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Facebook's PR feels broken

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Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#41

Post by manfredo »

svachalek wrote: post #7
creaghpatr wrote: post #2

>Boz posted an explanation on Facebook, where he advertises the post as an organizational, internal call-to-debate. But while it's great to have a safe space for internal, organizational debates, it's still hugely concerning when that internal debate is whether we should all have a free and fair election in the U.S. Was Facebook having an internal debate over whether we should all have a free and fair election in the…

I think the argument goes like this: 1. The US Presidential election is decided by a small percentage of voters who have an open mind and live in the right districts. 2. Facebook’s targeted advertising allows advertisers to efficiently buy the votes of these select voters. 3. Without Facebook, this wasn’t already happening. Personally, I believe #1 is more or less indisputable, and I’m willing to believe #2. But I’m…

> Without Facebook, this wasn’t already happening.

This double negative is a bit confusing. Targeted political messaging absolutely was a thing before Facebook and even the internet. Correlate info on zip code demographics, the readership demographics of different publications and media outlets and one can provide messages that target specific groups.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#42

Post by artemisyna »

duxup wrote: post #25
JohnFen wrote: post #22

In my opinion, the problem with Facebook isn't really the PR. Yes, Facebook's PR is broken as the article describes, but the real problem started years ago, back when it was a "well-oiled machine". The problem is that there is a huge distance between what Facebook PR says and what Facebook does. The constant apologies for misbehaviors that never are never corrected, the apparently deliberate misinterpretations of muc…

Yeah it seems like whatever rules there are ... there aren't many. The whole VPN they ran that tracks kids ... that's not even a mystery as far as being a terrible idea. Then Apple told them to knock it off. So Facebook renamed it (sloppily too) and put it up on the app store again until they got caught again. Kids, users, other companies, they don't care. How can a PR person even craft a response like "hey we did wr…

As someone that knows the person that originally tipped Apple off about the tracking... this is such a misinformed editorialization of what actually happened where I don't even know where to start.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#43

Post by sp332 »

arrosenberg wrote: post #39
farisjarrah wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree Facebook is doing a bad job with regards to political advertising, I am actually really glad facebook isnt stepping in and deciding whats truthful or not. Does anyone really think that we should give Facebook any power over our political system or give them the power to be the gatekeepers of what political ads we see? I think facebook should do what twitter did and just totally get out of the political…

Disagree. Since they have chosen to platform those ads, they should at least be held to the same standards as networks and not show ads that are provably false. It would be better if they didn't platform them, or better yet, they didn't have that much potential influence in the first place.

I would certainly rather have someone outside the company making that decision. Make the FEC do it.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#44

Post by ogre_codes »

One thing this piece really brings home to me is how unethical it is for media to sell sponsored content intermixed and indistinguishable from their own content. How do you trust a media outlet when their content is for sale? I know this practice pre-dates the internet, but it's hugely damaging to people's faith in the media.

I think Facebooks' failure in PR is more a symptom of how far Facebook has slid down the ethical slope into outright corruption. As you do more and more heinous things, it becomes more difficult to defend those actions.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#45

Post by duxup »

artemisyna wrote: post #42
duxup wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it seems like whatever rules there are ... there aren't many. The whole VPN they ran that tracks kids ... that's not even a mystery as far as being a terrible idea. Then Apple told them to knock it off. So Facebook renamed it (sloppily too) and put it up on the app store again until they got caught again. Kids, users, other companies, they don't care. How can a PR person even craft a response like "hey we did wr…

As someone that knows the person that originally tipped Apple off about the tracking... this is such a misinformed editorialization of what actually happened where I don't even know where to start.

Can you help clarify what really happened?

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#46

Post by sp332 »

Seenso wrote: post #13
svachalek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument goes like this: 1. The US Presidential election is decided by a small percentage of voters who have an open mind and live in the right districts. 2. Facebook’s targeted advertising allows advertisers to efficiently buy the votes of these select voters. 3. Without Facebook, this wasn’t already happening. Personally, I believe #1 is more or less indisputable, and I’m willing to believe #2. But I’m…

> 3. Without Facebook, this wasn’t already happening. > Personally, I believe #1 is more or less indisputable, and I’m willing to believe #2. But I’m not so sure about #3. I think you overstate #3 a little bit. It could have been happening without Facebook, but at a lower scale and not effectively enough to matter. I think there's also a #4: 4. Facebook ad-targeting allows the influence to be covert, because watchdog…

4 isn't right (anymore) because they made all political ads available to anyone who wants to see them. https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2405092116183307?id=2...

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#47

Post by manfredo »

creaghpatr wrote: post #2

>Boz posted an explanation on Facebook, where he advertises the post as an organizational, internal call-to-debate. But while it's great to have a safe space for internal, organizational debates, it's still hugely concerning when that internal debate is whether we should all have a free and fair election in the U.S. Was Facebook having an internal debate over whether we should all have a free and fair election in the…

There are a significant number of tech workers I know that do genuinely believe that companies should leverage their technology to benefit the candidates that they feel would be better for the country, and do things like ban Trump's social media accounts. This is what Bosworth was addressing:

> But he maintained that the company should not change its policies on political advertising, saying that doing so in order to avert a victory by Mr. Trump would be a misuse of power, comparing it to a scene from “The Lord of the Rings.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/technology/facebook-andre...

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#48

Post by throwaway122378 »

MBCook wrote: post #28
throwaway122378 wrote: post #19

Facebook’s PR isn’t broken, Facebook’s just doing some really bad stuff

Are you disagreeing with the argument in the article? Or is this just a comment on FB in general. I agree they’re doing bad stuff but I think the argument in the article makes a very good point about how they used to be good at handling PR for their evil and getting away with it and now they seem to have lost that touch. I doubt the level of evil has changed dramatically in the last 18mo but the PR reactions have.

Could be both. Ultimately PR is ineffective when the level of issues outweigh the amount of damage control PR can contain

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#49

Post by 2sk21 »

drewrv wrote: post #15

It still amazes me that the line of reasoning they publicly went with, around their decision not to fact check political advertisements, is that no one company should have that amount of power. The logical conclusion of their own argument is that Facebook should be broken up.

The level of power that Facebook has over global discourse is just chilling.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#50

Post by Seenso »

sp332 wrote: post #46
Seenso wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3. Without Facebook, this wasn’t already happening. > Personally, I believe #1 is more or less indisputable, and I’m willing to believe #2. But I’m not so sure about #3. I think you overstate #3 a little bit. It could have been happening without Facebook, but at a lower scale and not effectively enough to matter. I think there's also a #4: 4. Facebook ad-targeting allows the influence to be covert, because watchdog…

4 isn't right (anymore) because they made all political ads available to anyone who wants to see them. https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2405092116183307?id=2...

> 4 isn't right (anymore) because they made all political ads available to anyone who wants to see them.

I think #4 is still valid:

1. Facebook may not be to correctly identify political ads vs other ads.

2. Their Ad Library seems to be missing important information [1].

3. A disclosure like the Ad Library still obscures influence campaigns by greatly reducing the ability of watchdogs to passively monitor the political discourse. Instead they have expend much more manpower to actively monitor the library with the right search terms, and if they fail to do that they'll miss things.

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-blocks-ad-transp...

> Facebook has launched an archive of American political ads, which the company says is an alternative to ProPublica’s tool. However, Facebook’s ad archive is only available in three countries, fails to disclose important targeting data and doesn’t even include all political ads run in the U.S.

> Our tool regularly caught political ads that aren’t reflected in Facebook’s archive. Just this month, we noticed four groups running ads that haven’t been in Facebook’s archive:

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