Facebook Ads
Shares rank 5 of 7 advertising platforms by recommenders
Recommended for reaching large audiences and tracking returns, with several owners reporting profitable ad spend. Common caveat: scam ads and poor support.
Recommended for reaching large audiences and tracking returns, with several owners reporting profitable ad spend. Common caveat: scam ads and poor support.
30 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 23
- approval share
- 23%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 10 years
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Reaches a large audience
“without my little Facebook/Instagram ads people would have had to largely rely on word of mouth”
Comment from 6 Jan 2026 in “Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appear After 5 Seconds” “Facebook advertisers use it because it works and reaches a hell of a lot of people.”
Comment from 7 Sep 2026 in “It's time for Mark Zuckerberg to resign from Meta”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Scam ads go unchecked
“Meta looked into the scam problem and decided to stop looking sicne solving the problem would reduce their profits”
Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse” “the same reason why Facebook relies on scam ads for at least a third of their revenue”
Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “2026 Apple introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results” “Facebook is propped up with so many scams these days”
Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “Meta made scam ads harder to find instead of removing them” - Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “Meta created 'playbook' to fend off pressure to crack down on scammers”
- Comment from 13 Sep 2026 in “Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?”
- Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams”
Poor targeting and weak returns
“facebook ad targeting is also garbage. They have my entire history since 2004 and they still sometimes: think I'm a woman”
Comment from 2 Sep 2026 in “ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage” “Meta will use a massive amount of ur budget on your current customers instead of bringing in new customers”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “Why is Meta destroying its engineering organization?” “100% robots... never managed to get any positive ROI on any online platform I tried advertising on”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots” - Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “We collected 10k hours of neuro-language data in our basement”
Account bans, no human support
“Facebook not only denied them, but when the non-profit asked for a review of the denial they were warned if they asked again their entire facebook page would be flagged and deleted.”
Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “Meta made scam ads harder to find instead of removing them” “It's impossible to talk to someone in Facebook about this. The AI chat is completely clueless and can't do anything.”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “HERMES.md: Anthropic bug causes $200 extra charge, refuses refund” “signed up and instantly banned when I wasn't even banned when was originally a Facebook user”
Comment from 21 Feb 2026 in “Meta Deployed AI and It Is Killing Our Agency” Buggy self-serve interface, payment failures
“they had a really, really, really bad and buggy self-serve interface that made it hard for small advertisers to spend money”
Comment from 22 May 2026 in “The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't” “on both platforms the payment or creating the ad failed in various ways”
Comment from 27 Nov 2025 in “Does anyone run ads successfully?”
Other advertising platforms people recommend
The four most recommended other advertising platforms, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 25 | 144 | 15% | 11 | 16 yrs10 owners | — |
| Meta Ads | 14 | 28 | 33% | 6 | — | — |
| Instagram ads | 12 | 4 | 75% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Google AdSense | 11 | 47 | 19% | 6 | 20 yrs6 owners | — |
| Facebook AdsThis page | 7 | 23 | 23% | 5 | 10 yrs3 owners | — |
What people said
30 of the 31 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“There are so many scams being promoted on FB”
“100% robots... never managed to get any positive ROI on any online platform I tried advertising on”
“Facebook advertisers use it because it works and reaches a hell of a lot of people.”
“facebook ad targeting is also garbage. They have my entire history since 2004 and they still sometimes: think I'm a woman”
“I think it's all a huge make-believe.”
“these companies can't be bothered to scan this volume of AI ad slop”
“Meta will use a massive amount of ur budget on your current customers instead of bringing in new customers”
“they had a really, really, really bad and buggy self-serve interface that made it hard for small advertisers to spend money”
“was perma banned by an AI with this message”
“it looks quite scary to start again”
“It's impossible to talk to someone in Facebook about this. The AI chat is completely clueless and can't do anything.”
“much more cost-effective than FB for what they do”
“signed up and instantly banned when I wasn't even banned when was originally a Facebook user”
“Facebook doesn't care. They've got their eyes on your clients and want to cut you out”
“I got instantly banned for violating TOS”
“scary good with their ads and have often been even even when I actively tried to avoid them”
“Every dollar I spent on Facebook ads returned me $5 in revenue (at 40% margin)”
“No financial market would be able to run the way Google and Facebook run their ad markets.”
“Meta looked into the scam problem and decided to stop looking sicne solving the problem would reduce their profits”
“without my little Facebook/Instagram ads people would have had to largely rely on word of mouth”
“Facebook not only denied them, but when the non-profit asked for a review of the denial they were warned if they asked again their entire facebook page would be flagged and deleted.”
“Facebook is propped up with so many scams these days”
“Facebook ads absolutely allow criminal activity.”
“aren't suitable for my market”
“Of course, they got rid of all that.”
“Facebook ads have been better for quite some time.”
“the same reason why Facebook relies on scam ads for at least a third of their revenue”
“Basically none of the explicit advertisement worked at all and it wasn't worth the money.”
“on both platforms the payment or creating the ad failed in various ways”
“technically trivial for them to algorithmically flag it”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.