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> Facebook has systematically shut down our 2 small businesses during a pandemic and economic crisis without explanation. If you've spent $57MM on Facebook ads

by smoyer 6y ago

> Facebook has systematically shut down our 2 small businesses during a pandemic and economic crisis without explanation. If you've spent $57MM on Facebook ads, are you still considered a "small business"? Perhaps I'm out of touch. I think the warning about building your business on someone else's land still applies but I'm not sure how you get around that when so much of the world's attention is controlled by a few truly giant companies.

__s 6y ago
> I think the warning about building your business on someone else's land There aren't really any businesses which have sovereign territory
- ffhhj 6y ago
  > There aren't really any businesses which have sovereign territory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City
  - saotome 6y ago
    touché
- smoyer 6y ago
  That's an interesting position (and I'm not disputing it) but if you were a business that has sovereign territory, you still need utilities (Internet). Penn State has its own data-centers, is part of the Internet2 consortium and has dedicated fiber to both AWS and Azure but you're still ultimately reliant on those you're leasing the connections from - even if you own the fiber, you're probably leasing the right-of-way/poles/etc. So ... how do we build an Internet that's fully inter-connected but can withstand actions by the few relatively large carriers? Thinking about it a bit more, isn't the effect of having a few large network providers analogous to the issue with BitCoin having a few large mining operations in effective control of the ecosystem?
  - MichaelZuo 6y ago
    Satellite fleets?
    - smoyer 6y ago
      Which could theoretically be done today but then you'd be a tenant of Musk. I really think the idea of mesh networks is great for neighborhoods but can it be extended to a global-scale network (well ... continent scale until there's a personal communication mechanism that will cross oceans)? EDIT: This was posted on today's "Who is hiring?" thread - not really p2p Internet but ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25633106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25633106
      - jki275 6y ago
        You can theoretically run a very low bandwidth set of links over any radio technology, including HF which will give you that long range connectivity. Problem is, people expect streaming video on their smartphones. You can't do that over low bandwidth over the horizon links. Continent scale? Depends on the continent. No way to do that in the Americas, there's just too much open space. You could do it in many cities I do think.
      - MichaelZuo 6y ago
        I imagine there are no upper bounds to the growth of satellite communication capabilities other than physical limits. Extrapolating a few decades at current growth rates out the network be enormous.
  - toast0 6y ago
    Carrier's ability to influence has everything to do with their duopoloy on the last mile to the eyeballs. If you're in the position to lease a connection to an internet exchange, you've got tons of options for transit from there. And leasing fiber is generally a matter of location and cost, not content; I don't know if it's strictly common carrier, but it might be.
- dspillett 6y ago
  On a single someone else's land then? Going multi-platform from the start is probably not the way to go as you are adding complication before you have the basics rounded out, but once you are spending that much on advertising you presumably have a sizable turn-over and should have long ago looked at diversifying to deal with situations like this which (even if temporary) could kill the business model. Of course if FB is truly the only game in town for your target audience, you have a problem there...
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  Aren’t countries a business?
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  Funnily enough, I worked for a company that sold software to casinos, many of which very much exist on sovereign tribal land, where they're often the single major business entity. It led to some quirkiness: we had to disavow ourselves of almost all cloud services. They wanted all the software and data on-prem because they didn't want anything on U.S. soil.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  You don't have to be sovereign to own land. I own land.
- kube-system 6y ago
  Well, at least not currently. The East India Company didn't worry about building their business on other people's land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India There are a couple authoritarian states that have fully-owned state enterprises that people might also argue are one-in-the-same.
cookingmyserver 6y ago
I think that it could be considered a small business, but on the upper side probably. Their ads are the supplies they use to make their product. It works out to 4 million a year, although I doubt they were spending anywhere near that much starting off (which is why I think they could be past the point of the public's perception of a small business). It would be like looking at how much a small business fabricator spent on metal and other supplies. That number is going to be larger than what they actually bring in as profit. If ads aren't your supplies then it would absolutely be an indication of being a large business if you spent $57 million on marketing.
rsweeney21 6y ago
The US Government, specifically the SBA, defines a small business as any business with fewer than 1,500 employees and less than $38.5 million in average annual receipts. I was surprised by this definition too.
- 542458 6y ago
  Hunh, I would have thought it would be "or". I'm surprised as well!
- smarx007 6y ago
  That sounds a bit strange, I would count any business with more than employees to be "medium" and 1000 to be large. Think of coffee shops: 1500 people allows you to have a network across multiple cities. But w.r.t. the amounts of money, they spent $57MM over 15 years, so it's $4MM/y using very rough math. Upd: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/files/Size_Standards_Table.pdf https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/files/Size_Standards... says on p. 29 that it's less than $27.5MM or 1000 people, so you are right, it's quite a high bar. Upd2: EU caps small businesses at 50 people and medium at 250, which sounds much more reasonable to me https://www.ucl.ac.uk/procurement/suppliers/smes#:~:text=Definition,not%20more%20than%2050%20employees https://www.ucl.ac.uk/procurement/suppliers/smes#:~:text=Def....
kelchqvjpnfasjl 6y ago
I don't think that is $57MM in one year. I think that is over the lifetime of the business.
tgv 6y ago
The term was probably used to garner sympathy. "We, poor, small business owners, in the process of extracting the last bit of your muddled brain's attention, ..." But I'm sure they wouldn't have spent $57M if they hadn't extracted more than that from other advertising parties.
- papichulo4 6y ago
  Are we really going to be willfully ignorant of the fact that it's $57m CAD over 15 years? That's $3.8m CAD per year. Come on now. Let's not try to exaggerate the numbers here. I also don't see how shared.com is any different than buzzfeed.com. Is the deciding factor the number of things listed in an article? Like whether the list is of 8 things or of 38 things? What's the difference between those two sites?
behnamoh 6y ago
> If you've spent $57MM on Facebook ads, are you still considered a "small business"? My thoughts exactly. Not necessarily agreeing with FB's act here, but this post and the way they connect their issue to a hot topic these days (small businesses) seems hypocritical and an attempt to make people sympathize with them. That's not what's happening here. They should instead talk about the entirety of their business (all their pages, not just a handful) and then claim it is a small business.

