It’s not the ads, it’s all your FB friends and family who have “liked” that
alt-science.

And they’ll be sending you that stuff and then saying “If only he’d tried...”
as they lower your casket.

------
coronadisaster
facebook ads are the worst

