Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough' | Hacker News Reader

Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough'

bbc.com

255 pointsDarkContinent239 comments

And yes, he's absolutely correct. Some advertisers such as the big Canadian banks aren't even hiding it now switching from announcing a boycott to a limited-time withdrawal: "Participating brands will suspend all advertising on the platform for the month of July."

https://globalnews.ca/news/7129688/facebook-boycott-canada-b...

Nobody was ever hiding that the boycott is for July; the call for the boycott says so in the first line. Some companies decided to go for more than a month but that's their choice.

> On June 17, Color Of Change along with the NAACP, ADL, Sleeping Giants, Free Press, and Common Sense Media called on Facebook’s advertisers to hit pause on ad spending for July 2020

> https://colorofchange.org/stop-hate-for-profit/

Is there a big list of all of the companies taking part?

The list is probably longer now, but here's one from late June: https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1276681468119572481

https://www.stophateforprofit.org/participating-businesses

Kind of a sad excuse for a list. Can't see it moving the needle where it affects share price.

That's actually very well played. You know that companies want to hit pause because of lower sales and less consumer confidence, so you give them an easy out that will look like a moral stance, and you wisely limit the duration so that nobody feels too committed and can return to business as usual if Covid-19-related slow downs come to an end by the end of July.

Or, they could just stop the advertising because of budget issues.

Supporting the boycott may be unpopular with some demographics. So maybe, just maybe, there's something to it.

> Or, they could just stop the advertising because of budget issues.

Oh, certainly. My point isn't that they're doing it because of principles. The companies do it because they want to save money. But offering them an out that allows them do press pause but not say "we have bad sales" and gets them lots of good will in important media circles, that's a good play imho.

Especially the very limited length looks like that to me. Had they said "to boycott Facebook ads", no large business in their right mind would've gone through with it. Even with "boycott FB for a year", I don't think so. But for a month, while business has slowed down significantly and you're happy to cut back in spending? That's an easy yes.

And for the organizers it's a win as well, as they can say that they got some large companies backing their cause. It's a smart play.

It’ll continue beyond July. This quote may have changed everything. If he’s trying to become the silicon trump he is certainly getting there. Unsurprisingly both are clearly sociopaths.

You think a quote he made to his own employees, painting the company in a strong light, will change everything?

So because he won't kowtow to the demands of what he says is a threat to a small percentage of the company's revenue, he is now Trump?

Is there a list of mobs you believe companies should kneel before, lest you deem them to be in-line with Trump?

It wouldn't particularly surprise me if none of the vast majority of the public, HN commenters or the companies that signed up for it had actually read the boycott documentation so that might not be as important as it seems.

FB should offer a "limited-time" discount for advertisers, subsidized by rate hike when those boycotting return.

And companies pressured by CNN to "boycott" should withdraw their ads from CNN IMO.

In a way, they _do_ have a limited-time discount. Facebook's ad prices are set by an auction. If there are less advertisers competing during the boycott, the prices will be lower.

Why would this be a good idea? It sounds like a "punishment."

They're a private platform, they can do what they like?

I think you got "should" and "can" mixed up.

Ad rates are down, and I know several publishers, whose ads are monetizing well, are using this opportunity to increase FB spending . Like, buying hand over fist

I can see the rationale for this. Companies that publicly boycott Facebook harm Facebook's reputation (which in turn hurts Facebook's bottom line). These companies now pose a higher risk (given past behaviour) of publicly boycotting Facebook in future. So Facebook should insure against this risk by charging a 'boycott risk premium' (through higher advertising rates) for companies that are a proven public boycott risk.

A more interesting question is what if advertisers did not come back? Does Facebook have a "Plan B" for how they would sustain themselves?

What would happen if advertisers pulled out and Facebook fell on hard times? Would someone else acquire every detail of your life that you shared with Facebook? What happens if Facebook fails? Do they send your data back to you with a note saying "Thanks for the loan"?

> What would happen if advertisers pulled out and Facebook fell on hard times?

This is very unlikely, as Facebook has more money than it knows what to do with and will easily weather this storm.

Don't get me wrong, I'm the last person to defend the company, but this is the reality: Companies who say they are boycotting Facebook are only doing it as a PR stunt. Give a few months, and you'll see their ads back on your News Feed.

What I meant was not this particular instance but the future. Long term not short term. Is Facebook immortal? Companies, even the biggest ones, usually have a shelf life.

Facebook buys out their competitors.

The cool thing about facebook’s highly targeted advertising is that it balances the ad market in favor of niche players vs. generalists, which also means they have a long long tail of millions of small buyers vs. a few huge ones who used to dominate traditional media.

Old marketing was carpetbombing, which meant only those with B-52 sized budgets could dominate. It was also deeply entwined with centralized high-volume distribution models, aligning the interests of big manufactures and big retailers.

Today’s marketing is precision bombing. You just need the right explosion in the right place. Likewise, internet distribution enables the economics of small manufacturers and small retailers (shopify/amz third-party).

Which is why big advertisers have done relatively poorly with internet ads. Their prior campaigns worked, not so much because they or the product were good, but because they could silence small competitors. Because retailers could only carry a limited amount of products they would favor the big mfgs who could provide bulk orders. Consumers just went for them because they had no other choice.

Today small player’s can advertise to narrow niches where rates are low. Likewise consumers can access products that better suit their specific needs/wants. What this means is that FB doesn’t really need or depend on big budget advertisers. Mark knows this.

> Today’s marketing is precision bombing. You just need the right explosion in the right place. Likewise, the internet enables the economies of small manufacturers and small retailers (shopify/amz third-party).

It's direct mail and it's nothing new. It was annoying decades ago, it's even more annoying now, because it's better-targeted, to the point it's effectively surveillance. Carpet-bombing advertising is brand advertising: It's somewhat annoying, but it doesn't track you.

Direct mail is to FB ads what chariots are to a Ferrari. You can pay facebook to target any of 1.7 Billion people with 0 research on your end. You can automate a campaign for reach/effectiveness. Your budget can be whatever you want it to be. You can get instant feedback and adjust accordingly.

FB adds are expensive because people click on them. They click on them because they are useful. They are also minimally intrusive: just scroll past, no click to close, no have to watch, no site ruining banners.

I for one, actually like FB ads: they show things I may want or need, often with a discount or some other benefit.

Unfortunately, this model invites a lot of the "fly-by-night" type of companies offering products that may or may not have been thoroughly tested, but they know their target market may be easily manipulated through professional looking ads (eg young/naive people or people who don't know the wealth of data they give to FB to allow precision targeting).

Just one example: Molekule

Another example: Allbirds. $90 for a shoe with the build quality of something $25 from the Target store brand, but since it has hip, minimalist adverts on instagram it's seen as a great product and very popular.

I've never tried them, but isn't the selling point that they use natural materials rather than cheap synthetics like something for $25 from Target?

The main ad line seems to be how comfortable and the quality of the shoe, honestly the all natural point was news to me before you pointed it out to me, and I own the shoe. Two strikes for it though, given that they aren't the most comfortable shoe and as I mentioned above, the build quality was highly disappointing. I cannot stress enough how cheap this shoe appears in the flesh and on your foot, natural material or not.

