Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#81

Post by johannes1234321 » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

etempleton wrote: post #74

I am always a bit surprised that Facebook ended up as reliant on advertising revenue as they are. I feel like they missed opportunities to replace Craigslist as the de facto online classifieds and to offer a payment system like Apple Pay. Perhaps these are only obvious in hindsight. I feel that most of their issues stem from their complete revenue reliance on advertising. It forces them to make decisions about their…

The thing is that ads made them a lot quite quickly. Anything else will need time to grow to notable revenue streams. It's similar to Google in that regard, who always had revenue streams aside (like search appliances) but only now with different cloud-related (enterprise apps etc. included) projects.

But yeah I wonder about their thoughts for embedding payment into WhatsApp. Given Facebook's size they of course get a lot of regulatory attention, but they seem to think in that direction with Libra and other projects.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#82

Post by Infinitesimus » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #41

JoshTko wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate why it's gauche? I'm assuming the intent is to share on the platform that has the audience you are seeing to share the message to. It's not user friendly to direct people to another channel.

Twitter lacks both document authoring features and professionalism context for anything like an announcement like this. It comes off like an out of touch person trying to stay “fresh” or “with it” shoe-horning a dry press release comment into a medium people use to laugh at cat photos. Even official Twitter accounts and journalists have the sense to link externally to more important matters. It undermines credibility…

Strong perspective but understandable.

Alternative take: Twitter is where people are and information spreads by push vs having someone discover/navigate/link to your personal site for the announcement.

12 tweets is certainly a lot though but I don't get the idea that using Twitter to share important news is gauche. Maybe that was the case when they first launched but certainly not now.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#83

Post by bird_monster » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #56

As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, but the company is finding it very difficult to do The Right Thing, because it would reduce future revenue growth, shrink long-term profitability, and hurt the company's competitive standing against the many other companies that are trying to eat Facebook's lunch every day. In the extreme, Facebook's choic…

> As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large,

The nuance is that they're not - they're trying to improve their _image_.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#84

Post by na85 » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #56

As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, but the company is finding it very difficult to do The Right Thing, because it would reduce future revenue growth, shrink long-term profitability, and hurt the company's competitive standing against the many other companies that are trying to eat Facebook's lunch every day. In the extreme, Facebook's choic…

>Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large

I am utterly, completely bewildered at how one could look at Facebook's behavior and come to this conclusion.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#85

Post by shrimpx » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

The idea that Facebook “works on privacy”, and that this guy is going to “work on privacy” elsewhere now, is the most facetious thing ever. It’s like saying that Trump’s legal team led by Giuliani “works on election integrity”.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#86

Post by johannes1234321 » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #41

JoshTko wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate why it's gauche? I'm assuming the intent is to share on the platform that has the audience you are seeing to share the message to. It's not user friendly to direct people to another channel.

Twitter lacks both document authoring features and professionalism context for anything like an announcement like this. It comes off like an out of touch person trying to stay “fresh” or “with it” shoe-horning a dry press release comment into a medium people use to laugh at cat photos. Even official Twitter accounts and journalists have the sense to link externally to more important matters. It undermines credibility…

They could have used Facebook if they wanted to write a longer post, but they wanted the audience from Twitter. Aside from that they are a private person, not a public good and can do whatever they like. Be it not announcing a job change at all or printing and distributing flyers or something in between.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#87

Post by the-dude » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

0xB31B1B wrote: post #75

rossdavidh wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you're getting some downvotes, but I agree with you. Put another way, though: the problem is not Zuckerberg per se, it's the business model of advertising-supported, general-purpose social networks. If you took everybody out of Facebook and replaced them all with other equally qualified people, they would behave the same, as an organization. The problem is not Who, it's What. You can't "fix" Facebook, because t…

strong disagree that a Facebook staffed with different folks would behave the same. Zuckerberg has a majority of the votes due to his super voting shares. Leadership matters, individual actions matter. Twitter, for all its faults, has a leader who is leading the company down a different path than the pure money chasing and dominance, and i can imagine a differently lead Twitter being making more money and being worse…

Twitter even worse for society? How?

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#88

Post by soupson » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

SCHiM wrote: post #69

soupson wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This is surveillance capitalism taken to its extreme. Facebook didn’t invent it, they’re just doing it in a way that makes the consequences more difficult to ignore than Google, which has been able to largely sidestep the blowback by being mission critical to so many people and also having massive goodwill projects that don’t directly point to being profit driven. It’s up to citizens of the US and EU to reign th…

I mean, GDPR is a step in the direction. Many websites, and by extension, people seem to think that you comply by 'gdpr' by putting up a stupid cookie banner. But the real compliance is not storing PII, then you don't even need a cookie bar!

Asking companies not to retain PII is like asking a crack addict to please ignore the crack pipe and torch while you step out for an hour. The only solution is to make PII radioactive. Tax it. Burn companies that abuse it or leak it to the ground. HIPAA is a fucking nightmare but companies still figure it out:

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#89

Post by antiterra » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

arrosenberg wrote: post #70

antiterra wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean A/B testing?

No, I mean the paper the other user linked where they were turning dials so Zuck could cosplay as The Mule.

If FB had intuitively decided that too many positive posts had a negative effect on users (as contemporary research was suggesting) and amplified negative post visibility, there’d be no controversy. If FB decided intuitively that positive posts were good and they should reduce visibility on negative posts, there’d be no controversy.

Since FB A/B tested the effect of both and let academics analyze the data, that somehow means they are demonic.

https://www.pnas.org/content/116/22/10723

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#90

Post by bogomipz » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #56

As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, but the company is finding it very difficult to do The Right Thing, because it would reduce future revenue growth, shrink long-term profitability, and hurt the company's competitive standing against the many other companies that are trying to eat Facebook's lunch every day. In the extreme, Facebook's choic…

>"As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, ..."

Could you provide some examples how "FB truly seems to be trying improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large"? Just using one very recent example - how do you reconcile that outlook with FB threats against the Ad Observatory[1]?

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-demands-nyu-ad-observ...