by smoyer 6y ago

__s 6y ago

> I think the warning about building your business on someone else's land There aren't really any businesses which have sovereign territory

ffhhj 6y ago
> There aren't really any businesses which have sovereign territory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City
- saotome 6y ago
  touché
smoyer 6y ago
That's an interesting position (and I'm not disputing it) but if you were a business that has sovereign territory, you still need utilities (Internet). Penn State has its own data-centers, is part of the Internet2 consortium and has dedicated fiber to both AWS and Azure but you're still ultimately reliant on those you're leasing the connections from - even if you own the fiber, you're probably leasing the right-of-way/poles/etc. So ... how do we build an Internet that's fully inter-connected but can withstand actions by the few relatively large carriers? Thinking about it a bit more, isn't the effect of having a few large network providers analogous to the issue with BitCoin having a few large mining operations in effective control of the ecosystem?
- MichaelZuo 6y ago
  Satellite fleets?
  - smoyer 6y ago
    Which could theoretically be done today but then you'd be a tenant of Musk. I really think the idea of mesh networks is great for neighborhoods but can it be extended to a global-scale network (well ... continent scale until there's a personal communication mechanism that will cross oceans)? EDIT: This was posted on today's "Who is hiring?" thread - not really p2p Internet but ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25633106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25633106
    - jki275 6y ago
      You can theoretically run a very low bandwidth set of links over any radio technology, including HF which will give you that long range connectivity. Problem is, people expect streaming video on their smartphones. You can't do that over low bandwidth over the horizon links. Continent scale? Depends on the continent. No way to do that in the Americas, there's just too much open space. You could do it in many cities I do think.
    - MichaelZuo 6y ago
      I imagine there are no upper bounds to the growth of satellite communication capabilities other than physical limits. Extrapolating a few decades at current growth rates out the network be enormous.
- toast0 6y ago
  Carrier's ability to influence has everything to do with their duopoloy on the last mile to the eyeballs. If you're in the position to lease a connection to an internet exchange, you've got tons of options for transit from there. And leasing fiber is generally a matter of location and cost, not content; I don't know if it's strictly common carrier, but it might be.
dspillett 6y ago
On a single someone else's land then? Going multi-platform from the start is probably not the way to go as you are adding complication before you have the basics rounded out, but once you are spending that much on advertising you presumably have a sizable turn-over and should have long ago looked at diversifying to deal with situations like this which (even if temporary) could kill the business model. Of course if FB is truly the only game in town for your target audience, you have a problem there...
dkdk8283 6y ago
Aren’t countries a business?
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
Funnily enough, I worked for a company that sold software to casinos, many of which very much exist on sovereign tribal land, where they're often the single major business entity. It led to some quirkiness: we had to disavow ourselves of almost all cloud services. They wanted all the software and data on-prem because they didn't want anything on U.S. soil.
alisonkisk 6y ago
You don't have to be sovereign to own land. I own land.
kube-system 6y ago
Well, at least not currently. The East India Company didn't worry about building their business on other people's land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India There are a couple authoritarian states that have fully-owned state enterprises that people might also argue are one-in-the-same.

