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Facebook's advertising integrity chief leaves company
- eznzt 6y agoWhy do they hire people for positions such as "chief of advertising integrity"? Haters are gonna hate; the legacy media won't stop hating on them just because they have a "chief of advertising integrity".
- jhowell 6y agoThe tweet referenced in the article. Anyone come across technical insight into the limitation? https://mobile.twitter.com/robleathern/status/1326640178241413122 https://mobile.twitter.com/robleathern/status/13266401782414...
- anupamchugh 6y agoFacebook is a company that never stood by small businesses. It's also the company that manipulated users into a free basic services just to create their own walled garden in the internet. Still, sardonically they created two ad campaigns: Apple vs free internet and vs small businesses. Their whole marketing stunt was laughably wrong. No wonder their chief left the company.
- bcherny 6y ago> Facebook is a company that never stood by small businesses. Curious what makes you say this? Knowing a handful of small business owners, I hear lots of good things about how great FB ads are for reaching their customers without requiring multi-million dollar ad spends, agencies, etc.
- mrtksn 6y agoI find that argument unconvincing. If there were no ads, would have people starve to death because they would not be able to find restaurants? Also, local businesses can da a lot to turn heads without having a giant IT system spying on the people. Sure, FB provides value to its users but when they don’t provide the service, they don’t provide it for everyone. Local businesses spending on better signs and better service could be actually much better for the local community as the resources remain local and they get better service instead of sending their money to FB in exchange for reach shortcut.
- absolutelyrad 6y ago"Chief of Advertising Integrity" does anyone take that title seriously? Forget advertising, Facebook and it's CEO himself has no integrity.
- objclxt 6y agoFacebook uses “Integrity” as a friendly synonym for abuse / spam / illegal activity. For example, it avoids them actively having to say they have a “fake accounts team” (which would in turn indicate they have a fake accounts problem). Instead it’s part of the “Community Integrity team”.
- nowherebeen 6y agoSo it's a form of doublespeak?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI don’t know that I’d call it doublespeak. There’s a lot to be said for defining a job in terms of what it’s trying to produce rather than what it’s trying to fight.
- nowherebeen 6y agoGot it
- yesitstrue2 6y agoIn principle, good point. In practice, it really depends on where your levels of cynicism are at. Crediting FB with wanting to "produce 'integrity'" or even that they're "trying to fight" the myriad of destructive externalities their money-geyser has spewed forth is.. generous.
- tsimionescu 6y agoI think the point is more that they are fighting click-spam and other kinds of advertising fraud, to maintain the integrity of their advertising platform, in the sense in which an antivirus is maintaining the integrity of your system; NOT the sense in which an anti-graft law is maintaining the integrity of a politician.
- rock_hard 6y agohttps://twitter.com/robleathern/status/1345133167833997317?s=21 https://twitter.com/robleathern/status/1345133167833997317?s... His own statement
- geodel 6y agoFrom Twitter: > After almost 4 years, I made the difficult decision to leave Facebook, and 12/30/20 was my last day at FB. I've had a great experience in a difficult, fun, fast-growing and impactful role at the company working with amazing people From internet: > At Facebook, RSUs are subject to a 4-year vesting schedule: 25% vests in the 1st year (5% every 2.4 months), then 25% in each of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th years (6.25% every 3 months) I guess good for him to enjoy his wealth now. I wish him good health.
- high_derivative 6y agoThe initial 4 year schedule is largely irrelevant, considering high performers get large refreshers.
- ffggvv 6y agonot true. people usually have a large cliff after four years where their compensation goes down. because they ir initial grant is no longer vesting so they go from: initial grant / 4 + (refreshers x 3) per year to: refreshers x 4 per year in addition, refreshers are given at the current stock price whereas the initial was grant was given at the 4 years ago price which was much lower therefore appreciated considerably
- fractionalhare 6y agoAnd even those who receive just a standard "Meets Expectations" rating receive sufficient refreshers that there isn't that big a cliff after four years either. It may go from something like $500k to $450k. There's a lot of jumping around at the 3-year mark, especially for people who want to cash in their FAANG brand for a similar package somewhere else. But once you get to E5 and higher there is significant financial incentive to stay with FB for longer than the initial four years.