Yea the main selling point of Allbirds is their sustainable approach to manufacturing shoes. I've never owned a pair, but from my friends that do have them, they often describe them as "like if your shoes were socks" - which I think is intentional. Maybe OP went in with the wrong expectations?

Another reason that Internet ads don't completely supplant traditional mass marketing, is because a lot advertising is about creating a cultural consensus around a product. Beer is the classic example.

Corona wants to create the image that it's the beer for cool, relaxed dudes. We all know that there's nothing inherent to Corona that makes it the beer for cool, relaxed dudes. But through mass advertising they've created a widely shared cultural connotation for that brand. If I show up to a party with a six-pack of Corona, I'm projecting a clear message to everyone there that I'm a cool, relaxed dude. (Or at least style myself that way.) If I was going for sophisticated, adventure-lover I might show up with Dos Equis instead. And most everyone in America would understand.

For this type of marketing, hyper-targeted advertising defeats the purpose. You don't just want to reach the target customers. You want everyone in the broader culture to understand what your brand stands for. It's why mass reach advertising, like Super Bowl commercials or Times Square billboards command such hefty premiums. I watch a beer commercial at Super Bowl half time, and not only do I know that I've seen that commercial. but I know everybody else will too.

> If I show up to a party with a six-pack of Corona, I'm projecting a clear message to everyone there that I'm a cool, relaxed dude. (Or at least style myself that way.) If I was going for sophisticated, adventure-lover I might show up with Dos Equis instead. And most everyone in America would understand.

On the contrary, most are going to see you as the guy who brought bad beer because he's susceptible to aspirational advertising.

Your kind of party, unfortunately, is not the most common kind of party.

The most common kind of party is littered with brands - clothing, cars, purses, phones, jewelry, acessories, make up...

I wonder if there's a regional component to it. This might be yet another one of those cases where trying to say anything about America as a thing is nonsense.

Beer is a bad example these days because microbrews have taken over and the consensus has become fractured: Moose Drool is big where I live, but it likely doesn't exist where you are. Buying a macro means you're out-of-touch, no matter what kinds of ads InBev is putting out for it these days.

I realize this is going way off topic but I’m seeing the opposite: I have dozens of $20+ beer bottles in the basement and occasionally like a little fresh IPA but by volume I drink way more Modelo or other lager. Doing anything because everybody else is means... something, showing up with a case of miller lite says you DGAF and the genuinely interesting people seem to notice.

Facebook has a long tail of 8 million advertisers (according to their earnings report).Some of the big ones leaving would mean that the relatively smaller ones would get better returns on spend (due to fewer bidders and lower top bid) and in turn spend more.

This does help the brands get a bit of free PR at Facebook's expense, given that many of them would have been planning to reduce the spend anyway due to Covid.

Yep. This is just a few big companies finding a clever way to get free marketing out of a decision to cut their marketing budgets due to the pandemic.

By that same token, how big are the companies at the end of the tail? If large corporations are cutting marketing budgets, small shops on tighter budgets probably are as well

If you have a positive ROI on marketing, and prices go down, you increase spend.

Big brands cutting spend on positive ROI is probably foolish, especially if it lets your competitors increase their ROI. For brands like pepsi that don't sell online, then it's just a cost center.

Its the volume that makes up for that. Top 100 adverstisers on Facebook make up less than 20% of the total advertising revenue. So, a lot of other subscribers make up a major chunk, and if they increase spend even slightly (given better ROI) Facebook will have a net gain.

Not every other guy would have a tighter budget. Companies like a gaming company, a streaming platform, home delivery, edtech, telemedicine, D2C brands to name a few are the ones which have increased their budget during these times. Adding that to the fact they get better ROI on Facebook ads mean they will end up spending more (and getting more value in return).

Smaller advertisers risk being viewed as less relatable and ignorant of the damage to Facebook's brand.

No, they really don't because no-one can hold a list of millions of advertisers and who boycotted and who didn't in there head. There is no way most people will check a list before making a purchase either if that was going to be the next suggestion.

That wasn't the suggestion. The suggestion was, as I scroll through my feed, I see an ad and am displeased that small niche brand, whom as a small company, is more socially aware than a large corporation, and the small company is supposed to understand the issues with hate speech, yet they haven't left FB. It was not 'every consumer knows the millions of brands who left off the top of their head'.

If you're scrolling through your feed you haven't left Facebook either.

My interpretation of what's going on:

CEOs finally have leverage against their marketing departments to do black-out testing on social media ad spend. It's difficult to actually measure impact of ad spending, and marketing teams spin results to their advantage.

They will observe what happens and re-introduce spending where it actually works.

I doubt this very much. Doing black-out testing silently would be just as easy and allow a much greater degree of experimental control.

Well if it fails, and revenue drops, that would be hard to explain to shareholders right? Especially if the test has to extend for months to be realistic. Now they can at least say it's for a social cause.

Just blame it on the 'rona or geopolitics.

Maybe?

Part of the leverage is going public and saying it's about some principle.

For experimental control, executives tend to think simple is better. The more complex, the more room for fudging.

Also, it is being done during one of the craziest markets and climate ever to occur so it would be difficult to really get good numbers.

Bad take. These companies are using FB as a scapegoat to reduce ad operations during this pandemic/company budget reductions.

Seems synergistic with what I said, no? Reduce budget and do some testing at the same time.

In what world do you think CEOs don't have power over their marketing departments?

On paper, of course they can do whatever they want. This just gives them more cover to do it, shielding them (at least partly) from internal blowback.

When a recession happen the first to go is marketing.

As a test, you would need to control other variables, the present economic uncertainty basically rendered that impossible.

It's just the CEOs finding a convenient excuse to cut costs.

It's an even better deal: companies are replacing paid advertising with free exposure from being mentioned in news stories and bonus points for "standing up for what's right". In addition, plenty of people (and the news organisations themselves) share these news stories on the very same social media, with 0 costs for the companies involved.

Overall it means increased brand exposure for less money.

Good ol' public relations.

> When a recession happen the first to go is marketing.

As a marketer, I have found the opposite to be true for some industries. For example, during 2007/2008 my digital marketing agency saw a big surge in business from companies who saw marketing as a way to grow lagging demand.

Everything “non-core” usually gets cut... it depends I guess whether someone views marketing “core” or not.

I guess it also had to do with cost effectiveness. Digital marketing might have been small but cheaper than paper/cable medias. Right now given the size of Google and Facebook (and the fact that their whole revenue is basically ads), it seems the advertising spend on them has become excessive and not cost effective.

Zuckerberg: "We're not going to change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue."

Facebook Mission: "Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together."

Please update the mission statement

The results would be tainted by the free advertising brands get for boasting about cutting ad budgets.

>It's difficult to actually measure impact of ad spending, and marketing teams spin results to their advantage.

Have you used any self-serve ad tool? It's quite easy actually.

It's quite easy to get a measurement on your screen. That doesn't necessarily translate to measuring the impact of ad spending.

If I have social media ads, paid search, and retargeting ads all live on multiple platforms, there is undoubtedly interaction among them and the quite-easy self-serve ad tool is likely to show me a simplistic "last click attribution" at best.

Exactly. For really large companies with many channels, it's very difficult to disentangle this.

Here is a good discussion of the difficulty: https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...

Often on Google I see ads right above a organic link to the same site. I wonder if marketing teams count the ad click as a "win" when in fact I was looking for the company because I learned of it via word of mouth.

