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Comment by sly_foxx | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is the biggest scam for most businesses.

1) They've pulled bait and switch when they decided to charge to reach users that have already liked your page. Most of those users liked your page because you've posted a link to FB on your site.

2) Click fraud is rampant [1]

3) They make money on copyrighted videos + ripping off YouTube content creators [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q

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Big spenders do a lot of due diligence to make sure that the money they spend is actually giving them a positive return. It's not like businesses just throw millions down the drain and hope it gives them results. Facebook is working great for them and it is not a scam otherwise businesses wouldn't be spending billions on advertising there every quarter.

Or, as pointed out in a comment above, everybody is lying to everybody and the only loser is the customer. The customer may still find advertising to be a net win, but they have no clue to what degree it is such.

You are wrong on #1. The biggest con was Facebook selling those "likes" to your competitors.

#2 addressed elsewhere

#3 YouTube started through copyright violations and continues to benefit from copyrighted content today (if the rightsholders do not try to enforce.)

If the rights holders do not want to enforce take-downs on their content (eg because they're getting promotional value from it or otherwise), then it's not in any way wrong to benefit from said copyrighted content. In fact it's smart and appropriate to use copyrighted content in that case.

Just because something is copyrighted doesn't mean it's inherently or by default illegal or improper to use without permission - it means it may be.

You could repeat the exact same sentences for Facebook usage of videos as well.

Both FB and YT are benefiting from copyrighted content used illegally. The copyright owners don't have time to search and hunt down every last one of thousands of copies of their videos posted. Even when they do, the new ones just pop up a week later and people uploading are getting smarter with various tricks that prevent automatic detection.

Just want to say that it is default illegal to infringe copyright. It is a civil offence in most countries, but it is still illegal. You can be sued and "But you never complained" is not a valid defence. This is true of any country that signed the Berne convention. In many countries if you infringe copyright for profit, it becomes a criminal offence and you can actually go to jail.

I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Read the copyright law in your area. You will undoubtedly be very surprised at how wrong you are.

People do not blindly spend on advertising. For most people there will always be alternatives and they will compare the eventual conversion.

Online advertising is remarkably free market sort of business where fraud does not last longer.

To say Facebook is the biggest scam is too extreme. Click fraud exists on every single platform. Pay a hundred mechanical turk and they can click for you all day long.

I guess it depends on the industry but from my own personal experience, fraud is non-existent if your targeting decently specific (i.e. specific interests).

Facebook makes it really easy to track your cost per conversion (e.g. subscribe, signup or sale), and if you report revenue data back to them you can track and optimize for revenue.

The only excuse for loosing money on FB in the long-term is unsuccessful experimentation and that shouldn't be huge quantities.

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