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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of FB tacitly approving of those overly aggressive social game ads / updates for a while, until FB itself became strong enough to not need them anymore.

It also reminds me of Twitter encouraging 3rd party developers, then cutting them off once they became strong enough to be alright without them.

Clickbait articles surely padded FB's bottom line, but now that FB has become strong in the news feed / media source space, perhaps it feels that it can separate itself from the devil's bargain.

Yes, I hate clickbait just as much as the next HN'er (and would like to not consider it in the same vein as Twitter API use), but putting aside the nature of the content, the power dynamics at play seem analogous.

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You're right that Facebook is starting to exercise its strength in unhealthy ways, using companies until they decide to discard them. Most of these clickbait sites are getting traffic by paying celebrities to post the articles on their Facebook pages, cutting FB out of the revenue loop (example: [1] data: [2]). They have come to realize that they aren't going to get these companies to pay their extortionate rates for boosting page posts, so now they are moving to crush them instead. While this specific move may turn out to be a net positive for users, they are sending a clear message: pay us or we'll kill your business.

Facebook's behavior is getting more and more territorial, anti-competitive, and revenue driven. They are turning into the scary behemoth that many people feared they would.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/georgehtakei

[2] https://medium.com/@jbialer/influencers-partnerships-are-vir...

I'm having trouble seeing how the scenario you describe is 'unhealthy'. The behaviour to drive clickbait into people's feeds you describe is essentially the same kind of thing as email spam: using a loophole to drive the cost of reach as near to zero as possible in the hopes you'll make it up on the few suckers who click. If this isn't good for the user, how is it unhealthy for them to curb it?

And while I'd rather they be paying me to have my eyeballs available to them, driving up the cost of my eyeballs still benefits me even if I do not monetarily profit from it.

A business doesn't have an inherent right to exist. If it exists because it annoys people in a particularly profitable way I don't know where this sympathy is coming from.

I'm having trouble seeing how the scenario you describe is 'unhealthy'

I wasn't referring to killing clickbait as being unhealthy. I was referring to the practice of implementing policies that kill businesses because FB isn't getting their cut. There have been several much less cut-and-dry situations - for example, the drastically reduced organic reach of Facebook page posts for small businesses.

Right, but why is that unhealthy? If the cost of advertising on facebook is zero or near it, users suffer very badly (as on any platform). Someone has to force the cost up to make the platform livable, and the only party that realistically can in this transaction is facebook.

Like, I get why other things named in this thread are unhealthy. Particularly twitter pulling the rug out from app developers (which facebook also did, and I think was also relatively unambiguously unhealthy). I am not saying that all control of a platform is necessarily healthy, but you seem to be saying that it is unhealthy because it made an action that most see as undesirable unprofitable (thus causing businesses to fail).

Thus, you seem to believe that these businesses have some kind of inherent right to succeed on the good graces of another business allowing them to. I'm asking you to explain how that's in the public good.

It's unhealthy when they allow it for a long time, benefit from it, and then pull the rug out from under them once they believe it is in their financial best interest to do so. It's exactly the same as your Twitter and Facebook developer examples.

Developers were monetizing the Twitter platform until Twitter pulled the rug out. Facebook has similarly neutered their API to the point where it is nearly useless, and many businesses were crushed in the wake of the changes. You seem to be saying that it's only unhealthy when developers are affected, but that isn't the case. Developers have no "inherent right to succeed on the good graces of another business allowing them to" either, yet you see that as unhealthy.

Publishers and developers are just users of the system, getting crushed when Facebook doesn't believe it's getting a big enough cut. I would also argue that Facebook actively blocking the sharing of external content that its users choose to share with each other simply because they aren't getting their cut is different than the affected businesses believing they have an "inherent right to succeed on the good graces of another business". Businesses that don't directly do anything on Facebook will be affected by this, because if their visitors wish to share their content, they will likely attempt to share it through Facebook.

It doesn't affect users though, it affects pages. Articles shared by users as a post don't seem to be affected, it just ranks pages that consistently post clickbait lower.

Its not just pages. The blog post said that links to domains that tend to publish clickbait will rank lower. In other words, if an article I share that happens to reside on a domain that they have classified as a clickbait source, most of my friends won't see it even though I went to the effort of sharing it and wanted them to see it.

> While this specific move may turn out to be a net positive for users, they are sending a clear message: pay us or we'll kill your business.

I mean... facebook needs to make money too. These clickbait companies are making money of of facebook's audience, facebook's hardware and software... it's only fair that facebook gets a cut, isn't it?

How many years has it taken them to get to this point? It's not about money.

> Facebook's behavior is getting more and more territorial, anti-competitive, and revenue driven. They are turning into the scary behemoth that many people feared they would.

I do not fear whatever Facebook turns into because I can decide to stop using it. If they want to continue doing evil things, I can stop logging in, no? Why would someone fear that FB is turning into something?

You can stop logging in, sure, but they still own all your data

Well, yes, but that's sort of like saying "I don't care what they teach in public schools, I can choose a private school for myself or my family." In the end, since the majority of people are consuming that thing you are rejecting, there's a high likelihood of it affecting you in some manner anyway.

That is, FB is a behemoth, is a major source of current events for a large swath of people, and their decisions unfortunately may have wider consequences than we or they necessarily predict.