I’ve always seen that considered to be “paid search-branded”, which is tracked but is tracked and treated separately (for the reason you said).

Most analytics platforms will report on any straight direct line between spend and incremental revenue. The hard part is measuring the indirect part, as you mentioned, but it is possible.

It's easy to bullshit yourself into thinking your ads are much more effective than they really are. It's even easier to bullshit the people who pay you to do ads for them. Advertising and analytics platform happily oblige both use cases.

As 'sokoloff wrote, it's easy to get a measurement on the screen. But gaining real insight from it, or even knowing whether that measurement makes sense, requires a certain amount of analytical thinking and knowledge of statistics. Maybe among corporate marketing departments such skills are plenty, but in my experience, it's not usually the case with small marketing agencies serving smaller companies. Bullshitting has a better effort/reward ratio, particularly when your customers understand statistics even less than you.

2020 is very atypical and not a good time to run a "marketing off" test.

Even if you did an A/B or multivariate test across different markets, you'd probably be measuring local responses to Covid more than you'd be measuring Facebook marketing effectiveness.

On the other hand, with stay-at-home orders media consumption is at an all-time high. Ads should outperform in this environment.

This assumes your conversion rate from media is the same. It's reasonable to hypothesize that most are significantly more reluctant to spend money in this environment.

Agreed; it depends on the product.

Engagement rates are way up, but conversion rates are down. Overall a net benefit in my line of business, but it's affecting other segments different ways.

It doesn't matter. The test is "should we be spending money on this in 2020", not testing a hypothetical situation where the pandemic doesn't exist.

With that same argument you can conclude that since 2020 is very atypical then it's not a good time to run the usual strategy of last year. Might as well switch it up, cut costs or react (in case they saw that ad clicks went up, but not the actual sales).

My interpretation: old media doesn't understand new media.

It's not exactly blackout testing if the blackout testing itself is highly visible and gets positive earned media.

Let's See Your Treatment Effects!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd3gQAV1ncs

Run an experiment And let the truth fall out

Yes, I think it's a fault line that has been waiting to crack for quite a while. Facebook has never been a good match for those big household-name brands because for them targeted ads add very little value over blanket ads. They begrudgingly pay a heavy premium on targeting only because some demographics have completely detached themselves from blanket ad media. That's not how a happy customer relationship looks like.

Marketing departments (or external intermediaries) don't mind the lower value proposition at all, because they get all those micromanagement opportunities and (perceived) necessities offered by self-serve targeting platforms. Huge opportunities to look important. I wonder how the management overhead per dollar spent on ads has developed in the last 20 years.

That is an ingenious interpretation.

Probably too ingenious though, especially across all the companies involved.

Facebook is actually one of the few platforms (if not the only platform?) that allows running self-serve RCTs (conversion lift tests in their lingo): https://www.facebook.com/business/help/688346554927374

Conditional on them honestly reporting numbers, it's a pretty credible way to measure effectiveness in terms of incremental conversions you get by showing ads on FB/IG

Facebook is funny because I generally agree and disagree with everyone. But people make their points so poorly, they have no sense of objectivity or analytical ability, that I’m dismayed by all sides by the lack of a principled approach.

90% of what people post about is a distraction and futile. I wish Facebook could motivate and inform people to attend local government meetings. Instead, it’s like an interactive tabloid magazine that we’re embedded in. We’re on the shelf in a Rite-Aid living in a world of ridiculousness as corporations pass by us and sell us stuff. 24 hours a day.

The goal isn't to confer change, it's to increase platform interactions. The best way to do that is to give you content that inspires strong emotions whether it's uplifting positivity or partisan hate.

The entire reason to have reposts is for high-interaction content to get more traction while your Aunt Sally posting food pictures gets ignored. If Aunt Sally posts something divisive that gets lots of angry emoji faces and angry comments, then that will tend to spread more on the platform.

More people need to read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitiv...

The book is terrible. Mark Manson is terrible. Yes, by all means people should read, but not this. There is plenty of good literature, especially fiction, that doles out the same advice but in more tactful manner, rather than the writings of a guy's lifetime of good fortune.

> The book is terrible. Mark Manson is terrible.

Ad hominem.

> There is plenty of good literature

Never claimed otherwise, and it's not a zero-sum game.

> especially fiction

Sure, but different strokes for different folks, and there's something to be said about the directness of a self-help book vs. fiction.

> that doles out the same advice but in more tactful manner

His blunt voice is precisely why many find the book valuable. It cuts to the chase. The title itself makes it clear that this is what you'll get, so opening the book expecting otherwise would be nonsensical.

> rather the writings of a guy's lifetime of good fortune

His good fortune has no bearing on the value of his ideas. Again an ad hominem.

> I wish Facebook could motivate and inform people to attend local government meetings.

B...but that doesn't help with profits? Why bother?

I work in marketing. Advertising markets are pretty damned efficient. If a bunch of advertisers pull out, rates come down, new advertisers come in.

There may be some affect, especially if big companies were spending inefficiently to build "awareness". But at the end of the day, the market rate for a click is the market rate. Someone will pay for it.

If that were true, then why aren't frequencies capped for most campaigns run on-line?

I don't think I understand this question. Why doesn't Facebook limit the number of impressions? I assume the premise is that fewer ads will be worth more?

Again, the ad market is insanely efficient and competitive. Restricted supply doesn't correlate with increased prices. If 1000 impressions is worth $20 to me, and it costs $30 on Facebook, I can take my money elsewhere. I don't even need to push a button, I have software that could automatically change my budget minute to minute.

More inventory means more chances to sell something to an advertiser. That is why they go to such great lengths to build massive data centers with gigantic digital brains to figure out how to optimize session depth, impressions/user, watch time, etc. Buyers are not able to pay beyond their profit margin, so increased rates just means they cut budget and look somewhere else.

Let me explain it another way.

As a user, I often see the same ad 100s of times. Yes, 100s.

On most ad software, you can set it so that the user sees it maybe 3 times.

The fact that I see an ad 100s of times means that the ad market is inefficient. Maybe the competition for that ad space is efficient, but from a user POV, advertisers are wasting time and space.

Replying a bit late:

This is the difference between "Reach" (number of people who see the ad) and "Impressions" (number of times an ad was shown). Advertisers have the ability to optimize for either (or neither if they optimize for something else).

Usually this is based on some internal metrics they have, like a report that correlates the number of impressions it takes someone to convert. Nobody will buy a product based on a single impression, so some amount of repetition is required. There are also industries with really long sales cycles where consumers may only make buying decisions once a year or less, so if you buy ads, you need to do it over a long period of time.

That's not to say every advertiser is doing things logically or efficiently. There are a lot of dumb strategies. Just like the stock market, it's full of really dumb decisions, and it only seems sensible when you stand back and look at it as a whole.

Yup, this is true. Someone else's banner just shows up instead of the "boycotting" brand.

It’s so true. At the end of the day, users haven’t abandoned FB and that’s what advertisers care about.

In some ways they have though, at least in terms of time allocation. When Facebook was in its heyday it was the default social network. They dont seem to be adding as many new users and I suspect they are churning old users. They also have to compete with wechat, twitter, tiktok, reddit, twitch, etc so its not obvious to anyone but facebook how loyal the userbase is.

