Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Fraud [video]

youtube.com

271–280 of 412 posts

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those ads typically perform pretty terribly

Something doesn't make sense here... I gathered from other threads that Google's ads are preferred over facebook's. So either Google doesn't do "contextual/interest based" ads, or contextual/interest based ads do not perform terribly (compared to what facebook is currently doing).

Google's search ads perform very well. They capture people in the moment of intent. Google's 3rd party ads perform badly since they are abstracted much further away from live intent, but Google gets away with it because they are pay per click, which implies lower risk for advertisers.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#272

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.

Well, ad based revenue is not broken for Facebook or Google. They employ thousands of engineers and have made billions in revenue.

It should be broken. People just don't know to use Adblock. And it is broken from the perspective of being a reasonable thing to do. Both of those examples rely on totally crazy privacy invasion.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#273
post #216
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the newer generations who grew up online tend to be oblivious to Ads. It's just an instinct to ignore them.

More likely they THINK they are oblivious to them, but they are not. I recall (sorry, I have no citation) a survey of people who played the California state lottery that asked people if they had paid attention to any of the state's ads for the lottery. They also asked the people why they played the lottery. A very large fraction of the people who said they had not noticed the ads repeated slogans and tag lines from t…

Yeah, people aren't oblivious! That's why we need Adblock. Our brains don't adblock automatically.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it was my post, let me hijack the hijack and refocus the discussion. FB advertising has major issues and not just fraud. #1 - FB has a feedback loop issue The main reason why (for us) Google works so much better, is that it spans the full sales funnel, from impression to click to registration and finally conversion (room bought). Google optimizes ad serving for themselves AND for me, and I can see the results.…

Well, since you're "here" Here's the question I'd want to ask: if the Facebook ad clicks are from click-farms but you don't pay for them, how did they get there? One guess would be that click-farm people like stuff at random to "seem legitimate". Maybe Facebook itself incentivizes fake account to like stuff by not deleting fake accounts that behave "conveniently". But that's just a guess, I've look for someone to do…

My understanding was that identifying fake accounts automatically was a pretty hard problem to solve. That's not making up for the likes being fake, but it does justify why they can't just delete all the fake accounts.

To me, it seems clear that if something's going on, it's not Facebook "conveniently" letting the fakes go. It's more the problem being hard to cope with.

Or somebody present me results that demonstrate how easy it is to identify fakes with low false positives.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#275

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…

Hey everyone -- sorry to hijack the top thread but I’m an ads engineer at Facebook so I feel qualified to respond. I posted this over on reddit too but it's still pending approval. In the case of this ad — I think we actually delivered on what was asked for. The targeting specs were fairly broad (cat lovers in four countries). Getting 39 people who like cats to like a page with a cute cat picture in 20 minutes sounds…

Thank you for chiming in. Facebook should add a new filter limiting the audience to users who have fewer likes. So for example he could advertise to folks who are interested in cats but have fewer than 5 overall likes. Likes from more discerning users are certainly more valuable than likes from generous likers. How about another filter limiting the audience to users who have posted X number of entries to their timeline or the number of years they've been on Facebook?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#276
You know what else is interesting? If you pay per click then your ad gets shown to accounts that click on everything, but if you pay per impression (CPM) then your ad gets shown to people who almost never click on anything.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#278
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, since you're "here" Here's the question I'd want to ask: if the Facebook ad clicks are from click-farms but you don't pay for them, how did they get there? One guess would be that click-farm people like stuff at random to "seem legitimate". Maybe Facebook itself incentivizes fake account to like stuff by not deleting fake accounts that behave "conveniently". But that's just a guess, I've look for someone to do…

Jesus, did you watch the video that's subject of the post, or are you just posting, since "you are here." This is exactly the information that the video covers, with animations, explanations, and even links to sources.

I wish we are sufficiently close to a time, when automated comment-comprehending and comment-curating software - like browser extensions and plugins - are widely available, thanks to advances made in the areas of (textual) Deep Learning and (textual) Artificial Intelligence.

Perhaps then, clumsy comments like the one made by joe_the_user:

  One guess would be that click-farm people like stuff at
  random to "seem legitimate".
could be neatly redacted by the extension, without affecting the rest of the comment.

I surely hope so.

Some of the comments that surface to the top of the heap, are head-achingly dreadful.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it was my post, let me hijack the hijack and refocus the discussion. FB advertising has major issues and not just fraud. #1 - FB has a feedback loop issue The main reason why (for us) Google works so much better, is that it spans the full sales funnel, from impression to click to registration and finally conversion (room bought). Google optimizes ad serving for themselves AND for me, and I can see the results.…

Regarding #1 - Facebook conversion pixel (a JS script that has to be loaded the HTML header) solves the feedback loop problem. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/ads-api/offsi...

Is there a native mobile equivalent for this? Identifying our FB ad cohort is a major problem when trying to calculate the effectiveness of our ad spend on FB.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#280
I'm so glad this video came out. People like me can continue to dominate Facebook ads. This video will scare people away that do not know how Facebook ads work. Ask any internet marketer, Facebook ads are dominating unlike anything in history.

A part of me thinks this video was made to drive people away from FB advertising on purpose.

Post reply on HN