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Facebook hired PR firm that wrote negative articles about Apple and Google
- TACIXAT 8y ago>pushed the idea that liberal financier George Soros was behind a growing anti-Facebook movement Is there any real connection here? If not, it is really bad approach. People pissed off about misinformation on your platform? Better fuel some conspiracy theories to make up for it.
- hnmonkey 8y agoPerhaps they've seen how well this practice works on a subset of the American population and decided to emulate it because it was their best and least worst idea? While a bad approach it certainly seems to resonate with some portion of the populace.
- asdff 8y agoThis is exactly the danger. Morally egregious, but extremely effective advertising for the large swaths of uneducated and ill-informed. What is to stop a private corporation from polluting national discourse? Apparently nothing, now that Facebook has taken the drivers seat spreading loony conspiracy theories. This Russian playbook is public knowledge now, and intimately studied for better or worse.
- keyle 8y agoOk but ... "reportedly" and "didn't respond for comment", so that remains to be seen. I am not downplaying the effects of Facebook on politics though, that's a huge problem. It is true though that in many newspaper sites you'll find an inciendary title labelled "opinion" and that could be anti-anything and very biased with little sources (talking about the posts written by this PR firm). That stuff has to stop. People read it like the news being reported factually and the emphasis on "opinion" is never there.
- hnmonkey 8y agoThe word 'opinion' doesn't appear anywhere in the article, much less the whole page. You seem to be implying strongly that this article is fraudulent/biased with no evidence of that. I hope you do realize that news outlets (especially at the size of CNBC) fact-check and try to make sure their stories are vetted. They're not 100% perfect at that for sure, but you seem to be ascribing almost malice to them. 'People read it like the news being reported factually' because it is. That's literally what this is. There shouldn't be emphasis on 'opinion' because it's not an opinion piece. Your take on this news article is however straight up opinion.
- vatueil 8y agoI think keyle is suggesting PR campaigns like the one Facebook reportedly ran may publish slanted articles as "opinion" pieces, not that this news story is an opinion piece.
- hnmonkey 8y agoAhhhhhhhhh. Yes I suppose that is a possible take on what they said. It didn't seem at all clear to me that this was the case from my reading of it. keyle, if this is your message I'm totally sorry about my interpretation.
- jasonlotito 8y ago> reportedly Yes, because the original article is from NYTimes, which did the reporting. And from that article, they have quotes from specific people.
- detaro 8y agoURL should probably be https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-..., since the submitted URL seems to only report that NYT reported something.
- danso 8y agoAgreed, the NYT story is massive, and about so much more than hiring a PR firm to discredit critics. It includes a lot of detail of how Zuckerberg and Sandberg reacted very poorly to the warnings from former security chief Alex Stamos.
- puzzle 8y agoThis is not exactly new. Way back when Circles/Plus were being developed/launched/leaked, FB paid a PR company (M-B, I think) to attack Google, while insisting on keeping anonymous about their funding. I was at Google at the time and almost everyone thought of the usual suspects of that era: Microsoft, Oracle or even Steve Jobs. FB was not on the radar on that front yet and thus took everyone by surprise.
- notacoward 8y agoHere's a story about that firm from June of last year. https://www.recode.net/2017/6/7/15746928/republicans-political-opposition-tech-silicon-valley-trump https://www.recode.net/2017/6/7/15746928/republicans-politic... The big question for me is not whether hiring an opposition-research firm is within normal ethical limits. That ship sailed long ago, and don't think for a moment that FB is the only one who has ever hired such an outfit. The question is: why this one? Just one look at the people involved and their records would have told anyone who was paying attention that it's an exceptional sleaze magnet and engaging with them could not turn out well in the long term. Seriously, not a wise choice.
- simonsaidit 8y agoSomeone was recently convicted for fake hotel reviews if I remember right. I don’t see how this should be any different.
- shanghaiaway 8y agoSo Facebook is producing fake news. Hmm.
- adtac 8y agoAh, the Netflix model. After a point, you just have to start producing your own content.
- gerdesj 8y agoSirs Big company gets critical piece published about a competitor: Good Lord, really? ... soz ... RLY? This issue about fake news is really starting to get on my nerves (tits). Fake news is not a new thing and certainly was not invented in the current decade. Sincerely Angry of Andover
- vageli 8y agoI believe the parent was mocking the notion that FB is taking any effort of policing fake news seriously given that they themselves are producers of disinformation.
- jimjimjim 8y agoDoes facebook ever do anything with a shred of decency or just plain not-evil?
- PavlovsCat 8y agoWhat I don't get is why they don't "just" try genuinely cleaning up their act. Why not be rich, stable and wholesome; why reach for filthy rich and filthy? Unbridled greed, and wanting to be so good one cannot admit any wrongdoing, can easily wrap around to being more self-destructive than selfish.
- ravenstine 8y agoThey're not doing that because their long-term goal is to remain formless while consuming other businesses, like they have with Instagram and WhatsApp. Long before those have gone into terminal decline, they will have purchased some other trending technology. I don't think they really believe anyone's going to be talking about Facebook in another 5 years, and it may even go full Livejournal in the next year or so. Besides that fact, they never had a clean act in the first place. Zuckerberg's vision was never to "make the world more connected", no matter how many times he said it. Anyone who actually looked into the guy would have found out quickly that he was a talented programmer who happened to do the right thing at the right time, but never in a million years had the ethos of changing the world for the better. The company of Facebook never had a leader with a clean vision, nor will it ever.
