Facebook Disapproves OTW’s Anti-Smoking Article

Why is Facebook blocking Harvard’s landmark study linking smoking to arthritis?

Orthopedics This Week posts a number of its articles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn each week. Only one of these social media giants has accused us of using inappropriate images (like surgeries) and subjects (like pain management) in its postings. Facebook.

Including, it turns out, an article about a Harvard study which found a link between smoking and the incidence of arthritis.

On March 24, Facebook alerted us that one of our posts—”6-Million Person Years of Data Links Smoking to RA”—was getting a lot of views and asked if we wanted to “boost” its performance. Sure, why not? We clicked on the “boost” button and didn’t give it another thought until the next day. (https://ryortho.com/breaking/6-million-person-years-of-data-links-smoking-to-ra/)

Next day, Facebook told us that our 6-Million Person Year’s article (which they called an “ad”) was disapproved.

Said Facebook: “Hi Robin, Here’s what’s preventing your ad from being approved: Image: We don’t allow ads that promote the use or sale of smoking accessories (ex: tobacco pipes, hookahs, hookah lounges, rolling papers, vaporized tobacco delivery devices, shisha, electronic cigarettes).”

We answered saying: “It does NOT promote smoking. It is about a Harvard study that links Smoking to Arthritis. The image is someone breaking a cigarette. It is meant to represent quitting smoking. You guys are morons. Robin”

The offending image:

Facebook responded to our snarky comment, saying: “Hi Robin, This ad was marked as low quality based on our low quality or disruptive content advertising policy. Low quality may include ads that withhold important information to entice people to click the ad and/or that link to external landing pages with an unexpected experience, feature minimal original content or contain disruptive or low quality ads.”

Then we said: “No, you are wrong again. Have a real human look at this. Robin.”

Then Facebook said: “Hi Robin, I’m here to help. I have reviewed the ads and unfortunately, they were correctly disapproved for violating one of our lead ads custom questions policies. The question [insert the question] is not allowed because it asks for the user’s sensitive personal information.”

Insert question here?

Apparently, Facebook’s AI program forgot to find a question to insert. Could that be because there was no question in the article?!

Then we said: “Dear Facebook, as a medical publication the issue of smoking and its effect on the health of the patients our readers treat every day, is very important. The study which is the subject of the boosted post, is a landmark piece of work from Harvard University. It looked at 6 million person-years of data and found a link between smoking and arthritis. That is the subject of our post. The image is of someone breaking a cigarette in half—it represents smoking cessation. Someone with even the smallest amount of common sense needs to look at this. Robin Young, Publisher Orthopedics This Week.”

No answer from Facebook. And the story about Harvard’s study remains disapproved by Facebook.

Either Facebook’s reviewer is a moron, or this is a preview of our future with Artificial Intelligence.