Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban • Hacker News Board

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#311

Post by ankit219 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #250

ankit219 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a back of the paper calculation as to how much fb would earn via me as a user. I noticed a user like me spends about 15 mins a day on facebook and see around 6 sponsored posts. Internally FB ads are all CPM based, at about $4-5 per CPM, no matter the optimization advertisers choose. In a year he would have seen about 2000 impressions, and hence minimum price would be around $10 per year. (There are many users w…

I think your numbers are pretty far off if you look at Facebook financial statements, and a more accurate cost would be around $200/yr for a daily user [1]. US & Canada had 189 million daily users and a quarterly Ad revenue of 8.487 Billion dollars. That is $45 per user per quarter. [1] https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2019/q3...

You might be right. I was replying to the parent comment which said facebook should have a ad free subscription product at $2-3 per year. Just tried to say that the Revenue per user is more than that.

Also, the numbers you posted include all the inventory - facebook news feed, ads on the side right on desktop, instagram, messenger ads, stories ads, instant articles, and even the ad network. According to facebook (read somewhere) 70% of their ads are on the ad network.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#312

Post by birdyrooster » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:51 PM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #35

Traster wrote: post #4

>Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisements. To put it another way, if advertising on Facebook is part of my free speech, surely Zuck must run my adverts despite the fact I have no mone…

I notice you don't address his actual point though. If, let's say, a group advocating for the abolishment of asset forfeiture wants to communicate their message, and the media is not covering it, it would be natural for them to try paying for ads, and the obvious place to put ads are on social media, since that's where the eyeballs are (cf, the collapse of the news media). If social media bans those ads then while th…

You mentioned a minor downside to limiting paid political ads online. We get a huge upside in return.

The game we want is one where political movements can organically gain traction based on popularity.

In this world where political ads are banned, movements don't need financiers to be as successful as they could be. In your example, it's ironic you mention the civil forfeiture movement, because they are exactly the type of people who aren't spending money on ads. PACs and Super PACs for election campaigns are doing the spending. I wish you would acknowledge this.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#313

Post by mwsfc » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

colejohnson66 wrote: post #275

mwsfc wrote: post #268

My take? This is really a pretty simple equation for FB. Politcal ads = good business opportunity ....perhaps essential. Since FB tends to be a self-reinforcing echo chamber on both ends of the political spectrum, political ads will keep users engaged with the platform. For a variety of reasons interest in the 2020 campaign is likely to be sky high so allowing the ads should keeps FB's DAU's & MAU's in the preferred…

It sounds like you’re saying that because Facebook wants more money, they can do what they want. No. They shouldn’t get a free pass simply because it maximizes profit. Slight tangent: Regulation is a thing because businesses have been shown to not self regulate when its in their best interest not to. A corporation maximizing profits could be a good thing for consumers , but it could also be bad. And when it’s bad, th…

No, I never said Facebook is justified to do whatever they want because of their desire to reap more profits. Slight tangent: I don't disagree with your comments about regulation. Back to my earlier point, FB stands to lose more if they don't run political ads so expecting them to change their position in light Twitter's recent announcement is just not going to happen. Cloaking their position as promoting Freedom of Speech is complete rubbish.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#314

Post by birdyrooster » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #48

Angostura wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I humbly disagree > it would be natural for them to try paying for ads, and the obvious place to put ads are on social media It would be natural to them to post to their Facebook page because that's what social media is for and then for their committed network of supporters to repost etc. Remember - that's the advantage of social media - you can quickly get the work out to your supporters without having to go through…

That's not how social media works. Feeds are highly curated. > you can quickly get the work out to your supporters without having to go through intermediaries, or having to pay for advertising. How do you think Facebook makes money? And as a followup, why do you think people pay money to run ads on Facebook? Like, I 100% agree with you that this is how it should work, and it's how we all thought it would work 15 year…

Social media works this way on the scale of millions of people.

People disseminate unpaid political messages all the time. Curated feeds or not, they are seeing things which are popular amongst them and they reshare posts they like.

You can argue that people aren't interested enough in politics, but paid ads are not a good and balanced way to get people engaged. It leads to them having an even more skewed view of politics as it biases them towards the interest of those with the most money for political ads (as opposed to what is best for their community). Those interest can align in theory, but if we are trying to select the optimal system, why add paid advertisements if we don't need to?

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#315

Post by shaftway » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

bryan_w wrote: post #255

cj wrote: post #77

Are political ads labeled / presented any differently than regular ads on Facebook? The main issue I have with this is how Facebook strategically blends advertisements (which is often political during election cycles) together with organic non-sponsored content. Anecdote: My 84 year old grandmother spends 1-2 hours per day scrolling through Facebook's news feed. When I watch her do it, she pays ZERO attention to why…

> Are political ads labeled / presented any differently than regular ads on Facebook? Yes. It has a "Paid for by ____" header in addition to the sponsored designation

Yeah, but it's never "Paid for by Oil Companies Trying to Pollute the Environment". It's always some meaningless name that serves the underlying cause, like "Paid for by Citizens Concerned About Jobs"

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#316

Post by alwayseasy » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

quarkral wrote: post #114

dtwest wrote: post #45

Most people saw what Twitter did and thought, Facebook is probably under some pressure to do the same. Mark Zuckerburg saw it and thought, we now have a monopoly on social media based political advertising! $$$

I don't think Twitter actually hade much political advertising at all before tbh. It's like Bing traffic compared to Google.

Under $3M per quarter according to their CFO.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#317

Post by ineedasername » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

I wonder if there might be a middle path where only ads directly from the campaign are allowed. It wouldn't necessarily resolve the "is it telling the truth" issue, but it would curtail some of the more extreme black propaganda & dark money ads.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#318

Post by gojomo » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:16 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #4

>Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisements. To put it another way, if advertising on Facebook is part of my free speech, surely Zuck must run my adverts despite the fact I have no mone…

Paid advertisements are in fact speech covered by US free speech rights. Courts have accepted some limits in purely commercial speech, but political ads tend to receive the same protection as any other utterance, compensated or not.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#319

Post by rhizome » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:19 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #317

I wonder if there might be a middle path where only ads directly from the campaign are allowed. It wouldn't necessarily resolve the "is it telling the truth" issue, but it would curtail some of the more extreme black propaganda & dark money ads.

We could probably look back to when the laws were passed about identifying the source of broadcast and print ads, as well as "...and I approve this message" in broadcast ads. I'm sure there was some controversy, or at least discussion, that could be reflected upon in the current fight. Perhaps the whole history of fights in campaign finance reform applies.

I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook has already done this.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#320

Post by jeffdavis » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:24 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #4

>Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisements. To put it another way, if advertising on Facebook is part of my free speech, surely Zuck must run my adverts despite the fact I have no mone…

Free speech is not about the cost. A lot of kinds of speech require some outlay. Censorship is when you are willing to pay the cost, but it's still banned due to content.

Yes, I know we are discussing private censorship which is more acceptable than government censorship. But if FB wants to be considered a general platform, they have to be careful filtering content, including ads.