Facebook is becoming less relevant so yes these companies will most likely be back, but what about 5 years? They might not be willing to pay the same rates. Facebook will kind of be like a personal email client that people check occasionally. Facebook.com specifically, Instagram itself will remain popular for a while I would wager.

Does that make a difference then? Facebook's going to continue tracking the users all the same, their ad formats will just be different

> In some ways they have though, at least in terms of time allocation. When Facebook was in its heyday it was the default social network. They dont seem to be adding as many new users and I suspect they are churning old users. They also have to compete with wechat, twitter, tiktok, reddit, twitch, etc so its not obvious to anyone but facebook how loyal the userbase is.

But it has nothing to do with loyalty. It has all to do with algorithms. If Facebook's AI is superior to Twitter, Wechat, TikTok, Reddit and Twitch then advertisers will never leave Facebook. All Facebook needs is 30 seconds of user time to show them ads. Also don't forget the audience network that Facebook has. Are you playing a free game of Ludo on your mobile? You will be shown an ad in between games. That ad is served by Facebook. So it is not even necessary for the user to be on the platform to be shown ads! Now how do you tackle that? Publishers will also have to abandon Facebook. That will not happen so easily. The only way to tackle Facebook is to create an alternative that has at least 50% of the user base that Facebook does and also have an equally good AI Ad platform or superior.

> Facebook is becoming less relevant so yes these companies will most likely be back, but what about 5 years? They might not be willing to pay the same rates. Facebook will kind of be like a personal email client that people check occasionally. Facebook.com specifically, Instagram itself will remain popular for a while I would wager.

Facebook knows that. That is why they are constantly improving their algos to make it cheaper themselves. Advertisers don't want access to a billion people really. They just need to sell to a few hundred or thousand people to make their profits. Even if Facebook userbase comes down by 50%, if the Facebook AI is half as decent as it claims to be, it will still find the right audience for advertisers to target!

Personal opinion but TikTok's is great. I got sucked in in less than 1 min. I actually think the rest suck, including FB. Reddit has no AI.

Netflix's recommendation engine is usually spot on for me but I guess that is less difficult.

TikTok somehow convinced a bunch of young girls to dance in scanty clothes for the enjoyment of the internet for likes and comments. It’s not as bad as it used to be but knowing how they got started, as a de facto child porn production and distribution outlet (imagine if /r/jailbait was a default subreddit when Reddit launched), it’s hard for me to get over that and use TikTok.

When I open TikTok, that is not what I see at all. It's funny videos, sketches, memes that are all pretty relevant to where I live and around current affairs.

That said I don't use TikTok (or Instagram, FB etc) so maybe it's more like you're saying.

Depends which users. A lot of teenagers are "mostly on Instagram" or "only use it for Messenger". And teenagers are apparently an important population to marketers.

I know FB owns Instagram but the point is, Facebook as a platform may be past its prime in NA.

There’s even a meme: Facebook is for boomers.

Idk how much of that is true, but apps like Instagram and tiktok are definitely talked about more these days

Boomers have the money, though. And advertisers like people with money.

Smart advertisers, anyway.

The older folks make facebook sticky for the younger people too. It might not be their first choice for social media, but they're on there cause extended family are on there.

Some people quit facebook, most people don't. There's lots of groups, and now you have market place. It's genuinely useful.

Yeah my wife and I (millennials) have both been "Facebook is for Boomers" people in the past, but when I was into competitive card games all the events were organized on Facebook, and now that we have a baby there are all kinds of new parent groups that we use.

We still don't really think much of it as a social network but somehow while we weren't looking it pretty much ate Craigslist, Meetup, and Local News so now we're on the platform again. Like if someone has some baby formula they don't need, we find out on Facebook. If somebody gets stabbed at the pizzeria across the street, we find out on Facebook. If there's a card game tournament, I (found) out on Facebook.

> Facebook is for boomers.

I can confirm that, I've been told this by my niece.

With the rise of TikTok, I wonder if Instagram is past its prime as well?

Most of my friends have stopped posting photos to Instagram, and just occasionally share stories now. But for short-form video content, TikTok seems to be growing much faster.

Yeah but you forget that TikTok is effectively spyware for the Chinese government packaged to look like a social media app.

I don't think anyone here forgot it. The average user, however, even if informed, likely will not care. I tried to convey all the issues surrounding FB to my SO, which produced generalized shrug.

I think a more drastic message is needed. Maybe some more distributed version of fappening that affects nearly everyone. That could get some attention. Could.

Remind them it got started as the reddit.com/r/jailbait for video and see what their reaction is.

Didn’t forget, I just remember how Zuckerberg regarded Facebook users back in the day (and those were Harvard students).

Facebook had more daily users in the US in Q2 than ever before. They've never had a quarterly decline.

What's the quality of those new users though? The people signing up to FB for the first time in 2020 are probably not prime.

Advertisers just go to where the eye balls are at. Facebook has a good moat but places like reddit and twitter don't. There are already clones for both twitter and reddit. Some communities have left reddit and started their own standalone communities. Often times these communities are so tight-knit that most of the users leave the original platform completely. Same story for twitter. People are moving to a new platform called parler.

> At the end of the day, users haven’t abandoned FB and that’s what advertisers care about.

This goes, especially, to older people who couldn't care less and just want an easy platform to post political memes and gossip about the weird guys who come around the neighborhood in big trucks and snatch everyone's garbage from the curb.

There is this very good article of Ben Thompson [1] predicting that Zuckerberg won't budge:

1/ large advertisers represent a small portion of FB's ad revenue

2/ if large advertisers leave and price of ads fall, other "social media ad-dependent businesses" will pick up the slack because they can measure very well their advertising return on investment thus driving the price of ads back up.

[1] https://stratechery.com/2020/apple-and-facebook/

I am neither a FB user, employee or stockholder. FB has taken a lot of steps which I would not support personally; but how likely would it be for FB's bad policies to get more fanned by the old media(newspapers, news TV channels, influential blogs) because they have an axe to grind here. FB essentially disrupted the whole business model of old media and commoditizes old media entities. FB acts as a middleman, eats up revenue share and weakens the brand-user relationship, something no old media company will like.

Of course they will. The calculus has been done; the marketing boost from saying "we are pulling ads from Facebook (for X weeks)" apparently outweighs the actual value of those weeks of passive Facebook ads. And then things will be back to "business-as-usual" (although outrage marketing is business-as-usual).

He should just ban them for a year just to see what their reaction is.

That would be amazing to watch.

Maybe let's wait to see how the anti-trust conversation goes first.

If you're looking for anti-trust conversations, "let's all collaborate to stop doing business with Facebook" looks a lot more like an illegal combination in restraint of trade.

Of course he's right. If anything I'm surprised advertisers aren't cutting back more given how much revenue they're probably losing during the pandemic.

Real change has to come from two sources. Firstly regulation, Facebook will never "self-regulate" and this corporate activism is a joke. And secondly, from employees who in sufficient numbers have at least some leverage.

You do realize that regulating Facebook and other social media companies in order to force them to limit speech on their platforms would expressly violate the First Amendment? And, thank God for 1A, given the enormous amount of interest people have in limiting speech.

>You do realize that regulating Facebook and other social media companies in order to force them to limit speech on their platforms would expressly violate the First Amendment?