I must be missing out on FB because I do not use it for searching products, concerts, movies, news, restaurants, etc. It only shows me updates from family, specific business I have "liked", etc. But perhaps your point is, many people spend hours on it instead of news sites, thus see the content shared through that via walls instead of the main pages of news websites?

> But perhaps your point is, many people spend hours on it instead of news sites, thus see the content shared through that via walls instead of the main pages of news websites?

Yes. I don't use Facebook, but my significant other does, and of the few news items here that I think are relevant to her, she usually sees them shared through someone's wall post 12-48 hours later. For some people it's a giant peer-to-peer new sharing site, and it's the primary source of news they have. That's extremely powerful position for Facebook, which is also why they got into so much trouble when it came out a while back that they were tweaking people's feeds slightly based on political views.

Are you sure you're blocking all their cookies? Any site with a like button or Facebook comments will track you and use it to monetize your visits.

Ultimately it's like saying you aren't concerned about drug laws because you aren't in the drug economy... It has a high possibility of affecting your life in some way regardless.

If PrivacyBadger blocks them, then hopefully those are.

Cause you assume that you can just stop using it. If enough companies/people build in hooks on mobile or across the web or in any of the other million places that they are integrated (VR etc...), you're part of Facebook whether you want to be or not.

Let's say you run a restaurant. Facebook decides that they aren't getting enough money from local restaurants, and thus choose to greatly reduce the exposure of content that users share with their friends about restaurants that aren't paying them. You aren't even a Facebook user, but your competitors are and do pay them. Mentions of their restaurants actually get higher visibility than normal content and go viral, while mentions of your restaurant get no exposure at all. Your restaurant dies, while your competitors thrive.

It doesn't matter if you log in or not. Facebook policies can affect the fortunes of nearly every type of business.

While I see your point, I would believe this more with a website that was specifically used to search, aggregate, recommend, and communicate with restaurants (or other businesses). When did we start using Facebook to search for restaurants, movies, malls, shopping? I honestly do not consider FB as a source to find such places -- Google Maps (or just any search engine people use), Yelp, or whatever else serves its purpose much better, wouldn't you say?

Is a crowd that uses FB the most also the one with enough spending power to have such an influence?

Where I live now (Philippines) this is exactly how Facebook is used. Local businesses don't even put up websites many times because it's far more important to have an updated and active Facebook page.

Additionally, all sectors of the market use it here.

However, I definitely recognize this isn't the case in the US and many European countries.

This is no different to any other form of advertising in history.

No, it's not. As the preferred social sharing platform, they control conversations about things by controlling the exposure that various shares get. That is entirely different from everything that came before it.

Presumably as it became apparent that Facebook was squelching conversations about businesses that had not paid the tax, people would learn to have those kinds of conversations elsewhere instead.

"Let's say you run a restaurant. Facebook decides that they aren't getting enough money from local restaurants, and thus choose to greatly reduce the exposure of content that users share with their friends about restaurants that aren't paying them. You aren't even a Facebook user, but your competitors are and do pay them. Mentions of their restaurants actually get higher visibility than normal content and go viral, while mentions of your restaurant get no exposure at all. Your restaurant dies, while your competitors thrive."

This is no different to word-of-mouth reviews, that came from people who found out about a restaurant from a paid advert in a newspaper in 1950. If your restaurant didn't list in the paper (i.e. you didn't want to pay the premium for the advert) then you were at an immediate disadvantage.

This seems like basic market economics at work; as a restaurant owner, you have to make a choice - do I make more money back by paying Facebook their fee or by not paying them. If the answer is that I make more by paying them, then obviously they are providing a service that is worth what they are charging. If not, then it is not worth it and you don't pay it.

I am really struggling to see the problem with what you describe; how is it any different that advertising anywhere else? You decide if the cost of the ad is worth the ROI. Part of that decision includes knowing that your competitors might also advertise.

Does Pepsi get mad that Coke spends millions of dollars on Super Bowl commercials so they have to, too?

The network that displays the Super Bowl doesn't get to decide which brand people talk about after the game. Facebook is using News Feed to control conversations and narrative by controlling what is seen and not seen.

Does Pepsi get mad that Coke spends millions of dollars on Super Bowl commercials so they have to, too?

Probably. Advertising is somewhat analogous to mutually assured destruction.

>I am really struggling to see the problem with what you describe; how is it any different that advertising anywhere else?

Facebook holds a near monopoly on social networks, and it's exploiting that to extract rents in the form of advertising

You're right about the power dynamics, on the other hand, this is good for consumers and perhaps journalists and content provider who don't engage in clickbaity content. In other words, this may drive the news industry to be more substantive and that's a good thing for consumers.

So I guess what I'm saying is I don't mind when force is used for good --on the other hand, this strength, as you imply, can be used for conduct undesirable behavior on their part.

You're absolutely right that this is a similar dynamic. At this point this is FB's MO and you have to be a fool not to anticipate it as inevitable in each ecosystem/market they develop.

They did the same thing with overly aggressive affiliate advertising in the past when the first opened up their self-serve advertising platform.

That's a weird analogy. It's not like there was a lack of content (good or bad) competing for attention before...

I think a better analogy is "we have now implemented a spam filter. F U spammers."

Or: "we have now implemented a spam filter. F U spammers, your ad revenue isn't worth it anymore."

Does it matter? Oftentimes people do things that are socially positive for purely selfish reasons.

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