- matchbok 6y agoRemember, if you work for FB, you are part of the problem.
- tjpnz 6y agoI suspect a lot of people either believe there isn't a problem, that if there's one it's been overplayed or simply don't care.
- wtf_is_up 6y agoWhat problem?
- macintux 6y agohttps://daringfireball.net/2020/12/facebook_unknowable_megascale https://daringfireball.net/2020/12/facebook_unknowable_megas...
- dcgudeman 6y agoI don’t know why people are downvoting you. I had the same question.
- 3gg 6y agoIt could have passed as a troll question given that this is an old an well-known problem, but I guess it's best to err on the side of informing people than turning them away.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Zelphyr 6y agoI feel strongly that we’re at the point where one can’t think of Facebook and be ignorant of the problems and the clear abusive practices they have and continue to be engaged in. Every time they get caught they feint an apology and proceed to either ignore the issue, continue that same practice but in a different way, or engage in some new abusive scheme. It is foundational to them because it is fundamentally part of Mark Zuckerberg’s ethics, or lack there of as the case appears to be. So... in my opinion anyone going to work for Facebook, or continuing to work for them is no different than someone doing the same at a tobacco company. They know what is going on at those organizations and they are choosing to look the other way. That in and of itself is not illegal, of course, but they can’t cry foul when they get accused of doing immoral and unethical things while employed there.
- izzytcp 6y agoWho gives a sh*t? Why is this even shared here? HackerNews needs to get back to Engineering please. And, what the hell is Chief of Advertising Integrity ...
- annadane 6y agoWhy even bother commenting like that? You're not contributing anything
- zwlee94 6y agoi completely disagree. i'm glad this person wrote that - it lets me know that this board isn't completely 100% dead and there's people here who think posts about 'facebooks integrity advertising chief' have no business being on a board about Hacker News. maybe everyone is afraid to speak up against this kind of useless B.S. for fear of being accused of not being 'constructive' enough or something.
- djohnston 6y agoI disagree. I don't think it added any value. It's self evident why something ends up on the front page right? I don't go around shitting on every topic I'm not interested in, it's a waste of our finite time.
- blackbrokkoli 6y agoI will be first in line to cynically complain about inappropriate topics on HN, but why do you think this particular post is irrelevant? Software culture is partly hacker culture, and Facebook is probably one of the most visible showcases of this culture - and therefore somewhat worthy of discussion on HackerNews, wouldn't you agree?
- DLay 6y agoSomeone on Reddit was speculating that Leathern is joining Brave: https://reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/koo0zt/_/ghsa7xw/?context=1 https://reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/koo0zt/_/ghsa7xw/?c...
- yalogin 6y agoThis is like Fox News having an ombudsman for honesty and integrity in reporting.
- nabla9 6y ago>"leaving Facebook to work on consumer privacy beyond just ads and social media” Palantir Technologies?
- thegabez 6y agoCould be Brave?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cs702 6y agoAs a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, but the company is finding it very difficult to do The Right Thing, because it would reduce future revenue growth, shrink long-term profitability, and hurt the company's competitive standing against the many other companies that are trying to eat Facebook's lunch every day. In the extreme, Facebook's choices appear to be: (a) act in the best interest of society and get f#cked by competitors; or (b) remain a dominant force in the market, but as a side effect, f#ck everybody. All options for Facebook appear to be a mix of those two horrible choices.
- rossdavidh 6y agoI see you're getting some downvotes, but I agree with you. Put another way, though: the problem is not Zuckerberg per se, it's the business model of advertising-supported, general-purpose social networks. If you took everybody out of Facebook and replaced them all with other equally qualified people, they would behave the same, as an organization. The problem is not Who, it's What. You can't "fix" Facebook, because the problem is pretty fundamental to what they are.
- soupson 6y agoYes. This is surveillance capitalism taken to its extreme. Facebook didn’t invent it, they’re just doing it in a way that makes the consequences more difficult to ignore than Google, which has been able to largely sidestep the blowback by being mission critical to so many people and also having massive goodwill projects that don’t directly point to being profit driven. It’s up to citizens of the US and EU to reign this in. We can hate the player but we gotta hate the game even more.
