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What you’re missing is that Facebook doesn’t really want to solve this problem — dollars from Russians are still green. They just want the news story to go away
by ggg9990 9y ago
What you’re missing is that Facebook doesn’t really want to solve this problem — dollars from Russians are still green. They just want the news story to go away.
- adventured 9y agoThey generated $20 billion in operating income last year. They have $41 billion in cash. There's zero chance they're interested in the $2 million ad buy from Russian propaganda agents.
- ggg9990 9y agoIt’s not these ads in particular — it’s that culturally, Facebook believes that it should be able to sell whatever the hell ads it wants to whomever it pleases, and when someone questions that, Facebook’s instinctual response is “shut up please.”
- threeseed 9y agoThis is just nonsense. Facebook absolutely wants to solve this problem. It harms their brand, they are attracting scores of negative media and worst of all every day of inaction gets them closer to media-style regulation. And they are unquestionably making changes from News Feed algorithm updates to more rigid rules around buying ads to additional factor authentication in this case.
- ewjordan 9y agoFacebook leans left AF, as do most places in the Bay (whether people like it or not) apart from special cases like Palantir. From the bottom to the top of the chain of command they are as upset as anyone that they were used to nudge things to the right. They want the news story to go away, but they also want to stuff it all down Putin's throat, and Trump's as well. Russian trolls did not make up even a small percentage of their ad profits last year, I wouldn't assume they're protecting them in the name of a very small amount of money.