Yet FCC is still around regulating speech on broadcast television.

Because broadcast media is a publisher. Does Facebook want to call itself a publisher? If it does then I am sure FCC will regulate Facebook too. Right now all social media platforms are shielded by Section 230. They are platforms and not liable to what is posted on their platforms. But, some social media companies like Twitter have taken on the mantle of a publisher by mucking around with the US President's tweets. This has now set a precedent. Tomorrow Trump may or may not be in office. But Twitter will continue to exist. Will it continue to edit/censor Presidents and Prime Ministers around the World? If Twitter acquires those powers for itself without any regulatory oversight then you have an unofficial Supranational Government: Social Media.

> Does Facebook want to call itself a publisher?

I'm quite sure it doesn't want to call itself one. But once it made an algorithmic feed it decided to have a hand in what users do and do not see. It's not unreasonable to ask for some accountability in what that algorithm does, and such accountability is definitely not a violation of the first amendment.

> Will it continue to edit/censor Presidents and Prime Ministers

Point of clarification here: Twitter censored and edited absolutely nothing. They attached a warning to Trump's tweet. It is still available for all to read in its entirety.

> Point of clarification here: Twitter censored and edited absolutely nothing. They attached a warning to Trump's tweet. It is still available for all to read in its entirety.

No Twitter actually removed a video[1] that Trump posted.

[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/twitter-labels...

> in response to a copyright claim from one of the children’s parents

So they didn't remove it because of their own demands for censorship, they removed it because the DMCA required them to.

Does DMCA really require them to do so? Doesn't it fall under fair use?

Do memes also attract DMCA notices now? How about this Nickelback meme that was removed from Trump's tweet: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/twitter-nixes-tr...

Are you actually telling me that this doesn't constitute fair use? If this doesn't constitute fair use then Twitter will have to delete a billion tweets that use the same meme. Will Twitter be fair in its policy and remove all of them?

> Does DMCA really require them to do so? Doesn't it fall under fair use?

Yes, if they want to keep their safe harbor protections. If they think it's fair use, refuse to comply with the DMCA notice, and it turns out it wasn't fair use, they're now liable as infringers.

> Yes, if they want to keep their safe harbor protections. If they think it's fair use, refuse to comply with the DMCA notice, and it turns out it wasn't fair use, they're now liable as infringers.

But that is not as simple as it sounds. If you issue a DMCA counter-notice there is no compulsion for the service provider to honor the counter-notice. In fact, the default is to deny the counter claim because of contractual obligations between the service provider and the first party.

You can read more about it here: https://www.newmediarights.org/copyright/DMCA/youtube_refusi...

They are _very_ clearly acting as publishers as well.

When you connect to twitter do you see the same monolithic platform that everyone else sees before you each sort it as you please?

Of course not.

You see a specific-as-possible individual experience published just for you.

Edit: Twitter clearly needs and should have the ability to manage the content they publish.

But they also clearly function like a platform in significant ways.

It does not make sense to try to argue that Twitter is either a platform or a publisher and nothing in between

> They are _very_ clearly acting as publishers as well.

Then they should be held liable for every post/tweet that goes on their platform! Will they be willing to accept that liability like the media houses do? You can sue the media house if it posts something that is false. You can't sue Facebook for a post someone put on it. Facebook will call itself a platform and deny taking liability for someone's post.

> It does not make sense to try to argue that Twitter is either a platform or a publisher and nothing in between

It does make sense. Your nature of business defines the regulations that apply on you. I can't start a software business today and 3 years later arbitrarily decide to convert it to a defense manufacturing company and still hope to retain the same regulatory rules that apply for software companies. There are regulatory policies for every company based on its nature of business. You are creating a monster if you allow these social media companies to have all sorts of policies without any regulatory oversight!

EDIT:

> You see a specific-as-possible individual experience published just for you.

Yes and it still is a platform because the functionality (personal recommendations) is built into the platform as a feature right? It is a AI tool that recommends a feed based on your likes and dislikes. Is this the same as publishing? Nope. With publishing you have a process where posts are edited, verified and then shown to the public. There is some notion of "trust". So when I watch news I know that the news channel has not just curated, but also verified and then is showing me the content that I can then consume. That verification step is essential and is what separates a "Publisher" from a "Platform". Twitter never "verified" the feed right? It just curated it. As a platform it can only "moderate" based on its policies that prohibit certain acts that are illegal by law: like sharing child pornography or calling for violence or gambling. This is required by law and that is where moderation tools come into play. Twitter, by censoring/editing/attaching information to Trump's tweet is behaving as a "publisher" by actually verifying the content of the tweet in question. It does not fall under "moderation" as there is nothing there that is illegal for them to moderate. The feed I consume through personal recommendations is curated but still unverified. I still have to figure out for myself if the post/tweet in question is correct or incorrect. The onus of verification rests with me, the user. That is why it is a platform. The onus of verification in case of media channels rest with the channel. Because they are operating on the notion of "trust". That as a consumer of their content I have trust in what they show me. I don't need to verify. That trust is broken if they start lying. They can lie and spread fake news. But they will be held liable for it. That is why they are a publisher and have to go through the headache of verifying the news before it is broadcast to the public.

Twitter is like a post office. You send mails via post, you expect the postman to deliver the post to the nearest post office, which sorts and aggregates those posts and then pushes those posts to the relevant po box for dispatch. Imagine if the post office started to open the mails and tamper with the messaging. Would you be okay with it? The post office can only open posts if they find something criminal and that also has to be done in a systematic manner: An authority should be present while the post is being opened, every step is to be recorded, the items within the post should be carefully handled and recorded all the way up until the post is sealed. And then the authority must sign off by saying that the post did not contain anything bad (like drugs/weapons whatever that is declared illegal in that jurisdiction). That is the only powers a post office has.

Now imagine if the post office started messing with the posts. Imagine if you were running for election and you distribute flyers through postal mail. One of the employees in the post office doesn't agree with your ideology and decides to tamper with the flyer. Instead of modifying the flyer he attaches a sticky note with his own comments so whoever reads the flyer will also read the sticky note. Would this not be considered tampering with the messaging? How is Twitter attaching a notice to Trump's tweet any different from this? Only difference is that it is virtual and not physical?

The post office (Twitter) is _already_ opening every envelope. That is how the personalized feeds are created.

Do you think the post office should be able to check the content of your message to determine whether to deliver it to you tomorrow, next week, now (if the sender pays more)?

This is a much more complicated issue than a simple publisher-platform determination. The only thing that is clear is that Twitter, Facebook, etc, behave very much like both a platform and a publisher.

I do agree with you that new regulation is critical to help manage these systems.

> The post office (Twitter) is _already_ opening every envelope. That is how the personalized feeds are created.

Oh I meant humans opening the envelope, reading and manipulating the content. Not just opening it. I should have been more clear. The feeds are still created out of reading it but it is not being tampered with. A publisher does still collect and read reports provided by the reporter. However, the decision to publish is only based on verification of facts because the ultimate liability rests with the publisher not the reporter. If the publisher still goes ahead (some do) with fabricated news they can and will be held liable for it. The reporter is not held liable for it. The max that can happen to the reporter is getting fired from the media house.

But with Twitter, once it attaches it's opinion to the tweet, it is essentially indulging in fact-checking. That is what a publisher does.

