Facebook Fraud [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#161

Post by Houshalter » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 10:27 PM UTC

kevando wrote: post #147

Houshalter wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. If content from your friends and family and other pages you enjoy is regularly filtered out and replaced with paid "promoted" posts, it decreases the quality of the site.

And from there, you have the fallacy of this argument. This decreases the quality of your experience on Facebook. With the million other options and networks, why on earth would Facebook purposefully lower the quality of their product in order to make a few bucks with ads?

Because they can get away with it in the short term. Millions of dollars is more than a "few bucks" but it's driving the site down hill and possibly contributing to their eventual collapse. In any case you claimed it works out for the users quite well, which it obviously does not.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#162

Post by hackinthebochs » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 10:30 PM UTC

phreeza wrote: post #150

taigeair wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

huh? I do not understand what you are saying, care to explain?

Google had to be good because there was competition in the search space. Facebook doesn't have to be good because they're the only viable social network.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#163

Post by joeblau » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 10:30 PM UTC

dclara wrote: post #95

nayefc wrote: post #3

Twitter ads are pretty much the same. Never pay for ads for Twitter and Facebook. More than 98% of what you pay for goes to fraud followers.

We need better solution.

Pay for quality products.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#164

Post by droopyEyelids » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 10:32 PM UTC

kevando wrote: post #149

commandar wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a user perspective, I like things because I want to see content. It annoys me to no end that I know I'm missing out on updates from sources I care about because Facebook selectively decides what to show me, and effectively holds my attention hostage.

This is the argument I find confusing...You ask Facebook to curate your news feed and then get upset when they curate it.

Do you believe it's possible for Facebook to improperly curate content?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#165

Post by Loughla » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 10:40 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #153

Loughla wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 lik…

> 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? 1) They used other services (e.g. Evite) which had the same effect 2) Nobody uses those other services anymore (okay, I got one evite from the one friend who refused to use facebook...and then somebody created the event page on facebook and all the party pl…

I feel like that is a false choice. The only options are to either not do anything and be 'butthurt' or use facebook?

What about relationships with people? What about carrier pigeons? What about personal servants?

All of those things are able to do what you're complaining about, they just take slightly more effort.

I guess it's to each his own - is your support of a terrible, invasive company more important than your convenience? That's up to you.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#166

Post by taurath » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 10:42 PM UTC

taigeair wrote: post #139

bhartzer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Facebook's valuation will disappear equally as fast.

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

One can be built in months if it has the right model.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#167

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 10:43 PM UTC

kzrdude wrote: post #5

Be sure to watch through to the end for the conclusion! I'll summarise: Click farms like every page they can, far more than just the pages they were paid to like; the theory is that they will evade detection this way. Paying for "legitimate" facebook exposure will expose you to the click farms as well, and that will be the absolute majority of your gained likes. In this way facebook ads give a huge, but useless, gain…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#168

Post by droopyEyelids » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 10:44 PM UTC

commandar wrote: post #131

haffi112 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is to stop click farms from evolving into selling engagement as well as likes?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#169

Post by User8712 » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 10:51 PM UTC

capkutay wrote: post #40

kzrdude wrote: post #5

Be sure to watch through to the end for the conclusion! I'll summarise: Click farms like every page they can, far more than just the pages they were paid to like; the theory is that they will evade detection this way. Paying for "legitimate" facebook exposure will expose you to the click farms as well, and that will be the absolute majority of your gained likes. In this way facebook ads give a huge, but useless, gain…

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, if he could identify these accounts as illegitimate, surely Facebook could automatically do the same with their vast amount of data. However, they really have no incentive to do so. The average advertiser just wants to see a higher like count, and they're not paying as much attention as they should to actual conversions. If Facebook can serve 5x as many likes, with the help of illegitimate users, and no one is complaining about low conversions, they're not going to stop. Why chase down the click farms, if they're generating 80% of your revenue for free?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#170

Post by sytelus » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 10:52 PM UTC

Why everybody seem to ruling out the idea that FB is not running click farms? Theory that professional likers are clicking Virtual Cats and Virtual Bagles just so they don't get noticed by FB policing seems ridiculous.