Popular Viral Video Cries “Facebook Fraud"...And Gets It All Wrong

Yes, Facebook lost face during this episode. They have a bit of a history of pushing crowd's expectations so the surprise factor has worn a bit. They have already 'promised' to get rid of trouble makers like Google did with new anti-SEO algorithm. Welcome to Fortune 500 - fix fuckups with PR, cut aggressiveness later.

I might be missing something. The article headline says that Veritasium "got it all wrong", but I'm struggling to see what it is exactly that they got wrong.

There's this part:

> For starters, there’s a stunning lack of anything like testing. In fact, the lack of success that led to the irate video blogger’s claims of “fraud” is largely due to a lack of proper understanding when it comes to vital components of digital marketing like testing and targeting.

which is given without justification or evidence.

In fact, when it ends on:

> "It’s also important to note that Facebook does need to “clean up the pool” a little bit. Then implement some of the same type of fraudulent chargebacks that Google AdWords has now – which are a direct result of fraudulent clicks during the early days of paid search advertising."

makes it sound like Veritasium got it exactly right. What am I missing here?

Didn't really find much substance in this beyond repetition of 'fraudster' and accusations of incompetence; rather disappointing.

Only real bit of argument appeared to be this:

>Calling Facebook and its advertising “a fraud” because you choose to run a “like campaign” in a part of the world that is known for fraudulent links would be like calling Yahoo Stores “a fraud” because you chose to make your online shop visible in, say, Nigeria.

But the video _did_ include an experiment running in areas less known for fraud. A discussion of the merits and failures of that casual experiment would have been worthwhile!

Summary of article: "No, because that would be awful for my business".

I suspect Fang Digital has pushed this terrible notion on their clients for years and now look like idiots, so they are doubling down.

FYI: The marketers I work with have near universally dismissed FB as anything but "brand building for when you have more marketing budget than sense"... well before this video (or the 2012 BBC one) put it into the commons.

> Calling Facebook and its advertising “a fraud” because you choose to run a “like campaign” in a part of the world that is known for fraudulent clicks

He ran it in US, CA, AU, UK targeting cat lovers (see: http://youtu.be/oVfHeWTKjag @ 6:00) -- additionally, this is a full on admittance that fraudulent clicks are a huge issue.

> astute among us know that measurements such as “Likes” do not constitute anything

Then maybe facebook shouldn't be selling them as the metric?

I'm not sure I understand Ferguson's rant. He seems to be focused on the video author not knowing how to do PR right and claiming that he didn't do any testing then saying that Facebook needs to do some cleanup.

The video itself wasn't trying to be a tutorial on this. It stated a very simple argument:

Facebook's legitimate paid "Like" campaigns are a waste of money because the paid-for-clicks are used up by illegitimate "Like" campaigns trying to avoid detection; they do not reach people genuinely interested in his product. And, Facebook is happy to keep the status quo as it generates revenue for them.

So, what's the beef?