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Facebook Fraud [video]

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Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#61

Now people understand why G+ wants real names? Still doesn't stop the fake accounts but at the same time it pretty much patches it. I think

It'd take about five minutes to take the top 500 first and last baby names and write a script to generate fake names with combinations of them, adding a suffix every once in a while.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#62

The ad-based revenue model is fundamentally broken. Everyone needs to run Adblock and we need to figure out an economy that doesn't rely on this garbage.

Adblock is my favorite thing right now, I don't know why I didn't install it sooner. And I couldn't agree more on finding new ways to generate money for the online economy. Advertisement is so boring and old-school.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#63
post #42

I run profitable Facebook marketing campaigns. Here's the problem with this guy's argument: He expects people from Somalia to be as responsive to his content at people from the United States. That makes exactly zero sense. These aren't "likes", these are people. And the people from Somalia apparently don't like his content. But, according to his very own numbers, people from the United States are very responsive. Are…

If the people didn't like his content, then why did they "like" it?

winner winner chicken dinner

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#66

I found a way to dramatically improve facebook. Around the beginning of the year I unfollowed every single friend and page, so my newsfeed is completely empty. Now when I want to know what my friends are up to, I go check out their pages, essentially going from a push feed to a pull. It gets me out of the empty crack addiction-esque cycle of going to the news feed and being disappointed/bored with the lives of my fri…

My solution was to delete my Facebook account. Now, I engage with the people I care about via mechanisms that are far more meaningful: emails, phone calls, a coffee, a lunch.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#67

I run profitable Facebook marketing campaigns. Here's the problem with this guy's argument: He expects people from Somalia to be as responsive to his content at people from the United States. That makes exactly zero sense. These aren't "likes", these are people. And the people from Somalia apparently don't like his content. But, according to his very own numbers, people from the United States are very responsive. Are…

Please write an article about how you run these "profitable" campaigns. Seriously. It seems like you are the only person I've ever heard make this claim and I'm sure people here are dying to know the secret.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#68
When I moved to Silicon Valley in 2006, I had just lived through the events that were eventually twisted into the movie The Social Network. My conclusion having witnessed Mark's behavior firsthand was that he was the least trustworthy individual I had ever met and that he was likely to harm others.

At the risk of sounding like Chicken Little ("the sky is falling!") I wrote a great deal voicing my point of view, including my very first post on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24742), in which I called Mark a fraud. For expressing my grave and sincere concern, I was met with what could only be described as considerable hostility.

Aware that very few wanted to hear what I had to say, I did everything I could to move onto more interesting and useful work. I don't spend my time worrying about Facebook, so I haven't looked into their ad technology in any depth. Nonetheless, everything in the above video strikes me as spot on, which would also mean that I was exactly right. Facebook's entire valuation appears to be based on little more than false advertising and click farming. As the CEO of a publicly-traded corporation with a supposed market capitalization of $162.61 billion, Mark would still appear to be, as I described here (http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=80), the greatest con of all time.

I hope that based on these findings Facebook finds itself the target of civil actions filed by multiple Attorneys-General and the DOJ, but I doubt very much that our justice system would render a fair outcome even then.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#69

Nice video. All true. I have performed tests with the same ad budget ($20k) and target audience for Google and FB. FB ROI was negative. Google ROI was 400% (travel space). The only thing that seemingly "works" has been buying likes by advertising. This video should help educate my clients of the utter uselessness of those too. This brings up the interesting question of the general (non)value of a lot of mobile advert…

google display network advertising is equally useless/fraudulent

It is very good at giving me pictures of the more expensive things that I have recently bought, should I suddenly need two.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#70

Nice video. All true. I have performed tests with the same ad budget ($20k) and target audience for Google and FB. FB ROI was negative. Google ROI was 400% (travel space). The only thing that seemingly "works" has been buying likes by advertising. This video should help educate my clients of the utter uselessness of those too. This brings up the interesting question of the general (non)value of a lot of mobile advert…

Good questions raised about the UX issues that contribute to fraudulent clicks and installs but I take issue with the generalization that only bottom of the funnel, high purchase intent ads are valuable. Startups generally have a bias towards doing things that they can measure accurately. This leads to heavy reliance on highly attributable channels like AdWords since you can target people who have expressed high purc…

True. I should have generalized less. It didn't work for us. Reasons include the product in question (hotel rooms) which in New York are plenty in supply, the price of the product (median stay ~$800), a client with a relatively limited advertising budget (branding exercise unlikely), a defined purchase cycle (typically 2-4 weeks in advance of a trip), and last but not least, something people actually search for (not a "cash register" or "impulse" purchase). In short: I think FB ads may work for companies and products that sell "small stuff" or big brands that go for the eyeballs/brand recognition/awareness.
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