I’ve posted or tweeted about the frequent inanities (and occasional privacy abominations) of Facebook advertisements before, but this particular one really had me scratching my head:
This appeared in a space that, earlier today, asked me when the last time was that I drank Budweiser and, two days ago, asked me whether I ignore or accept friend requests from people from work. Huh?
Moreover, I’m not entirely sure that I even understand what the question is asking. “Stakeholders”? “Value-driven”? What? The question I think the poll is trying to ask is: “Who of the following should behave ethically?” the obvious answer being: all of the above. But there’s a huge amount of ambiguity there. The bracketed modifier to “values” is usually “Christian,” in which case my answer changes to: none of the above. Again: huh?
Beyond just being a poorly articulated question (let’s not even get started on the doozy of an answer choice that is “domestic politics in your country”), there’s something really irresponsible about Facebook posting something like this. Clearly, there’s an agenda behind that question. When I was asked when the last time I drank Budweiser was, I knew that answering one way or another would influence marketing practices towards my demographic — and even though I declined to answer (I wasn’t sure whether drinking Budvar counted for the purposes of that survey), I found the whole exercise less malicious because I knew what its intentions were, from start to finish.
But this poll doesn’t let me, or anyone else, know who’s asking, what interests they represent, or what the survey results are going to be used for. It’s a vague enough question that, conceivably, it could just as easily be a grad student’s research project as it could be an attempt to test the waters of public opinion on injecting “values” into politics. I obviously have the choice not to answer at all; but considering it takes two seconds to click a radio button and vote, I have to wonder how many people unwittingly answered the poll simply because it was there, without considering what question they were actually responding to. And while ignorant people are certainly entitled to their bliss, it’s still kind of reprehensible on Facebook’s part to post something like this without any explanation.