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"Chief of Advertising Integrity" does anyone take that title seriously? Forget advertising, Facebook and it's CEO himself has no integrity.
by 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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sorokod 6y agoLike a "Ministry of Peace" for war department?
- victorvation 6y agoWell, "Defence" would, as the intended product is not necessarily peace...
- sorokod 6y agoDefence, offense, it's really a matter of policy.
- andrei_says_ 6y agoAnd “Peace Officer” for police force trained to escalate.
- namdnay 6y agoI think doublespeak is when the two meanings are opposite, no? This sounds more like your standard corporate euphemism
- nowherebeen 6y agoFair enough
- wpietri 6y agoI can't find a definition like that. Wikipedia has it as "Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words." Which seems to fit perfectly for Facebook's behavior.
- pertymcpert 6y agoYou’re thinking of Doublethink from 1984.
- namdnay 6y agoAhhhh that's it, thanks!
- SilasX 6y agoI’d say doublespeak would be if “advertising integrity” were the department charged with respecting users’ privacy and (informed) choices, while said dept. executed Facebook’s policies that go very much against these things. But if parent is correct, the role is to enforce things users want (regarding spam/fraud/illegal goods), which matches standard notions of integrity, so it’s not doublespeak.
- herodoturtle 6y agoSo if the Chief of Advertising Integrity leaves the company it might be a good thing? As in they no longer have integrity issues? Gotta love these headlines /s
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoPulled straight out of the Moral Mazes playbook, chapter on “dexterity with symbols.”
- wpietri 6y agoOh, interesting! I hadn't heard of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Mazes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Mazes At this point, its research is nearly 40 years out of date. Is it still worth reading? And are there more up-to-date versions?
- hitekker 6y agoI’m reading it right now And I highly recommend it. Many of its insights remain both relevant and thought-provoking.
- Smaug123 6y agoZvi Mowshowitz talks a lot about it, starting at https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/05/30/quotes-from-moral-mazes/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/05/30/quotes-from-moral-ma... (main sequence page https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2020/05/23/mazes-sequence-summary/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2020/05/23/mazes-sequence-summa...). I found his sequence valuable.
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoMoral Mazes is one of the rare books I return to and read multiple times. Far from being out of date, 40 years later it is more relevant and the research lines up more directly with corporate behavior than really any other research on this topic written since then. It really is a tremendous book.
- anthuswilliams 6y agoThe latest printing includes an afterword by the author reflecting on the financial crisis, but most of the book is the original text. I recommend this book to everyone with a white-collar job. It's an incredible read. The research is a bit out of date, but the truths still hold. If anything, the age of the research is somewhat helpful. The phenomena these days are more subtle, and many of us work in companies with flatter hierarchies than the 25+ level pyramids the author studied. So the distance in time forces you to reflect on what has changed and whether the results are relevant to you. You will recognize so many of the situations as reminiscent of things you have experienced and haven't been able to put into words. It is 100% worth the read.
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- antiterra 6y agoThis is inaccurate, ‘integrity’ appears to just be a generalized term for any sort of content policing or support, including recovering passwords and memorializing accounts of the deceased. Teams have absolutely been identified by specific problem areas, so your reasoning doesn’t hold up. For example, “FNRP” stands for Fake, Not Real Person (which distinguishes from celebrity impersonation etc) per https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/may/21/revealed-facebook-internal-rulebook-sex-terrorism-violence https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/may/21/revealed-facebo...
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- saagarjha 6y agoI see “inauthentic content” show up a lot.
- nipponese 6y agoHis official title was Dir. of Product Management, which as you probably know, does not project integrity either.
- VonGuard 6y agoI mean, "Advertising Integrity" and "Facebook" shouldn't appear in the same sentence. Amazon is bad enough with fake reviews and retailers that ship terrible products when advertising them as something better. So it takes a lot to make me think something is worse and meaner to consumers than Amazon. But sure enough, Facebook is it. Their ads are about 60% complete scams, from what I can tell. I get all these ads for $200 Lego sets for $30! And there are hundreds of comments from people who have bought. Guarantee they all got 1 Lego brick in the mail 8 weeks later, and the site that sold it to them is gone. This would be bad if it was an occasional thing, but most Facebook ads I see are EXACTLY like this. Bait and switch. They send you a thing so you can't claim they didn't send you anything, but Facebook is making bank off of these dishonest scammers and seems not only not to care, but to encourage it. Oh and the thing they send you is from China, so sending it back costs more than you spent.
- icefrakker 6y agoSo it takes a lot to make me think something is worse and meaner to consumers than Amazon. That's a comment about yourself and not about Amazon. The idea that you can't find a shittier company than Amazon is completely laughable. What a completely insipid comment.
- joshthecynic 6y agoWell, "advertising" and "integrity" don't belong together anyway. Advertising is an inherently dishonest industry.
- dcgudeman 6y agoHonest question, what did Mark Zuckerberg do that makes you think he has “no integrity”?
