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Facebook Fraud [video]

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Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt there's any trivial solutions to this, but one simple scenario would be to limit the amount of 'likes' an account can have..but that could also cause FB to implode.

Well, there is one solution which wasn't mentioned in the video, get the bots to like your posts so they get visibility leading to actual users seeing them.

Facebook determines post visibility based on engagement. If a high percentage of your likes are fraudulent and don't engage, that means that the initial group your post is shown to is less likely to engage, and, in turn, your post is less likely to be seen by legitimate followers since the low engagement means Facebook won't expand the percentage of your followers that see it in the first place.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#132

As someone who has helped massively grow a handful of businesses with Facebook being a significant channel, part of me wants to say "Yep, FB advertising is bunk. Everyone stop!" But in reality I'd be saying that in a weak attempt to make my own Facebook advertising more effective. Lemme tl;dr this in three bullets: - It's far easier for non-sophisticated advertisers to waste money. - The ad platform is pretty technic…

So given that, to see significant ROI you need to find genuine experts in how to use each form of media. So, even if it is technically possible to do well in a given media, if it is really hard to identify who is a genuine expert in that media due to it being new and full of snake-oil merchants, then you are likely to do better in a more established field.

>it is really hard to identify who is a genuine expert in that media //

Arguably it's easy - if their advertising works then they're good. If you notice a marketing company then they're doing things right to some extent (at least WRT your demographic).

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#133
In every Facebook HN post, there is always the "I deleted my FB account" and the "you can't really delete your FB data" back and forth.

Instead of deleting your account has anybody tried to "trash" your account via "Liking" everything you can and posting a large sets of unrelated pics? your info is only really valuable because its "true". if you trashed your account, its pretty much the same as deleting. also based on the filtering mentioned in this article, it seems like at some point your friends would just filter you out.

Thoughts?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#134
In every Facebook HN post, there is always the "I deleted my FB account" and the "you can't really delete your FB data" back and forth.

Instead of deleting your account has anybody tried to "trash" your account via "Liking" everything you can and posting a large sets of unrelated pics? your info is only really valuable because its "true". if you trashed your account, its pretty much the same as deleting. also based on the filtering mentioned in this article, it seems like at some point your friends would just filter you out.

Thoughts?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#135

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.

It's kind of funny because Google really only controls the network of sites their ad spaces are on, the content of the ad you get is controlled by the advertiser or 3rd party ad tech provider.

The retargeting ads you speak of (Criteo runs a lot of them) is generated automatically via these 3rd party ad platforms cookie combined with an API into the advertiser's store feed (product photo, description, price, etc.) They get a stream of SKUs that you've looked at and try to get you to pull the trigger.

There's nothing to prevent the store from also associating items you've already bought so you don't get shown something that's irrelevant. My best guess is that it's just easier to not do that.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#136
post #6

If you haven't yet watched Derek's earlier video about "the problem with facebook", you should: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g because in it he lays bare several fundamental structural issues about facebook which 99% people don't realize. Well worth the watch. Unless fb changes drastically, it will die a surprisingly fast death.

The OP's video is great and identifies a real problem that should be solved. This particular video is naive and pretty bad in my opinion, really disagree.

They are from the same person!

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#137

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.

Hopefully improving technology decreases the costs of running large websites to make up for the decreased revenue. Recommendation engines can replace the need for ads entirely. It would recommend products/websites/apps/etc based on what it predicts you will like, not how much money the site is willing to spend on ads.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#138
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I really wish I could do that. I used to ask a friend to change my password, now I use www.offsocialnetwork.com to do it (I'm doing it this week). But I can't go really long without facebook since all is planned from there, the parties, the social events, the foreign friends visiting my city, foreign friends keeping in touch with me... I guess it's easier not to have facebook when you didn't travel a lot and don't ha…

"But I can't go really long without facebook since all is planned from there, the parties, the social events, the foreign friends visiting my city, foreign friends keeping in touch with me..."

I have two questions to respond to this - how did people do all of these things before the facebook platform? What is stopping you from doing these same things?

I find it fascinating that people treat websites like facebook like an actual addiction, and are scared of the withdraw problems in their social life. Is there such a thing as social addiction? Is that a thing?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#139
post #6

If you haven't yet watched Derek's earlier video about "the problem with facebook", you should: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g because in it he lays bare several fundamental structural issues about facebook which 99% people don't realize. Well worth the watch. Unless fb changes drastically, it will die a surprisingly fast death.

And Facebook's valuation will disappear equally as fast.

But then again, there were many alternative search engines but not many alternative social networks.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#140

In every Facebook HN post, there is always the "I deleted my FB account" and the "you can't really delete your FB data" back and forth. Instead of deleting your account has anybody tried to "trash" your account via "Liking" everything you can and posting a large sets of unrelated pics? your info is only really valuable because its "true". if you trashed your account, its pretty much the same as deleting. also based o…

That is interesting. I'm wondering if you have thought of the best way to remove an account from Facebook, turning your account into a spammer. You could have a friend report it after a couple days of spamming.

When, for example, an intelligence agency gathers people's information from a service like this they probably save themselves the hassle and do not include information from accounts marked spammer.

Am I making sense?

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