You probably don’t want to know what’s in it.

I’ve probably spent a few hundred dollars in a decade, boosting a few posts to see how well they would do.

If you’ve not thought about how Facebook makes its money, they like it that way. Everything they do is “proprietary.” If you’ve got a small business or a fan site, you know that Facebook is the bulletin board you pay. You assume that everything you post goes out to all your “friends”, don’t you? I don’t. Facebook takes everything you give it and arranges it so it holds the most eyeballs for the longest time.

I can’t remember who first told me about micro-targeted ads. It might have been my son Andrew. As a comic, he could spend $25 and give away tickets to boost attendance at a comedy club. You literally zoom into a specific place, demo, interests, and pay to be seen.

When Time magazine put “King Trump” on the cover, I figured perhaps that tune could grow a new set of wings online. It’s got about 165,000 views on YouTube. (Don’t bother putting a YouTube video on Facebook, they choke it. Google owns YouTube, Y’know.)

Spike and I collaborated on King Trump. It was his premise. His idea. I had a blast making the lyrics positive, in tribute to the original premise of Steve Martin’s “King Tut”, When we posted the YouTube clip on Facebook, literally 11 people saw it.

Pedro told me, you have to upload it directly to Facebook, they don’t like YouTube. So we did, a few hours later. It received about 35,000 views in the next 24 hours. I thought it would skyrocket on social media. It didn’t. A year later, it sits at 78,000 views.

Why?

Well, I wouldn’t know. But every few days Facebook tries to sell me on buying an ad to “boost” its performance. They’re taunting me.

Which is fine. I willingly gave them the content and all that information about how to exploit it. I get it. It’s a business.

I was lucky to make a good living off of advertising, so I have no problem with me gathering subscribers to a page so they can sell them back to me. It makes me smile. That Zuckerberg‘s a genius.

So after the Time Magazine cover, I decided to cough up $50 and see if it explodes.

What happened next blew my mind. The ad was rejected because I’m not a registered political advertiser. So if I’d just verify my identity, and give them a ton of info including my social security number…

I see. This is how they responded to Russian Troll Farms. I see what they did here.

Except for one thing.

This is not a political ad. It’s satire. My Trump loving friends laughed and my Left wingers laughed too. It’s comedy. If you know me well you know I give every politician shit for one reason. They ALL deserve it.

So I just laughed it off. Would be a waste of money anyway. I don’t need the views, and likes etc. I just hoped people would enjoy it.

I thought that would be the end of it. But no.

Now Facebook won’t stop hounding me to register as a political advertiser. Twice a day I get pitched by their bots. Keep in mind I’m arguing with algorithms. I doubt a real person is involved.

They offered an appeal. I explained I was not a political advertiser, and that this was satire. The appeal was rejected. And again I was offered to enlist; reminded of how simple the process is to register as a political advertiser.

Just fill out the forms and click “Agree.”