- CaptainZapp 8y agoLong before those have gone into terminal decline, they will have purchased some other trending technology. I don't think so. Any other significant acquisition by Facebook will be scrutinized by a very fine comb by the responsible authorities. While this will matter less in the US I don't believe that European competition authorities would allow those deals to go through today. In addition the really dirty slime oozing out of that carbuncle [and what else did they try to pull off, which we don't know yet?] also won't really help new acquisitions.
- randycupertino 8y agoThis reminds me of the youtube beauty gurus who will get paid 25k to give a positive review of the client's product, but can make 85k from the same client for leaving a negative review of a competitor's client. https://www.revelist.com/beauty-news-/beauty-influencer-negative-reviews/13369 https://www.revelist.com/beauty-news-/beauty-influencer-nega... Relevant quote, ""A brand I consulted with asked me to inquire about working with a top-level beauty influencer. The influencer's management offered me these options: 1) $25K — product mention in a multi-branded product review. 2) $50K–$60K — dedicated product review (price determined by length of video). 3) $75K–$85K — dedicated negative review of a competitor's product (price determined by length of video). 4) A minimum 10% affiliate link or code to use on IG and YT."
- asdff 8y agoThe market is eating itself. The old adage was that if you wanted your competitor's market share, you had to design a better product. You can now get away with selling a worse product, if your advertising convinces consumers that the previous model is worthless or the competitor's product is poor. The pricing data here supports that negative advertising goes a lot further than positive advertising. What is the incentive to pay for good product design or innovation if it's more profitable to pay off reviewers and advertisers to lie for you? Why develop a valuable product when you can so easily lie about its actual value? We are moving out of an age of engineering and into an age of advertising and snake oil.
- manigandham 8y agoMarketing includes making a product and finding customers through messaging, so nothing is changing. False advertising has long been against the law but social media and the various "influencer" platforms are mostly unregulated wastelands that dont have proper oversight or standards. It's not like unscrupulous companies weren't able to buy bad word-of-mouth before.
- slededit 8y agoThe 50s was the golden age of advertising, and the basis for the show Mad Men. Its no coincidence this was around the time that it was discovered the product really wasn't important. It was more about how the person felt when buying and consuming that product. In short the "better mousetrap" hasn't been thought true for the last 70 years. If you are going to actually make a better product you better make your customer feel smart for buying it - or you will fail.
- cmsonger 8y agoClassy.
- espeed 8y agoLast month when the spin pieces posted on why WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton left, I asked, "Who's submarines [0] are these?"... the contrast in the two articles is telling.... [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078230
- ggggtez 8y agoThe politics are not surprising. They fact that they managed to not know about radicalizing content and fake news (or not care) is more surprising. They have the data. It's staring them in the face.
- stevespang 8y agoJust like cockroaches caught inside a trap with no way out - - they will all try to exploit/capitalize on each other's weaknesses, just at the right moment, sever an arm or a leg, feed upon it just to stay alive. Last man standing.
- assblaster 8y agoI still wonder to this day who is paying WSJ authors to write hit pieces against YouTube. It's uncanny how the WSJ is persistent in its attacks on top YouTube personalities for the purpose of getting advertisers to leave the platform, see adpocolypse.
- assblaster 8y agoMy best guess is Amazon/Facebook, for the purpose of boosting Twitch and Amazon video, though I also suspect Fox/Hulu.
- danso 8y agoHow is it “uncanny”? Because the WSJ tech reporter has found an issue and decides to keep reporting on it, as new developments and revelations are made? Who do you think paid the WSJ reporters who kept on writing “hit pieces” on Theranos until Theranos collapsed?
- shard972 8y agoI don't even see how the two can be compared... Who broke the law on youtube? Who even lied about something? Oh yea, someone yelled nigger in a video game. Totally worth those investigational journalists getting to the bottom of wether or not pewdiepie is racist.
- jshevek 8y agoIt seems less distasteful to me if you at least put that word your are quoting in quotation marks.
- harmmonica 8y agoI don't mean to be cheeky, but I think the owner of the WSJ is paying them. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118589043953483378 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118589043953483378 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-02/murdoch-seeks-to-dent-google-s-ad-dominance-after-youtube-revolt https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-02/murdoch-s...
- shard972 8y agoNot sure why this is news, just the free market in motion. If consumers didn't like this, they can just signup for another social media network.
- tdb7893 8y agoIf you are talking about market efficiency one of the main components of it (which is really often overlooked) is access to accurate information to be able to judge the quality of products. It hurts consumers when they do things like this and consumers also can't do anything about it unless they know about it (which is the whole point of the article that you are dismissing).
- jordonwii 8y ago...What other social media network?
- tdb7893 8y agoPerfect time to switch to Google+! /s
- merricksb 8y agoActive discussion about the original NYT report from a few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18453958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18453958