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Comment by kevinsundar | Hacker News Reader

Assuming this is true, who comes up with ideas like this?

If I was an advertiser do I really want to pay to have my ad (video nonetheless) shown to someone while they're actively trying to have a phone call? As a user, I'd just be pissed off at the advertiser plus im not looking at my screen when talking.

I guess technically this increases ad "views" metrics. But advertisers are just wasting their money. I hope the fact that Meta is testing changes like this causes advertisers to re-evaluate the risks of using FB advertising.

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A PM who's been given a metric goal and has their performance staked on hitting goal with nothing to counter-balance their push to hit that goal.

I recall a presentation someone gave awhile back which said something like, "Give a PM a goal that their job depends on and they will burn the company down to hit it."

I was a PM at a FAANG in a former life, so I can understand the pressure. Thankfully, I never did anything like this, partly because my team had a strong focus on customer experience but also because I cared less about the financial/promotion incentives.

Sounds about right. From what I've heard, Meta is laser-focused on metrics compared to other tech companies and FAANGs, and entire promotion cycles are based around how much you "moved the needle" so to speak along some metrics. This "increase revenue through in-call ads" seems like low-hanging fruit for any PM or engineer who wanted to get promoted quickly.

I am certain the advertisers love this. All ads are intrusive, and generally the more intrusive the more expensive.

Yes but intruding into private audio calls is something users would be heavily suspicious of. It's not hard to imagine a non technical users thinking "OMG they're showing me ads based on my calls". Lots of people already think this.

Also its one thing to show an expensive ad on a screen that the user is actively looking at (that might actually be effective), and another to show an expensive ad on a screen that 95% of users are not looking at.

If true this will end up selecting for less technical people, which will mean it'll turn into an ad feed full of quack garbage that is aggressively marketed to less technical people.

But the ads they show will be based on your calls right? Because, how else...

Why would they have to be based on the calls? Facebook already knows a lot about the participants.

Has Facebook ever indicated they're capable of a "yep, we've got enough info on everyone, we're good" attitude?

My reply was to “how else…”

The call to action piece is missing because even if you see something you want to click-on you will avoid it because you have a live call

This looks like the layout for the "Watch Together" feature: https://messengernews.fb.com/2020/09/14/feel-together-messen...

There's a bottom section that slides up and if a user clicks on one of the videos it will play for all participants. If anyone sees this and didn't intentionally click on one of those videos please file a bug!

I wonder what would happen if there would be more "Karens", that would complain about this?

Looking at the screenshot, let's say it's a cat food ad... if that "Karen" would call the cat food company and complain that their ad wasted her time with an old relative, or whatever, and in turn waste that companies time... and multiply that with 10.000 karens,... but it needs people to actually be proactive about stuff like that.

I don’t understand why you would choose to say “karens” instead of “people”.

Because "Karens" are usually the ones who complain to managers about stuff like this. "People" just say "meh" or complain to a friend or two, and a "Karen" will go through a whole line of managers and complain to all of them.

Because lumping other people together under derogatory labels so that we can all more easily hate others is the "normal" way many humans interact with one another these days… :(

Ads are often (if not always) shown to users who are actively trying to do something else. Like watching a video or reading an article. Why should this be different?

> video or reading an article

Setting aside that people load their browsers up with ad blockers to avoid those too, they're also async experiences that have no real-time social dynamics involved with them. Video calls are interpersonal and interruptions are highly problematic.

Yes, but in the cases you mentioned the user is interacting with the same pane of glass. In this case, the user's interaction is voice, not the screen.

Also not to mention that calls are very private. And the impression it gives to consumers that their call is being used for ads or even tracking.

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