3 ms·

I think the problem is that facebook never had to fight for tracking. Everyone just just got tracked and fb could do what they want. They never cared whether it

I think the problem is that facebook never had to fight for tracking. Everyone just just got tracked and fb could do what they want. They never cared whether it was really useful, they just tried to show as much relevant ads as possible. A complete disregard for the user-experience thanks to it's monopoly, which also shows in fb getting unpopular (at least in my circles).

JKCalhoun 6y ago
I don't know. When I first heard people talking about dark patterns in UI design, Facebook was the platform that immediately sprung to my mind. It was always laughable (?) the hoops you had to go through to turn on various aspects of privacy in their settings. And it was constantly changing, requiring users to constantly go back into settings to turn off yet another flag that was introduced default-on. They seem to have known very early on that user's would not appreciate their crap.
danShumway 6y ago
I'm a bit of an ideologue on this point, but I would argue it's not just Facebook -- nearly all modern advertising is divorced from the idea that ads need to provide value to consumers. At best, ads are treated as an annoyance that users put up with in order to access content that they want. But the advertising industry desperately doesn't want to acknowledge that. They want to stick their heads in the sand and ignore that most users don't want to see anything that they're making. They want to argue that most users are benefiting from ads, even though that's clearly not true. A system that aligned incentives between advertisers and consumers, where advertisements themselves actually needed to justify themselves and inform/entertain users enough that they provided positive value to the viewer -- that system would look very, very different from the advertising world we have today. I think that disconnect is why you see people in the advertising industry fighting about ideas like users' Right to Filter, or why they're so paranoid about users having more control over which ads they see. Advertisers know that nobody likes ads and that for the average consumer, their ads aren't providing any kind of actual value. There's no incentive for most online advertisers to make ads that improve the quality of anyone's life -- the biggest incentive in the current system is to alter consumer behavior against their will regardless of whether that ad helps or hurts the viewer.

JKCalhoun 6y ago

I don't know. When I first heard people talking about dark patterns in UI design, Facebook was the platform that immediately sprung to my mind. It was always laughable (?) the hoops you had to go through to turn on various aspects of privacy in their settings. And it was constantly changing, requiring users to constantly go back into settings to turn off yet another flag that was introduced default-on. They seem to have known very early on that user's would not appreciate their crap.

danShumway 6y ago

I'm a bit of an ideologue on this point, but I would argue it's not just Facebook -- nearly all modern advertising is divorced from the idea that ads need to provide value to consumers. At best, ads are treated as an annoyance that users put up with in order to access content that they want. But the advertising industry desperately doesn't want to acknowledge that. They want to stick their heads in the sand and ignore that most users don't want to see anything that they're making. They want to argue that most users are benefiting from ads, even though that's clearly not true. A system that aligned incentives between advertisers and consumers, where advertisements themselves actually needed to justify themselves and inform/entertain users enough that they provided positive value to the viewer -- that system would look very, very different from the advertising world we have today. I think that disconnect is why you see people in the advertising industry fighting about ideas like users' Right to Filter, or why they're so paranoid about users having more control over which ads they see. Advertisers know that nobody likes ads and that for the average consumer, their ads aren't providing any kind of actual value. There's no incentive for most online advertisers to make ads that improve the quality of anyone's life -- the biggest incentive in the current system is to alter consumer behavior against their will regardless of whether that ad helps or hurts the viewer.