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Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

reuters.com

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Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#151

Post by smolder »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #108
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…

My point is that Oil Companies can improve their behavior only by putting their business at risk.

I don't think it's a justifiable for risk mitigation reasons to act as the oil industry has. What they can do more of is invest in more R&D for moonshot energy products. Or invest into existing green energy areas. I believe there are just better short term returns on PR (deceiving the public as much as possible), buying help & protection from regulators, and the status quo generally. I also believe the powers that be in that industry, like many others, are old, uninspired, and unreasonably resistant to change. Like Zuckerberg, they're more afraid of lost profit than destroying the world, whether by a lot or a little.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#152

Post by rtx »

_Understated_ wrote: post #147
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…

Your original point says that they are looking to change for the benefit of mankind... They aren't. They have no sincerity. They will do what makes money. Period. They have shown time and again they don't give two fucks about humanity, mental health, regulators etc until they are about to generate bad PR from it. The government seems to be aiming at them right now although I suspect that once the brown envelopes stuf…

I hope governments starts with more evil companies. Facebook should be down the list.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#153

Post by kaizenb »

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…

> Facebook didn’t invent it.

Didn't Google invent this model? [1]

>Surveillance capitalism was invented around 2001 as the solution to financial emergency in the teeth of the dotcom bust when the fledgling company faced the loss of investor confidence. As investor pressure mounted, Google’s leaders abandoned their declared antipathy toward advertising. Instead they decided to boost ad revenue by using their exclusive access to user data logs (once known as “data exhaust”) in combination with their already substantial analytical capabilities and computational power, to generate predictions of user click-through rates, taken as a signal of an ad’s relevance.

>Operationally this meant that Google would both repurpose its growing cache of behavioural data, now put to work as a behavioural data surplus, and develop methods to aggressively seek new sources of this surplus.

>The company developed new methods of secret surplus capture that could uncover data that users intentionally opted to keep private, as well as to infer extensive personal information that users did not or would not provide. And this surplus would then be analysed for hidden meanings that could predict click-through behaviour. The surplus data became the basis for new predictions markets called targeted advertising.

>Here was the origin of surveillance capitalism in an unprecedented and lucrative brew: behavioural surplus, data science, material infrastructure, computational power, algorithmic systems, and automated platforms. As click-through rates skyrocketed, advertising quickly became as important as search. Eventually it became the cornerstone of a new kind of commerce that depended upon online surveillance at scale.

>The success of these new mechanisms only became visible when Google went public in 2004. That’s when it finally revealed that between 2001 and its 2004 IPO, revenues increased by 3,590%.

>Surveillance capitalism is no more limited to advertising than mass production was limited to the fabrication of the Ford Model T. It quickly became the default model for capital accumulation in Silicon Valley, embraced by nearly every startup and app.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-...

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#154

Post by 13415 »

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…

I'll be honest, judging from my experience with Facebook's ads system, I'd wager they have accumulated some technical debt and their content evaluation (aka censorship) systems don't really work or don't scale. There are numerous reports of incorrect flagging of business accounts and ads managers and insanely long review processes (which, by the way, never result in an apology) on forums outside Facebook. Advertisers were moving to other platforms because Facebook became unpredictable and ads costs were skyrocketing just before the US elections.

It's a bit better now but they still seem to have problems identifying objectionable content. If the system doesn't work for ads, it won't work for orders of magnitude more user posts either.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#155

Post by baby »

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…

My guess is that marketplace has already replaced Craigslist in a number of listings. I still go to Craigslist for finding a rent though.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#156

Post by freebuju »

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…

Your first argument gave me quite a good chuckle.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#157

Post by giantrobot »

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…

> 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.

I think the point is they literally can't improve Facebook's behavior because their behavior is their business. They don't have any products that can function without their panopticon and Skinner boxes.

It's not that they can't compete by changing their behavior but cease to be a viable business that can even operate.

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#158

Post by daenney »

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…

> If Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et al could improve Facebook's behavior without putting the business at risk, they would do it in a heartbeat.

Based on what evidence do you make this assertion?

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#159

Post by Nextgrid »

cs702 wrote: post #146
noahtallen wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think as many companies have started to do today, one can spin green manufacturing as a PR thing, and possibly market your product towards customers who are willing to pay more for greener manufacturing practices. Along the way, hopefully you could invest in green manufacturing improvements to make the tech cheaper at scale. I don’t think it has to be an a or b situation. I think the best and brightest could solve…

> I don’t think it has to be an a or b situation. I think the best and brightest could solve the problem without decimating their profits. I hope you're right! But so far, it appears no one at Facebook has figured out how to escape this "tyranny of horrible choices." > I think the problem partially is maximizing revenue at the cost of everything else. I disagree. I think the problem, from the perspective of Facebook,…

> the many companies trying to dislodge Facebook from its dominant position

Such as? Can you find me one company that provides a similar feature set to Facebook (cross-platform messaging & calling, personal & business pages with unlimited media uploads, groups, marketplace, dating and the network effects of everyone you know already being on it with their real name and no usernames to worry about)?

Furthermore, if Facebook stops or tones down paid advertising and unpaid spam/clickbait it will be yet another reason for users to prefer them versus the competition.

> Facebook's users are addicted to the social-media-crack

Are they? Facebook users are primarily there for keeping in touch with their friends, and happen to get sucked down the rabbit hole of bullshit by Facebook's algorithms which prioritizes engagement. Removing the engagement-generating crap won't suddenly remove the need for people to socialize.

> many of Facebook's customers -- advertisers and propagandists -- want Facebook to continue to modify user behavior on their behalf; and if Facebook stops doing that, those customers will migrate to the competition.

These customers want to go where the users are. If Facebook stops advertising but all the users remain (partly because of the lack of advertising), advertisers do not have a magic wand to move people across to another platform where they can advertise, short of paying those people to move (in which case it would be a win-win situation as people would be compensated for their time & attention).

Re: Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company

#160

Post by quonn »

spanktheuser wrote: post #141
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…

It's almost as if capitalism requires outcomes which are exploitative. Whether that is the labor force, the environment, minority populations, civil society, population health. Too bad no one has written a book or three looking into this. I'd read it.

What‘s needed is regulation. A lot of regulation that is not questioned based on some free market fundamentalism.

That‘s all. Given that, capitalism works fine.

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