That is why I said that the key difference between a platform and a publisher is the step of "verification". With a feed you are still being shown unverified user generated content. The onus of verification rests on your shoulders. But once Twitter decides to verify a tweet, the onus of verification now lies on Twitter's shoulders.

> I do agree with you that new regulation is critical to help manage these systems.

Exactly. Either content is regulated or not regulated. Moderation I agree with because those are clearly defined by law (like no calling for violence, racial abuse, bomb threats, child pornography etc). But anything more than that needs to be regulated. Else these social media companies will have too much power in their hands. They can censor anything at will. I have seen many of my comments in Youtube get deleted just for the mention of the word "China". I never get an alert for it. Only after I refresh the page do I see that it has been removed. And I live in a free country not bound by any dictatorial laws. So I am sure that Youtube algorithms have some bias added into it. Censorship is so prevalent now that people are gaming the Youtube algorithms by using words like "Chyna". I remember during the initial days of the Coronavirus outbreak Youtube was removing any mention of Coronavirus and restricting/demonetizing any videos that spoke about the issue. So much so that even legitimate videos got shadow banned. So many content creators started using the word "ramen" for Coronavirus.

This sort of censorship is not good. This is not what internet was built for!

Yes, YouTube's opaque system where you cannot easily tell what is the algorithm, what is systemic moderation, and what is personal channel moderation is a good example of why it's so important to have strong regulation.

It will definitely not work to expect everyone to show exemplary good faith behavior in public interest like Twitter. Even though they don't appear to be doing enough to handle astroturfing.

Why is this so hard to understand?

https://xkcd.com/1357/

I'm not sure I understand. Why do you think that cartoon relates to the idea of the government regulating FB to block Trump's account?

Remember how Facebook operates around the world. Not just USA.

that's not true at all. this congressional report[1] outlines the capacity of the government to regulate speech.

"However, the fact that a law affects speech protected by the First Amendment does not necessarily mean that it is unconstitutional. As explained below, the First Amendment allows some regulation of speech and does not prohibit regulation of conduct.[...]"

If a law does regulate speech, a court would consider the type of speech being regulated to determine how closely to scrutinize the regulation. For example, a court may ask whether that speech is commercial and, as such, deserving of less protection under the First Amendment.[...]

Certain categories of speech receive even less protection than commercial speech. For example, the Supreme Court has said that states may prohibit speech advocating violence if that “advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Thus, certain types of threatening or violent speech posted on social media may not be entitled to First Amendment protection"

And also concerning internet platforms in particular:

"A court might also look to the particular nature of the medium being regulated, asking whether there are special characteristics that might justify greater regulation. The Supreme Court has said that “[e]ach medium of expression . . . must be assessed for First Amendment purposes by standards suited to it, for each may present its own problems.”"

So there's considerable complexity to the regulation of speech. It's not at all a binary issue.

[1]https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45650.pdf

You are absolutely wrong on both counts.

THe only real change will come from users. If Facebook users start boycotting (and to be clear no users are doing this), that is what will hurt them. So while you and I continue to be outraged, a lot of users don't care enough and just goto Facebook to see what their friends are doing and clicking on that ad. And the wheel keeps on turning around.

Employee activism won't matter much for Facebook. Unlike Google, Zuckerberg holds all the keys and he is firm/unwavering to his principles. Also, the core set of employees stick with him. Check out how Chris Cox just rejoined Facebook.

I hear this claim a lot, but it forgets that Facebook has 1.7 BILLION daily active users and still growing. They won't miss a few users here and there: users are the product, not the customer. 100 million people could leave Facebook and it would only slightly reduce the amount of ad impressions they can sell.

On the other hand if advertisers boycott Facebook that directly hurts their bottom line.

400 advertisers, who are the largest brands, have already boycotted Facebook. And the stock is near all time high (it recovered the losses this week) and Zuckerberg is pretty much saying he won't change nothing. So there you have it. Very likely this will hurt advertisers more (since they now have lower ROI) vs. Facebook whose large base of performance driven and small advertisers (who don't have much brand to speak of) will take over.

Only thing which matters in the end is whether users continue engaging with Facebook. Money will flow thereafter. If users don't engage, even if the money is coming in for the time being, it will raise red flags across the board. This is why Twitter is such a shoddy stock to own - since their user numbers have been stagnant since 2013 regardless of how strong their ad business is.

This is social media 101.

Most of Facebook's advertising by total volume comes from large numbers of small advertisers. That's why their stock is up -- people didn't realize how small the net impact of a few large brands is on their total revenues.

Were you going to ignore my point about Facebook being about to lose 100 million daily active users without even feeling it?

You have no idea what you are saying. You need to go deep to have sane arguments.

If FB loses 100M users in US, they are actually going to lose their shit vs. them losing 100M users in APAC. Get real. The fact of the matter is no user in US (where almost all the uproar is) is leaving

ALso, most people knew about FB having majority of its spend from large advertisers. The stock fell because Wall St felt that the boycott will go deeper (or will impact usage numbers) but it just fizzled out with some big brands. And that doesn't matter. So it is back up again.

Facebooks value proposition (users) to its customers (advertisers) is too high. Other advertisers will fill in the gap left by those who are boycotting – less advertisers means more ad space for the others.

Agreed that even 100 million isn’t enough, though it would be the start of a trend which could slowly pick up momentum.

All true, but I'll point out that different users are worth different amounts. If the users with high disposable income leave, then the Audis and Pelotons leave the platform too.

An excellent point. Facebook's demographics now skew heavily towards Boomers who have lots of money to throw around. These boomers are never going to leave Facebook based on some "delete Facebook!!!" comment on Hacker News or Reddit.

Literally the only effective way to force Facebook to change their ways is regulatory action or advertiser boycotts.

Agree with you on the first part, but not sure on the second – if skilled employees leave (especially for other competing social media apps) Facebook will start to lag. Even with its core loyal employees Facebook can’t compete if they don’t retain skilled workers.

Facebook has enough momentum that not having the best and brightest probably wouldn't slow them down. And, let's face it, for what Facebook pays, there are still plenty of skilled people who don't favor one side or the other who would happily take their money.

Momentum would keep them going for a long time but they’d eventually stagnate if they lost the majority of their best workers – look at other once dominant tech companies who can longer get the best talent, even with their deep pockets. This doesn’t mean they’d collapse completely of course.

I realise this is just a hypothetical though – highly unlikely since it would require the top employees leaving en masse.

> Even with its core loyal employees Facebook can’t compete if they don’t retain skilled workers.

There is an abundance of skilled workers who don’t care about this boycott. I personally know quite a few skilled devs who think Zuckerberg taking a stand is a reason to work for Facebook.

Well yeah but that would be Facebook retaining/gaining skilled employees, not losing them.

If, hypothetically, many skilled workers did care (and didn’t like Zuckerberg’s stance) then they’d lose them, which would impact their performance especially against competitors.

I appreciate that this is highly unlikely to happen since, as you said, many don’t care and in fact see this as a positive. I was just stating that I object to the idea that employees can’t have an impact – they can, in sufficient number. We just need to get them to care (lol).

If you have leverage with your employer you should use it to demand more money. Don't let other people bully you into wasting your negotiating capital on their pet causes.

Not being bullied by anyone and I've got enough money. Which was sort of my point. Tech workers are generally speaking financially secure enough to actually use their negotiating capital for something that's important to them.

