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

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#111

Post by cs702 » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

tome wrote: post #106

cs702 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that Facebook can improve its behavior only by putting its business at risk. If Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et al could improve Facebook's behavior without putting the business at risk , they would do it in a heartbeat. But it appears they can't. Their efforts are thus sincere but highly constrained: They will never voluntarily do anything that would put the business -- their life's work -- at risk. If I may us…

I'm finding these two sentences hard to reconcile. > If Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et al could improve Facebook's behavior without putting the business at risk, they would do it in a heartbeat. But it appears they can't. > Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large

Imagine yourself as the CEO of a manufacturer that pollutes rivers, and you sincerely want to stop polluting, but if you stop polluting, the company's costs would increase to the point it would no longer be able to compete against all the other companies that continue polluting -- and they're trying to eat your lunch you every day. So, if you stop polluting you would quickly lose relevance, be forced to shut down plants, be forced to fire lots of decent people, and eventually go out of business.

Moreover, when the company was started, no one anywhere realized that polluting rivers was so bad for everyone. No one knew back then; no one thought of it as a problem.

Your choices are: (a) act in the best interest of society and get f#cked by competitors; or (b) remain a dominant force in the market, but as a side effect, f#ck everybody. All your options appear to be a mix of those two horrible choices.

What would you do?

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#112

Post by avian » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #52

absolutelyrad wrote: post #5

"Chief of Advertising Integrity" does anyone take that title seriously? Forget advertising, Facebook and it's CEO himself has no integrity.

I can't find it now, but I remember a story from somebody in the Lean Manufacturing world about a place that was having safety problems, so they appointed somebody Safety Director. This signaled to everybody that safety was that one guy's problem, not theirs. Accidents went up further and stayed up until they got rid of the Safety Directory position and made everybody responsible for safety. That resonated for me bec…

This story explains why every workplace safety exam I ever took had at least one question similar to "who is responsible for fire/machine/... safety" where the only correct answer was "everyone".

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#113

Post by annadane » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

soupson wrote: post #67

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…

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 would argue they basically invented it. A lot of the dirty tactics in play today are because companies feel the need to catch up to Facebook, who set the ecosystem as it is by continually being dishonest and predatory

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#114

Post by wolco2 » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #103

_Understated_ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large Sorry, that's a hard disagree from me and I think you couldn't be further off the mark. Facebook's entire raison d'etre from day 1 is to take as much data from as many sources as possible, then use the most powerful computers, programmed by the brightest minds, to use that data to maximise their profit wi…

My point is that Facebook can improve its behavior only by putting its business at risk. If Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et al could improve Facebook's behavior without putting the business at risk , they would do it in a heartbeat. But it appears they can't. Their efforts are thus sincere but highly constrained: They will never voluntarily do anything that would put the business -- their life's work -- at risk. If I may us…

When you are build on a certain core you can't change who/what you are.

Facebook is built on getting / using user data to determine what to show.

Google is built on geting / using user data to determine what to show.

To betray those goals wouldn't make sense. How they go about it can change. Facebook has always gone hard and fast. They treat you more like a raw piece of meat. They will run ab tests on you and treat you like a variable in a ongoing experiment. Google has such reach that they can make minor changes and capture vast amounts of data.

Other companies are doing the same way but instead of using it to determine what to show you they use it to determine what ads look like so you can buy their product.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#115

Post by ma2rten » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 6:16 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…

I used to work at the biggest social network in the Netherlands. They tried to make a push for becoming a classifieds site and also payments before Facebook, but neither of these worked out.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#116

Post by zwlee94 » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

annadane wrote: post #98

izzytcp wrote: post #20

Who gives a sh*t? Why is this even shared here? HackerNews needs to get back to Engineering please. And, what the hell is Chief of Advertising Integrity ...

Why even bother commenting like that? You're not contributing anything

i completely disagree. i'm glad this person wrote that - it lets me know that this board isn't completely 100% dead and there's people here who think posts about 'facebooks integrity advertising chief' have no business being on a board about Hacker News. maybe everyone is afraid to speak up against this kind of useless B.S. for fear of being accused of not being 'constructive' enough or something.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#117

Post by 3gg » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

dcgudeman wrote: post #31

wtf_is_up wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem?

I don’t know why people are downvoting you. I had the same question.

It could have passed as a troll question given that this is an old an well-known problem, but I guess it's best to err on the side of informing people than turning them away.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#118

Post by djohnston » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

zwlee94 wrote: post #116

annadane wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why even bother commenting like that? You're not contributing anything

i completely disagree. i'm glad this person wrote that - it lets me know that this board isn't completely 100% dead and there's people here who think posts about 'facebooks integrity advertising chief' have no business being on a board about Hacker News. maybe everyone is afraid to speak up against this kind of useless B.S. for fear of being accused of not being 'constructive' enough or something.

I disagree. I don't think it added any value. It's self evident why something ends up on the front page right? I don't go around shitting on every topic I'm not interested in, it's a waste of our finite time.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#119

Post by chishaku » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #111

tome wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm finding these two sentences hard to reconcile. > If Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et al could improve Facebook's behavior without putting the business at risk, they would do it in a heartbeat. But it appears they can't. > Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large

Imagine yourself as the CEO of a manufacturer that pollutes rivers, and you sincerely want to stop polluting, but if you stop polluting, the company's costs would increase to the point it would no longer be able to compete against all the other companies that continue polluting -- and they're trying to eat your lunch you every day. So, if you stop polluting you would quickly lose relevance, be forced to shut down pla…

> the CEO of a manufacturer that pollutes rivers, and you sincerely want to stop polluting

Imagine you started a company that pollutes rivers and you're still the CEO.

Imagine people believing you sincerely want to stop polluting.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#120

Post by roydivision » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #96

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…

Exactly, except that we don't have to imagine anything. If Facebook were to disappear today, there already exist many companies with similar business models willing to take its place. Some more willing to cross the line than Facebook.

Legislation is the key here, not simply destroying the company.