remembering an advert correlates but is different to it being valuable.
Useful ad for Facebook. They made money on it. The advertiser didn't.
No one remembers who ran the ad. Even if we did, it would only be in a negative light due to a weird and off-putting advertising approach.
There's a difference between awareness campaigns and click / conversion campaigns and if there's some ads for a garden chair and your friend is sitting on it you'll definitely remember it more than some random model. Or clothes that are advertised on your body. Not saying that's the future we want, but it would definitely work for a while.
I'm sure the real reason is that Facebook added a poorly thought out feature to their marketing tools around that time, and someone just decided to try it out.
Sometimes people really miss the forest for the trees. Most people actually like Facebook. If you can't wrap your head around that you have to accept you are distinct from the typical consumer. A trillion dollars is not made by appealing to the margins. If Facebook really sucked so bad everyone would log off.
Instead of another boring Facebook sucks comment why don't you ask your sibling why they didn't stop interacting with the website after that? You would probably learn more about the world doing that than trying to speculate about marketing tool features at a company you don't work for.
That is absolutely not a success story when trying to market a Christian dating platform.
If you thought about things more clearly you would also realize that a platform that tried to measure something more like "how did the date actually go" would be even more dystopian. You want an algorithm to start pricing in the cost of you falling in love? If a date goes amazing should the software send you an additional invoice? People who use these apps are already essentially outsourcing interpersonal relationships. How far do you want to take that? The lack of precision is not "dumb, ridiculous and laughable" it's actually a saving grace.