Money is the lowest form of compensation, it doesn't really matter once you have enough to put food on the table and pay rent. Self-realisation is more important and a lot of people in particular at tech companies haven't fully realised yet how much influence they could have if they're smart about it.

Those “pet causes” are my values and principles, and they’re worth more to me than money.

Your presuming someone would have to be bullied into action is strange, like you don’t believe many people actually think differently and care about these issues.

He is 100% correct. These advertisers have gotten millions of dollars in free PR for the "boycott" but that last won't long for most of them.

I really have a hard time believing consumer behavior is affected by these boycotts. Is the average person running to spend more at Starbucks or Hershey or Honda because they temporarily "stood up to Facebook"?

if there is enough news about it, why not? There is a segment of the population upset at starbucks over their holiday cups.

Analogously, does the average person run to spend more at Starbucks or Hershey or Honda because they scrolled past the same ad 10 times in a single day in their Instagram feed?

FB executives knows the numbers, and knows how to play them out. They also know how far reaching their platform is, and how well they are able to target the intended customers of the businesses.

They have also proven time and again that their targeted ads generate the results these businesses need. Pausing a month or two of ads does not hurt their bottom line. They could simply take a hit on those months and when these businesses go back, they could (again play the numbers) and charge more to recoup those losses.

The FB platform has grown so big that they know even if they lose one big business, the same could be replaced by 10 or 100 or even 1000 small businesses which will allow them to simply get the same amount being paid by the big companies.

Such a statement shows, that he still has learned nothing, specifically not responsibility. For Zuckerberg it needs to financially hurt, in order to cause ethical decisions.

Well, such kind of statement will hopefully also prolong the boykott, because no one will want to seem like the beaten dog, beaten. ack into line. Hopefully the boykott will even increase.

Maybe the ask was just too big. If someone bashed me relentlessly over media, I too would be trying to mollify the mob.. but not at any price.

>For Zuckerberg it needs to financially hurt, in order to cause ethical decisions.

Hasn't he lost ~$6B in net worth because of this?

So he is worth $82B now? Do you think he really loses sleep over that? He knows this is temporary and the stock will most likely bounce back.

He did when FB's stock fell from $242 to $216 a couple days ago. Now it's back up to $234, so you do the math.

He hasn't really lost anything. Even if he was planning to liquidate all of his stock right now, and assuming he could sell it all at the current market rate, what do you think could really be bought for $6 billion? They are just numbers at this level. He hasn't lost anything tangible.

By that logic it's impossible for him to lose anything tangible so OP's comment is pointless.

> OP's comment is pointless.

We at least have consensus on something.

Not impossible, but very unlikely within the realms of the existing financial systems. You can't control billionaires using the very systems that made them billionaires.

You can only hurt him if the outrage mob is large enough. Probably, it isn't, it's just a vocal minority, the rest of the world is going to continue using facebook.

And he has reason to be optimistic.

As per the UK's recent review into competition, 80% of online advertising spend in the UK at least, is spent with Google and Facebook [0]

So, perhaps in his mind it hurts them more than it hurts Facebook

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-regime-needed-to-take...

If Facebook was a bar, would you go there? Would you hang out there? I wouldnt.

As long as companies like making money more than whatever cause they're claiming to care about, Zuckerberg will be proven right.

Advertisers certainly will be back, because their public support for the cause du jour is simply a rational decision to make money/avoid losing money. When established corporations support your cause, you should be worried, because what you think you're getting isn't what you're going to get, the status quo.

I don't know if Zuckerberg is right or not, but his retortic doesn't make it more likely that they will back.

rhetoric + retort = retortic

Whilst companies have discussed pulling out of Facebook, for the most part they're neither discussing, nor implementing exits from Instagram.

As Instagram makes up an increasing amount of Facebook's revenue, the reality is that they're rather unconcerned. This is part of the cycle.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

This advocacy for a group boycott raises anti-trust concerns, IMO. While it is not aimed at getting price concessions, it is aimed at getting other concessions in terms of the public perception of the context of the advertisements bought. This is a material contractual term, and organizing a group boycott to coerce concessions from Facebook to their business partners seems problematic on anti-trust grounds.

Of course they will. All of the "boycotts" but one I've seen were until of the month, and the way it's worded, they probably won't even stop using it, just putting money into their account.

Look, I'm not going to lie: I'm not the biggest fan of Facebook and the way it structured it's closed groups or how it allows posts to go 'viral'. I think there's a lot of negativity that comes from 'viral' posts.

But does anyone realistically think you could put Facebook in charge of moderating all content in the 500+ or so languages on there? With 3 billion users?

It would mean the end of all open communications platforms that we've seen since 2000s.

My conspiracy theory mind tells me this is just brands doing a show of power to end up paying less for ads. Plus scoring a PR win. The bad part is that it encourages Facebook and others to do more aggressive automatic moderation, which has low precision and deletes accounts of people merely mentioning sensitive topics.

Zuck is busy trying ensure his best employees aren't running for the hills. Too late man too late. It's already happening.

Yeah, if recruiters are tagging the least interested in tech in my contacts, then I know it's a ship going down. Acqui-hire is their only way to replenish the talent pool, now.

Are you saying fb is tagging non tech people for jobs?

I didn't want to be rude and say, "least talented people." Here I'm equating least interested with least talented.

Facebook is taking a firm stance NOW. But I imagine they will end up singing a different tune if enough companies join the boycott to drop their ad revenues by 20%.

Cuts in ad buys directly hurt their profits, because ad sellers (and data collection firms) are their primary customers. Users are just a commodity that enables Facebook to sell ads and harvest data.

I think it's pretty plain this has to do with politics.

It's group-bullying of Facebook. But Zuck's right-- Facebook has a huge audience, and they will keep using the platform. If some advertisers don't want to pay, their competitors will.

I hate bullying. I hope Facebook profits out of all this.

Of course they will. It's called performance marketing for a reason. You can track your marketing invest down to the penny. Who cares if they're evil. I believe that this is mostly a small little kindle that will burn out soon, and not a huge wildfire for Facebook.

On a related note I just saw someone on Twitter mentioning this report that was just released that does a real deep dive into how the problems associated with hate speech have played out on the ground in India. [1]

It's grim reading and I think it is a huge slap in the face to that ridiculous corporate propaganda piece they released the other day saying that they don't profit from hate speech.

I'd encourage people to have a read of this, I often see these Facebook threads become extremely abstract and quickly becomes derailed about principles of free speech and the conversation just runs around in circles.

Instead this is a very concrete instance of a problem that is really happening and in concerning numbers around the world (i.e. the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar) that is directly aided by Facebook.

I want to instead have the conversation about what should we do about this particular problem and it's variations? Should brands factor these kinds of problems into their marketing strategies?

[1] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58347d04bebafbb1e66df...

This is pretty explicitly the type of speech that doesn't need protection by 1A. The absolutism of it is really an ideal that practically achieved would lead to some ugliness.

But I'm wondering how this extends to banning conservatives, conspiracy theory pages, or even jokes? When is it going too far over the line, which is drawn at different points for different people/groups?