- SCHiM 6y agoI mean, GDPR is a step in the direction. Many websites, and by extension, people seem to think that you comply by 'gdpr' by putting up a stupid cookie banner. But the real compliance is not storing PII, then you don't even need a cookie bar!
- irateswami 6y agoThe words "Facebook" and "integrity" in the same sentence is an oxymoron.
- cm2012 6y agoFlagged because this thread has no value beyond people who don't like fb kvetching. The guy who left loves fb, he didn't leave because fb is being unethical.
- etempleton 6y agoI am always a bit surprised that Facebook ended up as reliant on advertising revenue as they are. I feel like they missed opportunities to replace Craigslist as the de facto online classifieds and to offer a payment system like Apple Pay. Perhaps these are only obvious in hindsight. I feel that most of their issues stem from their complete revenue reliance on advertising. It forces them to make decisions about their core product that reduces utility, but makes it superficially a more sticky user experience.
- johannes1234321 6y agoThe thing is that ads made them a lot quite quickly. Anything else will need time to grow to notable revenue streams. It's similar to Google in that regard, who always had revenue streams aside (like search appliances) but only now with different cloud-related (enterprise apps etc. included) projects. But yeah I wonder about their thoughts for embedding payment into WhatsApp. Given Facebook's size they of course get a lot of regulatory attention, but they seem to think in that direction with Libra and other projects.
- a3n 6y agoThe thing about ads as a user/product is that it doesn't feel like you're giving away resources at every interaction. You're just reading about grandkids and adrenochrome. It's about the lowest friction transaction there is.
- ma2rten 6y agoI used to work at the biggest social network in the Netherlands. They tried to make a push for becoming a classifieds site and also payments before Facebook, but neither of these worked out.
- disgruntledphd2 6y agoYeah, unfortunately ads is the most profitable business model on the internet for large sites with sticky user-bases. If FB thought they'd have made more money going after Craiglist and PayPal, then that's what they would have done ten years ago.
- shrimpx 6y agoThe idea that Facebook “works on privacy”, and that this guy is going to “work on privacy” elsewhere now, is the most facetious thing ever. It’s like saying that Trump’s legal team led by Giuliani “works on election integrity”.
- joshthecynic 6y ago"Advertising integrity chief" sounds like something straight out of Orwell.
- mrfusion 6y agoWell that’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one.
- coldtea 6y agoBeing Facebook's "advertising integrity chief" sounds like a sinecure, anyway...
- williesleg 6y agoFacebook is cancer.
- hooande 6y agoPeople are the problem, not Facebook. Conspiracy theories, FOMO and interpersonal toxicity existed long before social media, in roughly the same proportions. FB can prevent overt scammers and bad actors from using their platform, but that's about it. Any organization with the thinnest patina of legitimacy can and should be able to participate. Running a scam business tends to be low expense. They don't have much to invest in other than advertising, which is why scams dominate low value ad inventory. I don't blame facebook for this. It's just part of running one of history's largest advertising businesses. I understand that many of us here aren't fond of social media, but the majority of humans really like it. And they bring with them all of the worst (and best) aspects of social interaction. I don't blame facebook for that, either. Being angry at social media companies is like being angry at the mirror because you don't like your appearance. Facebook isn't the cause of humanity's problems. It's just the means by which we're observing them.
- andred14 6y agoThe censorship currently on Facebook is identical to the tactics of H1tler and his pal Dr. G0bbels. I was banned merely for sharing my polite opinion backed up with statistics and scientific facts. Why is that not OK?
- musicale 6y agoTIL Facebook had a "chief of advertising integrity." Be that as it may, I'm not sure we want to be dependent on Facebook to regulate the businesses and political organizations that advertise on its platforms. Perhaps the US should consider creating a Federal Trade Commission that could regulate advertisers, and perhaps a Federal Election Commission to regulate election-related spending, including advertising.
- mrpigeonpants 6y agoIt sounds good at first, until you find out the role was filled by a swarm of bees shaped like a human being.
- cute_boi 6y agohahaha they just appoint and if something wrong happens "Chief of Advertising Integrity" can be blamed and Mark can be act as god providing free services to small companies and people. Corporation has become so much evil and greedy, they have used every strategy so they cannot be taken down or cannot be regulate properly.