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After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off

jordan-shared.medium.com

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Re: After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off

#131

Post by arp242 »

ike77 wrote: post #38
arp242 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ~$60million is over 15 years, so it's about $330k/month on average, which is still a very substantial amount of money, but at "Facebook scale" this is pocket money you find in the sofa; their revenue is about $5.8 billion a month . For Facebook, the effect is like refusing to serve a customer their coffee at a coffee shop. I suppose that's the real problem with these kind of issues; you see the same on e.g. YouTu…

Well yes and no. FB revenue in 2019 was 70e9$. I also assume that Freebies spending was not constant over the 16 years. So their spending represented almost 1/10000 of FB revenue. I agree you can probably afford to lose that as a business owner but you probably can't be "meh, whatever" either. I expect that a decision of that scale would have probably be considered by many people / relatively highly ranked employee.…

To clarify: I don't think that "meh whatever" is literally what people are saying (to each other or themselves), it's just that there are also other customers, new leads, and all sorts of other things to do, so it's more of a "doesn't matter enough to actually take action"-kind of thing. Or, in short, "meh, whatever" :-)

And there are probably other factors as well, such as poor internal communication, algorithms making poor decisions, and more. But those are all solvable problems and I suspect that "meh whatever"-attitude plays a fairly large role in them not getting fixed at various levels. I mean, if my company left 330k/month on the table then I'd run after that faster than Usain Bolt. But do you think Zuckerberg or other top-level managers at Facebook will?

But I have no insight in any of this, so I'm just guessing really...

Re: After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off

#132

Post by dstick »

JamesBarney wrote: post #124
corobo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why open yourself up to a lawsuit though? If you say something that can't be solidly proven now you have to deal with lawyers

Because it's the right thing to do and I doubt it really has much influence on liability unless you say something like "we're not working with you because you're a black woman".

I watched a documentary called “Suits” a while back about a corporate legal firm and that convinced me that you are wrong. Those well dressed professionals will use anything you say against you in the court of law!

Re: After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off

#133

Post by santoshalper »

blantonl wrote: post #89
_vertigo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is absolutely full to the brim with “crap content”. Crap content happens to be what drives engagement, so hosting crap content is a large part of Facebook’s business model. You’re speaking with a pretty authoritative tone there as though you’re absolutely sure that Facebook has had a change of heart and only wants to host quality content, and there’s no other reason why the pages were removed. Do you have so…

I stand by what I posted. I'm allowed to be authoritative as I want in my opinions and what I deem to be a personal analysis of what is a subjective issue. If you aren't in agreement with my assertions, you are free to click the down arrow to the left of the post.

You're allowed to be anything you want. It's a free country. But 2c worth of advice - representing speculative things as high-confidence erodes your credibility. Unless you have some insight or information that everyone else here doesn't, you're really just full of it.

"Facebook decided they don't want to be a part of this type of content distribution" - That is not stated as an implied opinion, it is stated as a fact with absolutely nothing to back it up. Certainly Facebook is just as filled with this kind of low-quality content today as it was yesterday or three months ago. There is just nothing to support your speculation that this is part of some movement by Facebook to improve quality of content.

Re: After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off

#134

Post by lhorie »

blantonl wrote: post #89
_vertigo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is absolutely full to the brim with “crap content”. Crap content happens to be what drives engagement, so hosting crap content is a large part of Facebook’s business model. You’re speaking with a pretty authoritative tone there as though you’re absolutely sure that Facebook has had a change of heart and only wants to host quality content, and there’s no other reason why the pages were removed. Do you have so…

I stand by what I posted. I'm allowed to be authoritative as I want in my opinions and what I deem to be a personal analysis of what is a subjective issue. If you aren't in agreement with my assertions, you are free to click the down arrow to the left of the post.

I thought the down arrow was supposed to be used to indicate that a post is of low quality or that it doesn't conform to guidelines, not to express disagreement; and that disagreement was meant to be expressed by posting arguments

Re: After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off

#135

Post by bosswipe »

blantonl wrote: post #61

Let's be fair here. Shared.com is in the business of producing and distributing crap content. That's a subjective term, but it's like the supreme court ruling on pornography, you'll know it when you see it. These guys most likely "skirt the line" to just operate as a mediocre and crappy content distribution network, that at scale, makes a lot of money because there is a certain subset of the population that will eat…

> Facebook decided ...

