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Comment by vegashacker | Hacker News Reader

The OP says that they are not accusing FB of using bots to drive up revenue.

They refused to overtly accuse them, but the subtext seem to argue exactly that.

Which is really taking things too far - if Facebook wanted to generate some revenue with bots then it wouldn't be very difficult for them to write ones that supported JavaScript.

That is true, but Facebook's reputation would suffer seriously if they were ever caught.

What they (Facebook) are doing now seems to be some version of DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell).

I don't think so, there's lots of reasons that would be a stupid idea for Facebook. But there's clearly something shady going on, and Facebook is being dicks to them in other ways, so they're out. That's the subtext.

They end the bot section with "But let's move on, because who the bots belong to isn't provable." after saying that they weren't accusing Facebook of running the bots. The subtext is screaming out.

Does me pointing out the barely shrouded subtext mean that I believe what they are saying? Of course not. It's just as likely, it seems, that their test is simply flawed (as others said, let's see the technical honey trap), that it's some other technical fault, etc. I highly doubt, just on intuition, that Facebook is running such broken bots: Come on, they'd do a better job than make something so easily detected.

It would be outrageous for FB to run the bots themselves. There's two other issues that are more realistic and unfortunately not so great for FB: they're aware of the bots and ignoring them in favor of the ad revenue or they're just becoming aware of the bots and will implement some fix which could result in a substantial decrease in ad revenue. Good to keep in mind that OP's 80% is just one data point and may not be accurate.

I actually think they were trying to say something strange is going on, which I think is pretty obvious given their stats, and that they have no idea who's doing it or why, partially because Facebook can't be bothered to look into it or at least get back to them about it.

That to me sounds like FB is aware of the issue and isn't interested in discussing it. That's the subtext imo.

My own suspicion would be because someone is gaming their ads and they haven't been able to prevent it as of yet, and not because they themselves are gaming the numbers. No doubt they believe that discussing it is tacit admission that they haven't been able to prevent it, which is bad for business.

I see what you're saying, it just isn't very hard for me to take them at their word: They're not claiming that it's Facebook, not out of some sense of propriety, but because they don't have any evidence that it is. It could be anyone.

And it doesn't matter who it is, because they're leaving for a different reason: Facebook never returns their calls unless it's with an offer of extortion.

While I doubt malicious intent on FB's part there's certainly a financial incentive to ignore this problem. How would their earnings reports change if they stopped charging at least some advertisers for 80% of clicks?

It would be a very, very short term financial incentive.

Advertisers monitor to see performance on the other end, and when the campaigns don't yield actual success they move on.

The only real exception to this are mega-brands that advertise just to build namespace. Everyone else expects direct action from some hefty percentage of their ads.

Are you saying it's short term because advertisers would notice? Sure some advertisers would notice. However I doubt the majority are capable of performing the OP's analysis (which could use some scrutiny).

Imagine a 100 person company with 5 people dedicated to advertising. Leadership says to increase on-line presence. Some recent college grad on the advertising team buys FB ads. Next month leadership is pleased that they're advertising on Facebook. Also leadership is pleased that sales increased x%. The FB ads could be completely worthless. Some non-trivial percentage of clicks could be from bots and no one would notice.

You act as if "everyone else" sees results from FB ads. They don't. This is a well known problem. They have a high rate of adoption from new sign-ons, and also a high level of departure. While the first number is greater than the second number, they are ok. Either they will manage to improve value and keep more of the advertisers, or one day the Ponzi scheme implodes.

You act as if "everyone else" sees results from FB ads. They don't.

Most ads target a specific outcome: You buy a product, create an account, joining a mailing list, etc. Even the most technically incompetent advertisers establishes these fundamental metrics such that they can say "I spent $1,000,000 on Facebook ads and only got ten signups. I spent $1,000,000 on iAds ads and got ten million signups." That sort of thing.

I think Hanlon's Razor is appropriate here: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I don't think so; if anything, the subtext is merely arguing that Facebook isn't doing anything to stop the problem. Whether that is just as bad as running the botnet itself, that is another thing.

Assuming the problem is as bad as many are saying, I personally think it's fair to draw the same conclusion you have -- running and letting run a botnet is one and the same. It's costing other businesses money; it's too big for Facebook to be able to play dumb on the issue.

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