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"My favorite statistic this year was Facebook’s claim that 75 million people watched at least a minute of Facebook Watch videos every day — though, as Facebook

"My favorite statistic this year was Facebook’s claim that 75 million people watched at least a minute of Facebook Watch videos every day — though, as Facebook admitted, the 60 seconds in that one minute didn’t need to be watched consecutively. Real videos, real people, fake minutes." With all the recent news [0] coming out around FB and their practices, I've only one thing to say now: I knew they were evil, but I didn't think they were stupid too. [0] 'fake', who knows after this article?

agumonkey 8y ago
I tend to consider internet measures to be 0.1% of real world measures anyway. You don't perceive, think, feel the same when you went out to see something in the flesh. If you divide internet time by the ratio of ADD in each user at the time you get epsilon
ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
That's a good point, but I think many of these videos only require 5 seconds to really get the point. If Facebook wants to say I watched 1 minute of videos and its because they saw me stop scrolling and continuously digest a couple seconds of some buzzfeed video that is fine with me and I would think is honest. But if their calculations includes videos that I "watched" for 1 second or less than 1 second, and didn't even pause my scrolling.... that is pretty wretched.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  But if their calculations includes videos that I "watched" for 1 second or less than 1 second, and didn't even pause my scrolling.... that is pretty wretched. Worse, they count videos that auto-played on the page after you scrolled, then walked away from the computer to get a beverage.
nkurz 8y ago
I didn't really understand this criticism. If one were to say that American's on average watch almost 4 hours of television per day[1], is it at all misleading that this might not be done in a solid block? All the other criticisms aside, I'm just fine with saying "1 minute per day" even if this involves several short videos. [1] Yes, this actually is the correct figure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption. 3 hr 58 min per day; 35.5 hr per week; 77 days per year. And if you are thinking to yourself "Well I don't watch any!", remember that this just means someone else is watching twice the average to make up the difference.
- swsieber 8y ago
  A minute is a small time. Small enough that it can be comprised fully of mistaken video starts. Given that the videos auto-play, I wouldn't be surprised if a significant portion of the count was from videos autoplaying as people scrolled theough.
  - ben_w 8y ago
    Disagree. Five seconds is in that category, one minute is in the “ha ha my cat fell off my bed isn’t that cute” category.
    - eigenvector 8y ago
      The 1 minute can just be 5 seconds 12 times, which is pretty easy to accomplish with autoplay while scrolling Facebook while never deliberately watching anything.
      - kazinator 8y ago
        Vegging in front a TV for two hours can be accomplished without deliberately watching anything. It's a captive pair of eyes that can be subliminally programmed, even if no deliberately watching.
        eigenvector 8y ago
        But even if you passively watch TV while doing something else - like cooking for instance - you at least show the intent to do that. Your TV doesn't turn itself off and play in the background even if you actively don't want it like web auto-play videos attached to unrelated content (your social feed) do.
  - kazinator 8y ago
    So, in other words, you are in no way misled by Facebook's wording. Just other people might be and that's wrong!
- 8y ago
duxup 8y ago
I worked at a company where they hired a new marketing VP. After a year the CEO stood up with the marketing VP to talk about their amazing marketing accomplishments. I was confused as still nobody really knew our company other than existing customers, our marketing was awkward, social media accounts even more awkward and dumb, and so on. So they rolled out their big marketing accomplishment. Old youtube advertisements (also way awkward / looked like a video of a bad power point presentation) had been skipped by users at a high rate. Now, ZERO of our youtube ads had been skipped in the past 6 months. This of course made little sense as someone, somewhere, had to have skipped an advertisement right? Turns out they shortened the ads so that they were below the time that allowed a user to click skip.... and this was their big accomplishment. It was a non real accomplishment as far as I was concerned ... but they got all the high fives and bonuses, so I guess it was real.
- Balgair 8y ago
  Perception is reality in a lot of the bigger orgs. That said, physics and economics still catch up sooner or later, though typically later. Glad to hear you've moved on. I hope the current 'thing you do all day' isn't quite as easily fooled.
- ritchiea 8y ago
  It may actually be an accomplishment. They figured out how to take advantage of the system so that users could not skip your ads. That might be a great thing. But the nature of the accomplishment requires you to change your metrics to evaluate the success of your ad campaigns rather than keep the same metrics and label yourselves a success.
kazinator 8y ago
Nothing about that statement suggests that anyone watches an uninterrupted minute of anything. If I say I drink 2l of water a day, it's not a reasonable interpretation that I'm quaffing 2l in one sitting once every 24 hours.