cookingmyserver 6y ago

I think that it could be considered a small business, but on the upper side probably. Their ads are the supplies they use to make their product. It works out to 4 million a year, although I doubt they were spending anywhere near that much starting off (which is why I think they could be past the point of the public's perception of a small business). It would be like looking at how much a small business fabricator spent on metal and other supplies. That number is going to be larger than what they actually bring in as profit. If ads aren't your supplies then it would absolutely be an indication of being a large business if you spent $57 million on marketing.

rsweeney21 6y ago

The US Government, specifically the SBA, defines a small business as any business with fewer than 1,500 employees and less than $38.5 million in average annual receipts. I was surprised by this definition too.

542458 6y ago
Hunh, I would have thought it would be "or". I'm surprised as well!
smarx007 6y ago
That sounds a bit strange, I would count any business with more than employees to be "medium" and 1000 to be large. Think of coffee shops: 1500 people allows you to have a network across multiple cities. But w.r.t. the amounts of money, they spent $57MM over 15 years, so it's $4MM/y using very rough math. Upd: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/files/Size_Standards_Table.pdf https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/files/Size_Standards... says on p. 29 that it's less than $27.5MM or 1000 people, so you are right, it's quite a high bar. Upd2: EU caps small businesses at 50 people and medium at 250, which sounds much more reasonable to me https://www.ucl.ac.uk/procurement/suppliers/smes#:~:text=Definition,not%20more%20than%2050%20employees https://www.ucl.ac.uk/procurement/suppliers/smes#:~:text=Def....

kelchqvjpnfasjl 6y ago

I don't think that is $57MM in one year. I think that is over the lifetime of the business.

tgv 6y ago

The term was probably used to garner sympathy. "We, poor, small business owners, in the process of extracting the last bit of your muddled brain's attention, ..." But I'm sure they wouldn't have spent $57M if they hadn't extracted more than that from other advertising parties.

papichulo4 6y ago
Are we really going to be willfully ignorant of the fact that it's $57m CAD over 15 years? That's $3.8m CAD per year. Come on now. Let's not try to exaggerate the numbers here. I also don't see how shared.com is any different than buzzfeed.com. Is the deciding factor the number of things listed in an article? Like whether the list is of 8 things or of 38 things? What's the difference between those two sites?

behnamoh 6y ago

> If you've spent $57MM on Facebook ads, are you still considered a "small business"? My thoughts exactly. Not necessarily agreeing with FB's act here, but this post and the way they connect their issue to a hot topic these days (small businesses) seems hypocritical and an attempt to make people sympathize with them. That's not what's happening here. They should instead talk about the entirety of their business (all their pages, not just a handful) and then claim it is a small business.