How do you know that?

Re: After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off

#136

Post by _vertigo »

blantonl wrote: post #89
_vertigo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is absolutely full to the brim with “crap content”. Crap content happens to be what drives engagement, so hosting crap content is a large part of Facebook’s business model. You’re speaking with a pretty authoritative tone there as though you’re absolutely sure that Facebook has had a change of heart and only wants to host quality content, and there’s no other reason why the pages were removed. Do you have so…

I stand by what I posted. I'm allowed to be authoritative as I want in my opinions and what I deem to be a personal analysis of what is a subjective issue. If you aren't in agreement with my assertions, you are free to click the down arrow to the left of the post.

That’s not what the down arrow is for. This is what I’m getting at.

Instead of treating the comment section as a dumping ground for your purely speculative opinions masquerading as authoritative takes, and pushing the burden of nuance onto readers by asking them to downvote if they disagree, I think one should clearly state their opinions in an intellectually honest way. Then there is no need for downvoting if others disagree.

Re: After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off

#137

Post by BikiniPrince »

smnrchrds wrote: post #47
AlexandrB wrote: post #5

Another sign that several FAANGs exist as a monopoly. When you're so big that you can provide effectively no customer service to a customer spending in the 10s of millions (and they have no competitor they can go to afterwards) there's a problem.

I agree with you. When the issue of Apple's anti-competitive behaviour comes up on HN, it is always rebuffed by saying Apple does not have a monopoly—its US share of smartphone market is merely 40%. This is demonstration that you don't need a 100% market share to act anti-competitively. Facebook and Google each have less than 30% market share in ad spend in the US.

Sadly, only 40% when your opposition is fragmented and frankly a crap interface.

There are many things I like about Android, but most of them are philosophical.

I find navigating it atrocious and I have spent quite a bit time reverse engineering some applications.

Again, this is the competitor to apple? How much does each market capture. I suspect apple is doing much better here.

Re: After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off

#138

Post by vosper »

santoshalper wrote: post #133
blantonl wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand by what I posted. I'm allowed to be authoritative as I want in my opinions and what I deem to be a personal analysis of what is a subjective issue. If you aren't in agreement with my assertions, you are free to click the down arrow to the left of the post.

You're allowed to be anything you want. It's a free country. But 2c worth of advice - representing speculative things as high-confidence erodes your credibility. Unless you have some insight or information that everyone else here doesn't, you're really just full of it. "Facebook decided they don't want to be a part of this type of content distribution" - That is not stated as an implied opinion, it is stated as a fac…

> representing speculative things as high-confidence erodes your credibility

I wish you were right, but I actually think most of the time the exact opposite is true: appearing highly-confident about speculative things makes someone seem more credible, rather than less.

Re: After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off

#139

Post by jolmg »

lhorie wrote: post #134
blantonl wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand by what I posted. I'm allowed to be authoritative as I want in my opinions and what I deem to be a personal analysis of what is a subjective issue. If you aren't in agreement with my assertions, you are free to click the down arrow to the left of the post.

I thought the down arrow was supposed to be used to indicate that a post is of low quality or that it doesn't conform to guidelines, not to express disagreement; and that disagreement was meant to be expressed by posting arguments

Everyone votes by their own rules. There's no official guidelines on how to use the voting buttons.

Re: After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off

#140

Post by gpm »

xiwenc wrote: post #14
AlexandrB wrote: post #5

Another sign that several FAANGs exist as a monopoly. When you're so big that you can provide effectively no customer service to a customer spending in the 10s of millions (and they have no competitor they can go to afterwards) there's a problem.

I’m curious why the author didn’t take this to court? Perhaps it can evolve into a class action lawsuit. That would teach FB and other FAANGs.

To court... for what? Choosing not to do business with the author? That's not illegal. That doesn't become illegal just because they've done quite a bit of business in the past.
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