agumonkey 8y ago

I tend to consider internet measures to be 0.1% of real world measures anyway. You don't perceive, think, feel the same when you went out to see something in the flesh. If you divide internet time by the ratio of ADD in each user at the time you get epsilon

ghostbrainalpha 8y ago

That's a good point, but I think many of these videos only require 5 seconds to really get the point. If Facebook wants to say I watched 1 minute of videos and its because they saw me stop scrolling and continuously digest a couple seconds of some buzzfeed video that is fine with me and I would think is honest. But if their calculations includes videos that I "watched" for 1 second or less than 1 second, and didn't even pause my scrolling.... that is pretty wretched.

reaperducer 8y ago
But if their calculations includes videos that I "watched" for 1 second or less than 1 second, and didn't even pause my scrolling.... that is pretty wretched. Worse, they count videos that auto-played on the page after you scrolled, then walked away from the computer to get a beverage.

nkurz 8y ago

I didn't really understand this criticism. If one were to say that American's on average watch almost 4 hours of television per day[1], is it at all misleading that this might not be done in a solid block? All the other criticisms aside, I'm just fine with saying "1 minute per day" even if this involves several short videos. [1] Yes, this actually is the correct figure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption. 3 hr 58 min per day; 35.5 hr per week; 77 days per year. And if you are thinking to yourself "Well I don't watch any!", remember that this just means someone else is watching twice the average to make up the difference.

swsieber 8y ago
A minute is a small time. Small enough that it can be comprised fully of mistaken video starts. Given that the videos auto-play, I wouldn't be surprised if a significant portion of the count was from videos autoplaying as people scrolled theough.
- ben_w 8y ago
  Disagree. Five seconds is in that category, one minute is in the “ha ha my cat fell off my bed isn’t that cute” category.
  - eigenvector 8y ago
    The 1 minute can just be 5 seconds 12 times, which is pretty easy to accomplish with autoplay while scrolling Facebook while never deliberately watching anything.
    - kazinator 8y ago
      Vegging in front a TV for two hours can be accomplished without deliberately watching anything. It's a captive pair of eyes that can be subliminally programmed, even if no deliberately watching.
      - eigenvector 8y ago
        But even if you passively watch TV while doing something else - like cooking for instance - you at least show the intent to do that. Your TV doesn't turn itself off and play in the background even if you actively don't want it like web auto-play videos attached to unrelated content (your social feed) do.
- kazinator 8y ago
  So, in other words, you are in no way misled by Facebook's wording. Just other people might be and that's wrong!
8y ago

duxup 8y ago

I worked at a company where they hired a new marketing VP. After a year the CEO stood up with the marketing VP to talk about their amazing marketing accomplishments. I was confused as still nobody really knew our company other than existing customers, our marketing was awkward, social media accounts even more awkward and dumb, and so on. So they rolled out their big marketing accomplishment. Old youtube advertisements (also way awkward / looked like a video of a bad power point presentation) had been skipped by users at a high rate. Now, ZERO of our youtube ads had been skipped in the past 6 months. This of course made little sense as someone, somewhere, had to have skipped an advertisement right? Turns out they shortened the ads so that they were below the time that allowed a user to click skip.... and this was their big accomplishment. It was a non real accomplishment as far as I was concerned ... but they got all the high fives and bonuses, so I guess it was real.

Balgair 8y ago
Perception is reality in a lot of the bigger orgs. That said, physics and economics still catch up sooner or later, though typically later. Glad to hear you've moved on. I hope the current 'thing you do all day' isn't quite as easily fooled.
ritchiea 8y ago
It may actually be an accomplishment. They figured out how to take advantage of the system so that users could not skip your ads. That might be a great thing. But the nature of the accomplishment requires you to change your metrics to evaluate the success of your ad campaigns rather than keep the same metrics and label yourselves a success.

kazinator 8y ago

Nothing about that statement suggests that anyone watches an uninterrupted minute of anything. If I say I drink 2l of water a day, it's not a reasonable interpretation that I'm quaffing 2l in one sitting once every 24 hours.