At this point, it's hard to make a case for why Facebook is NOT a criminal enterprise.
Facebook knew for years ad reach estimates were based on ‘wrong data’
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Re: Facebook knew for years ad reach estimates were based on ‘wrong data’
#22It is difficult to get Mark Zuckerberg to understand something is wrong if it is making him the right amount of money.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it,” as Upton Sinclair put it.
that's what I was riffing off of.
Re: Facebook knew for years ad reach estimates were based on ‘wrong data’
#23It is difficult to get Mark Zuckerberg to understand something is wrong if it is making him the right amount of money.
I'm not gonna sit here and defend the Zuck, but your statement is true of many, maybe even most, people. Once enough money has entered the picture, people become very flexible.
I did say it mainly because I found the image funny, but I agree, I doubt I would be significantly more moral, but I do find it funny.
Re: Facebook knew for years ad reach estimates were based on ‘wrong data’
#24I'm sure the free market will punish Facebook, so we don't need to worry about this.
Re: Facebook knew for years ad reach estimates were based on ‘wrong data’
#25From my own personal experience with online advertisement, it pays off in one specific case. If a user is right now comparing multiple solutions to a specific problem, showing them an ad for your solution could pay off. E.g. if someone searches for plumbers near their home, an ad of your plumbing company will have a decent CTR and may bring in business. Bombarding someone looking for random entertainment after a hard day at work with ads of luxury cars would be quite futile.
The advertisement companies know this very well, but they also know that the specific, well-aimed ads make a small fraction of their revenue. So they have a very direct interest in using the success metrics from the specific ads to sell their platform to a much wider range of customers, for whom it will never pay off.
There's also considerable FUD[0] involved in the decision process. Sure, you don't see your ads paying off directly, but there must be that legendary brand awareness building up in the background. What if you decide to pull the plug on ads, and in a year your company's sales drop by 20%? Do you want to risk your entire career over a choice of saving your employer's money that isn't your own money anyway?
Also a huge chunk of advertisers are clueless people that decided to try ads for the first time. They don't know what to expect in terms of payoff, they don't know to make specific problem-oriented ads (and whether their case is even a problem-oriented case). So they spend some ad dollars and move on. But due to the scale of the market, it still adds up to a healthy profit for the platform.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt
Re: Facebook knew for years ad reach estimates were based on ‘wrong data’
#26Even three years ago, I have seen academic work (presentations) on Facebooks effectiveness of advertising - based on facebooks own data - and the conclusion was pretty dire. The only reason (yes I asked) Facebook continued to allow these studies was because Google did even worse. I wonder if all this stuff ever got published. Never heard anything in the press, so I am guessing Facebook eventually pulled the plug. I w…
Please share if you have!
Here is one from originally 2016
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3033144
Apparently - I did a quick search - conversion rate at facebook is said to be on average up to 9% (in marketing materials) or around 4-5%.
In this study, the authors show conversion rate consistently sub 1%, which is however not the point of the article. Rather, they also show that the lift in conversion (so the actual impact of the ad) as calculated by observational measures usually over-estimates the actual lift (sometimes significantly). Observational measures were those used by advertisers on facebook - maybe even now?
The more snarky comments from the presentation are missing from the draft, of course.
Re: Facebook knew for years ad reach estimates were based on ‘wrong data’
#27I remember not too long ago Uber cancelling previous arrangements with Facebook advertising over a similar fraud.
You remember incorrectly. https://which-50.com/how-uber-learned-it-had-a-huge-ad-fraud...
Ah yes. Thanks for the memory. So they effectively cut their ad spend on Facebook by 2/3rds (an experiment) and saw virtually no difference between the two budgets. An obvious indication of reporting fraud.
Re: Facebook knew for years ad reach estimates were based on ‘wrong data’
#28>Facebook has come clean on a slight error in how it presented video view time on its platform. A mismatch in how average video view time is calculated and how it is defined — resulting in that number being reportedly inflated by a trivial 60 to 80 percent, for a short period of two years. I don't understand - a "slight" error and 60-80% is "trivial" for a "short" period of two years? Is it just me or is this languag…
Sounds very sarcastic to me.
Re: Facebook knew for years ad reach estimates were based on ‘wrong data’
#29Facebook is not an advertising company. They're a parasitic revenue laundering company. They feed off the cashflow of soon-to-be-bankrupt startups as part of giant global VC-fueled pyramid money laundering scheme. Founders get paid to take huge loans on their startup's books and run their startups straight into the ground while laundering all their capital to beef up Facebook's revenue for the benefit of big VCs and…
One day, books will be written about the predatory and degrading tactics used by Silicon Valley companies of all types. It is ironic that in an area of the country that prides itself on its own "progressiveness", people are more than happy to grind employees of speculative startup companies into the ground in a effort to raze the competition with free products, while living off endless VC investments.
Google, as it exists now, is the natural outcome of this process.
Re: Facebook knew for years ad reach estimates were based on ‘wrong data’
#30Same shit that caused "pivot to video" and killed so many things. https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1183209875859333120
It's infuriating how Facebook faced basically no actual consequences for that. Their lies decimated entire industries. I had many writer friends who lost their jobs and were in extremely desperate situations because their employers were convinced to pivot to video based on those lies.