Because my fear is the government doesn't crackdown like 1984, but the public is convinced there is a much broader definition of wrongthink that people call each other on, leading to less creative expression even if it's offensive (with context) and essentially the same as CCP limitations of speech. For instance I think we're mostly over the days of racial one-liners that are just dumb and play on stereotypes, but how do we convince people still thinking those jokes are appropriate to cease using them? Education and compassion may help in some cases but not all.

Lets start by condemning and removing organized genocide.

There is (hopefully) enough space between "actively organizing genocide" and "conservatives, conspiracy theory pages, or even jokes" to allow room for a reasonable line.

>how do we convince people still thinking those jokes are appropriate to cease using them

By restricting their ability to make those jokes in a way that is clearly tied to the act of making those jokes.

> There is (hopefully) enough space between "actively organizing genocide" and "conservatives, conspiracy theory pages, or even jokes" to allow room for a reasonable line.

There is no trust to allow anything resembling a reasonable line.

Could you please expand on that?

Trust between who?

I'd kind of make the argument that to me at least, it's not really a story about "finding the right balance" between free speech absolutism and a generally pleasant society.

To me that is a somewhat interesting conversation for sure, but the point here I think is that we have a huge number of cases where real live violence and harassment is occurring directly and indirectly as a result of Facebook's choice to NOT properly moderate content that we seem to both agree is most certainly not the kind of speech worth defending.

Facebook will say that there is no way that they could possibly do a sufficient job on this and will remind you that they are "always seeking to improve" but the reality of the matter is that they have made a decision for reasons that aren't actually clear as to why they decided to dedicate this specific amount of resources on the problem.

A lot of people in society think that they should be spending more on trying to fix that problem. I happen to be one of them and I think that is the conversation I am trying to have. What is a good way for society to provide their feedback on how tech has impacted their relationships? Seems to me that very few people actually like social media but many are addicted because these Facebook spent untold amounts of time and money finding new ways to optimize for "engagement" without ever really considering all of the shitty impacts on society that might have.

No speech on private platforms is protected. 99% of Americans just don't know how the constitution works.

I'm not sure why people are hating on Facebook more than any other platform. Justified or not? Explanations pleasse.

> I'm not sure why people are hating on Facebook more than any other platform. Justified or not? Explanations pleasse.

This is a big topic, so you really can't expect someone to do your homework for you if you actually want to understand.

Long story short Facebook had already shown themselves to be duplicitous and untrustworthy on the user privacy front for more than a decade, then various other dark sides of social media made themselves most evident on Facebook, and Zuckerberg has done a poor job at responding to those challenges.

I predict that Facebook will do a huge OOH campaign squeezing the other co's to come back to Facebook

He should just ban them for a year.

Here's the business case why advertisers wouldn't want to enter the boycott, beyond just losing their fb sales:

1) Facebook has had a number of negative sounding news cycles in the past few years (Cambridge Analytica, etc.), and data shows that the average American hasn't changed their behavior based on them. 70% of all Americans and Canadians use Facebook or Instagram at least once a month, and 55% of all Americans and Canadians use it at least once per day. Facebook's monthly and daily user counts have only grown.

2) Facebook has done a better job than many in blocking hate speech. They can always do better, but I'd be worried about scope creep. If Facebook makes changes that the boycott organizers don't think are enough, it could make advertisers in the boycott a target if they start spending on FB again later. One key risk is if the boycott demands they start deleting Trump's posts, like Twitter did. If that happens, it would potentially put any boycotters in an unpleasant media cycle.

3) Most of the advertisers joining so far are companies that either are progressive at their roots (Patagonia, Ben & Jerry's, The North Face) or want to cut ad spend in a COVID environment anyway (Verizon, Unilever). For instance, Unilever is also pausing Twitter ads, which has nothing to do with the boycott.

4) Right now the general public does not associate most companies with FB ads. Joining the list will remind people who are passionate about this issue that their company does FB ads at all, which they don't currently think about.

So all the above combined makes me conclude that joining the boycott offers few advantages, but presents real risks.

> it would potentially put any boycotters in an unpleasant media cycle.

That's already happening anyway, look at Ryan and Saagar today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQICXcPBG8c

It will be a moot point soon enough when the ad market crashes.

My take is that since many people increase their cellphone usage, some renown brands do not need advertising as they may already seen increase in online sales, hence could be a good reason to cut in ads and be politically correct

Last two things I got from FB Ads:

"Smart" Wallet in Nov 2019: Never arrived. Owner now keeps posting dramatic posts without issuing anyone a refund.

Bamboo Socks: Never arrived. No email after the first order confirmation last year. No nothing.

Last 10 things I bought from FB ads. All arrived and our family loves it.

Anecdotes are just that - one off instances. What matters is the trend. And a lot of users buy from Facebook Ads and are happy with it. That is why Facebook revenue keeps growing at 25% yoy on a massive base of $70B.

HN has gone nuts. Downvoted to oblivion when quoting figures from quarterly reports.

You don't vehemently boycott everything that is advertised to you? P:

Neither are you. You get brainwashed like the rest of us.

I tried that for a while. Then I realized I spend most of my time on Twitter, FB, etc. hiding or deleting ads. So I just deleted all of my social media accounts.

it shows that when you have a monopoly or a strong moat, you can basically say "fuck you" to your clients in a polite way of course, oh well

If my direct competition is partaking in this boycott, I'm doubling down on my facebook ad-spend. Great opportunity to steal customers from your competition while they are worried about posturing.

You'd probably be able to cut your ad spend in half and get the same result if the niche is small enough. If only you are buying ad spots for Amish chocolate teapot fans all of the sudden I imagine the price goes down quickly.

potential ad free alternative https://userheist.com

'soon enough' hahahhaha

even if big Corps stop advertising on FB. they will pay for FB's massive data.

I actually hope not.

All I can do is imagine Jesse Eisenberg saying this. There are other channels you can push your spend through with decent ROI. Nobody's platform be it a personal blog or small app is without analytics anymore.

Shorting Facebook: FB 210p 7/10

2:10pm 7/10/2020?

I think he means he's buying put options at 210 expiring on 7/10

Don't know if you're joking, but it's Facebook put option with strike price of $210 expiring on 7/10, in other words, betting that the stock price of FB will be less than $210 by July 10 - current price is $235, so that would be down ~10%.

Is it really necessary to announce that you've taken a specific position. Should we all layout all of our related positions on every post about a company?

This doesn't belong here.

I think it's good to disclose financial interests if you're making a point about a company, like disclosing if you are an employee.

I'm putting my money where my mouth is. No, not necessary; contingent. No, we shouldn't all lay out positions.

Given how much hacker news has been gamed lately, this does belong here.

So then say your short. Why do I need know at what strike price you bought at? This isn't wall street bets.

Hope you sell those soon before you lose it all.

I hope he doesn’t cave in. All the companies who signed onto the campaign to stop advertising on Facebook are essentially against the fundamental principles freedom of speech and expression. I don’t plan to buy from them any longer, because they’re normalizing censorship.

He won't cave. If he did, he'd lose, not advertisers, but users. Some fraction of his user base cares about being able to express those opinions.

> I don’t plan to buy from them any longer, because they’re normalizing censorship.

Go make a right-wing social media site, or join one that exists now. There's people threatening civil war if Trump isn't re-elected, without being challenged or 'censored'.

Freedom of speech is from the government, private companies have freedom to choose what they allow, given they also have free speech

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