Facebook users offered ‘white powder, pills and sex toys’ in bizarre targeted Wish ads
SEX toys, white powder and pills are being offered to Facebook users in bizarre targeted Wish adverts. Thousands of ads are displayed daily for a range of items at extremely low prices – including toenail extenders and “cute” tampons. But among the more sinister objects available to buy are suspicious-looking bags of white powder for […]
SEX toys, white powder and pills are being offered to Facebook users in bizarre targeted Wish adverts.
Thousands of ads are displayed daily for a range of items at extremely low prices – including toenail extenders and “cute” tampons.
But among the more sinister objects available to buy are suspicious-looking bags of white powder for £5 and mysterious pills.
One Twitter user shared a grab of the advert for the powder, saying: “Right these wish adverts are getting out of hand now.”
Another, who was targeted by the same advert, said: “These wish adverts are on another level.”
Wish is a £6.5billion e-commerce company based in the States and was founded in 2013 by former Yahoo and Google programmers Peter Szulczewski and Danny Zhang.
The site now sells its 200million items all over the world with most products taking between two to four weeks to ship.
Its adverts give no context for the product other than the price – meaning users have to click on them to find out what they are looking at.
And they have now gained a cult following among baffled social media users, who regularly share images the weirder items online.
One shows six colourful tampons for less than £1 complete with cute animal faces, while shoppers can also buy a cat blindfold for £1.
Another post on Weird Wish Ads, which collates the stranger objects, shows brightly-patterned underwear for dogs – again for less than £1.
A more expensive item is an inflatable pod being flogged for £993 that shows a model relaxing on a bed inside.
They also have an array of fetish gear – including a dog collar with leash for women and various sex toys.
Many fear the ads are based on a Facebook user’s search history but it actually comes down to the social network’s algorithm.
In 2015, Facebook updated its ad product from “static” offerings to “dynamic” ads that move on a carousel – allowing companies to simply upload their entire product catalogue to the platform.
The company’s algorithm then chooses which product to show which consumer.
Normally, Facebook would pick certain ads – such as shoes for shoe lovers – and bombard users with them.
But as Wish’s catalogue is so large, the stranger items have been making their way to the surface.
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The company is now trying to move away from weird ads and actually sell items people want to buy.
Szulczewski told The Daily Beast: “We’re going to start showing things people are actually buying and people will see.
“We’ve been around five years, we sell three million items a day, and very few of those are weird severed tongue devices or cat blinders.”
