In order to promote my works of literature I maintain a Facebook page called Jeffrey Vernon Matucha, Author. Facebook pages are de rigeur for people who want to promote just about anything on social media, and Facebook knows it. Facebook offers an advertising service known as Post boosts. Basically you can post something on your page, and then have Facebook advertise that post through a post boost. You can spend as little as ten dollars to have a post on your page advertised.

Of course there are conditions. Sometimes reposts do not have boosts available, for whatever reason. And when you submit any kind of advertisement to Facebook, whether it be a post boost or some other kind of ad, it goes through a review process. Facebook has also been cracking down with community and accuracy standards, some which have been in place for years, and some which they implemented only recently because of public pressure over disinformation.

When I posted an excerpt from a work in progress enittled The Horniest Lesbian in the World, an excerpt from my novel-in-progress What the Hell Ever Happened to Yuri Rozhenko, I received a notice on the post that a boost was unavailable because the content went against Facebook’s community standards. Specifically because they detected the word “Hell” in the post. Honestly, there’s plenty of much more explicit wording in the excerpt itself, being as the story contains gratuitous swearing along with complex conversations about genitals, so why they decided to focus on that word is kind of a puzzler, but then again Facebook AI is a pretty wonky and uneven thing.

Amused at Facebook’s pearl clutching policy at the word “Hell”, along with a notice that I could qualify for a post boost if I just cleaned up my act, (Which would be quite difficult to do since the reference to that particular Satanic hot spot is in the title of the work I’m trying to promote,) I took a screenshot of the notice and posted it on the very same author’s Facebook page, thusly:

 

 

After I posted about a post not being boostable because of H-E double toothpicks, I noticed that Facebook had put a “Boost Post” button on that post. Not only that, I was getting notifications suggesting that maybe I might want to spend a few bucks to boost this post about an unboostable post. (Facebook regularly tries to hustle promoters to use its paid services through notifications.)

So I took a screenshot and posted that to my authors page:

 

 

And what do you see at the bottom of this post about a post about an unboostable post? Why, a “Boost Post” button! And again, Facebook sent me notifications asking if I wanted to boost this post!

So again, I took another screenshot and put up yet another post on my authors page: This time about a post about a post about an unboostable post. Here:

 

 

And guess what happened next? Yep! Facebook went out of its way to suggest that I boost this post! And again with notifications egging me on to boost it! Basically this thing was starting to wrap in on itself, and was turning into some sort of Escher-esque decent into infinity.

 

 

Not only were they asking me if wanted to do a traditional post boost, they were also suggesting that maybe I could try out one of their slideshow ads, which would feature fancy shmancy cards with quotes from the post.

 

 

So I decided, what the hell. Why not gamble ten dollars and see if they would approve this post as an ad. I filled out the standard form to make a post into an advertisement and then submitted it for review. I just asked for a regular post boost, rather than the slideshow.

 

 

I’ve boosted posts before. Usually the review process is routine, and I assume that it is one of the few Facebook routines that is not strictly relegated to their AI routines, though I have had ad submissions shot down right away for specious reasons, meaning it was declined by a bot. Far, far too much of Facebook’s maintenance and policy routines are done by bots, are huge failing for such a site!

Much to my surprise and amusement, they actually approved the ad! I’m really not sure how it will be perceived, or if it will actually get me any notice, since it’s basically a convoluted rant about how ridiculous the Facebook advertisement algorithm is.

 

At the time that I posted this, the ad has been running for more than twenty four hours. I’ve checked the algorithm and it’s actually created some new engagements. (Meaning people actually went and looked at the post through the advert.) Just for fun, I put the link to the offending blog post in the comments, so it’s a roundabout way to sneak in something that violates Facebook’s pearl-clutching community standards. Never mind the conversations in the actual piece about how much erections weigh and gigantic clitorisii. (What is the plural for clitoris anyway???)