- 3131s 6y agoGrandstanding about transferring all his wealth for tax purposes under the guise of it being "charity", obnoxious attempts to man-in-the-middle most of India's internet connectivity, screwing over users with "privacy zuckering" that causes settings to revert, etc. The joy of my life was seeing Zuckerberg getting absolutely owned on his own Facebook page by thousands and thousands of Indian people who wanted nothing to do with his money-grubbing initiatives.
- ses1984 6y agoPretty much everything he does makes me think he has no integrity.
- KittenInABox 6y agoAt least for me my impression of Mark Zuckerberg lowered significantly once I learned the details of him pressuring native hawaiian people via lawsuits from their ancestral lands so he can have an island to himself.
- nearbuy 6y agoIt sounds a bit less clear-cut than that. It seems that, through inheritance, 138 relatives each owned a tiny share of 2.35 acres of land, with one of the relatives, Carlos Andrade, owning a larger share and having been the only one living on the land. Andrade sued his relatives to force them to sell and compensate them for their shares. Zuckerberg sided with Andrade. I'm not sure of the details, but it sounds like he doesn't have the island to himself, since Andrade is living there, and it sounds like the other relatives weren't using the land.
- d33 6y agoHow about this one for a start? https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5?IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-im... There are so many problems surrounding Facebook and its CEO Zuckerberg that it's pretty difficult to choose one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAgbIiQSzEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAgbIiQSzEk That's the peak of cynicism that could only compare to politicians like Putin.
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- wpietri 6y agoI can't find it now, but I remember a story from somebody in the Lean Manufacturing world about a place that was having safety problems, so they appointed somebody Safety Director. This signaled to everybody that safety was that one guy's problem, not theirs. Accidents went up further and stayed up until they got rid of the Safety Directory position and made everybody responsible for safety. That resonated for me because I've seen that happen in software, that classic pattern where cowboy coders ship garbage to QA. The lowest bug rates I've seen are where everybody cares about quality. With Facebook, I expect that "Chief of Advertising Integrity" is sort of light a lightning rod. The job is not to solve the problem, it's to take the hits.
- drdeadringer 6y ago> That resonated for me because I've seen that happen in software, that classic pattern where cowboy coders ship garbage to QA. The lowest bug rates I've seen are where everybody cares about quality. On the flip side, I get nervous when I hear something akin to "We don't have QA here", sometimes as a matter of pride. Think of those times when you've heard someone snear at "Safety First", but for QA or testing. Perhaps one ideal would be to promote a "everyone cares about quality" environment whilst still having some people focused specifically on QA.
- smillbag 6y agoThat's such a funny story, and so predicate. I would love the source to this if it comes to anyones mind!
- avian 6y agoThis story explains why every workplace safety exam I ever took had at least one question similar to "who is responsible for fire/machine/... safety" where the only correct answer was "everyone".
- jacquesm 6y agoThis goes for computer security as well, but in practice without at least a voice in the management security will get axed on every turn because it is seen as all cost without benefit to the company. This is changing slowly, mostly on account of the GDPR, but it is still the prevailing view.
- ashleshbiradar 6y agowhat company has integrity? not trying to normalize bad things, but seriously, what profit-driven thing has integrity?
- a3n 6y agoOne place I would look is some, but not all, medical device companies. Making devices that are helpful and not lethal is motivational and fulfilling for employees, and great PR. Disclosure: I worked at such a company, and have much respect for the care and capability of almost everyone I knew.
- Cullinet 6y agoOne of the most highly moral and conscientious doctors I was lucky enough to attend school with is now a medical equipment director having been a incredibly young board member of a major American pharma Corp. I definitely agree with your views here.
- lordnacho 6y agoMy local fish and chip shop sells fish that's fish and chips that are potatoes. They don't take my money for nothing, and they don't take my data to sell me ads. I'm sure you can think of a few other for-profit businesses that do what they say and say what they do.
- indymike 6y agoI'm impressed with whatever branding exercise came up with Chief of Advertising Integrity. So much meaning and non meaning at all in the same four words.
- victor9000 6y agoI imagine that this role reports to some middle manager in the PR department.
- onetimemanytime 6y agoFB's "Chief of Advertising Integrity" and Google's "Chief of Privacy Integrity" ....
- vr46 6y agoMy immediate thought was that ‘they even have one?’
- rapnie 6y agoMaybe the corresponding role was "front-end marketing designer".
- tempodox 6y ago“Integrity” (literally: Being whole, not fractured), in that case, means: “Every ad on the planet goes through Facebook”.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y agoI would not take any titles at Facebook seriously. We know that they create titles like this and assign them when useful for PR purposes.1 I think that is just one more thing that prevents me from taking anything about "Facebook, Inc." seriously. Powerful yes, legitimate no. 1 The story of the Onavo founder they took on after the Onavo purchase was one example.
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