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Comment by chuckadams | Hacker News Reader

> Three advertisers also said they'd encountered a problem where Meta automatically switched those toggles to "on," even when they'd explicitly turned them off — meaning they inadvertently spent their budgets on AI-generated ads they didn't intend to run.

Goodness, such uncharacteristic behavior for Facebook apps :-|

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We tried these AI-produced ads. They produced gibberish. Random mutations of our existing ads with nonsensical words and the desired actions just permutated.

One of the enshittification patterns: Abuse the middleman formerly applied just one side eventually gets applied to the other as well.

Used to be that only the consumer was exploited this way. Manually turn off notifications and permissions in an app, only to have them turned back on after an app update. This is why I block app updates across the board. My bank app will tell me when i need to update to continue using it, and that's good enough for me. Most app updates tend to make the experience worse these days.

Yeah, as much as some software updates need to be automatic for security reasons, others need to be opt-in because the publisher can't be trusted.

Not just in the sense of downgrading the software, but also when the publisher—sometimes under new management—decides to add things that invade your privacy or are straight-up malware.

It’s the third stage in the process. First the platform is good to users. Then it’s bad to users but good to business customers. Third, and finally, it’s bad to both users and business customers. Now it’s only the shareholders that are winning.

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