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Thanks for laying out your logic. I work in the ads business at FB. I do so because I personally like ads and my biggest gripe is that ads are not relevant an

Thanks for laying out your logic. I work in the ads business at FB. I do so because I personally like ads and my biggest gripe is that ads are not relevant and personalized enough. I want better ads. Ultimately ads support a robust ecosystem of free software and content that keeps many creators going. Consumers can also choose to buy their software and content, or donate, but most don’t. Despite their whining, most people want free stuff, and ads are almost free (a small attention cost). I think people comparing ads to guns, plagues, and locusts need to check their own values. Ads support free stuff for the poor and middle classes. Rich coastal elites can tell themselves they will pay for everything, and that’s great (most don’t). Most consumers cannot afford to pay for software or news subscriptions. Ad models fill out the spectrum of options. Is the current ads ecosystem perfect? Clearly not. There’s a lot we need to do to educate users, get consent, and increase control and transparency. On the flip side, this needs to be simple and easy: consent needs to be an understandable and low friction process to avoid consent fatigue. They are also plenty of privacy enhancing technologies like differential privacy and local caching to deal with data sharing issues. If you hate ads, lean into that. Don’t work for adtech, block all your ads, pay for everything. I support you and respect that! I just think it’s mean and shortsighted to think that everyone else is like you and to aggressively attack adtech engineers, platforms, businesses, and the billions of consumers who aren’t as rich as you and will happily watch ads to get free stuff. The internet is great because a lot of high quality stuff like software, news, videos, etc is free for anyone, anywhere. Ads make that possible and I’m proud of it.

jonny_eh 5y ago
> Ads support free stuff for the poor and middle classes. Rich coastal elites can tell themselves they will pay for everything, and that’s great (most don’t). Why doesn't FB offer a "premium" tier for people to buy their way out of ads?
- filoleg 5y ago
  >Why doesn't FB offer a "premium" tier for people to buy their way out of ads? Warning: here goes my armchair theory. Because as soon as you put a price tag on it, people will instantly see that they can actually get that "premium" tier for free by using an adblocker, which will lead to more people using adblockers. If something is just free, most people don't really care for it. But if it is something that is free while it is normally not free, people will flock to it. Just think about random just that people wouldn't care to buy normally, but end up buying it because it is on a "90% off sale" (even if the "sale" price is the same as it would've been without a "sale"). Which sort of makes sense with FB, because you get a clear price tag attached and you feel bad for spending those money, when you can get the exact same experience "for free".
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    A think this is a brilliant hypothesis. It makes a lot of sense
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    Except you can't really do this with FB - they serve the ads from the same place they serve the content. AFAIK, ad blocking in FB/IG/WA doesn't work except on Desktop?
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    That's only really true for Web. Mobile ad blockers can't work since their ads are served from the same hosts as the content. And most of their usage is on mobile.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    For additional paid feature, change the Facebook logo to "Facebook Premium" and bundle music subscription service.
  - creato 5y ago
    Why doesn't (or does?) this apply to youtube, spotify, or other similar services?
    - filoleg 5y ago
      My guess is because for those services you listed, ads explicitly stop the experience and make you watch ads to continue to be able to use the service normally. If I watch a Youtube video and it gets interrupted by an ad, I am stuck until it is over and cannot consume my content. Same with Spotify. So understandably, people would be willing to pay for the premium tier. I, myself, pay for premium on those services to not deal with ads, as they steal my time and interrupt my normal usage of those services. With FB, ads aren't interrupting the experience. They are just there, but you are welcome to completely ignore them and proceed consuming your content. I wouldn't pay premium to get rid of FB ads, even if it was just $1/mo. Especially given that, more than once, I got genuinely useful ads that helped me with making a good purchasing decision (the final decision came down to me doing my independent research before buying, but the ads pointed me towards the type of stuff I was looking for). So I don't gain much by getting rid of FB ads (as they are non-interruptive), while potentially losing out on some stuff. I think the last bit I mentioned is kind of the key to FB strategy. They don't want to offer the "no-ads" premium tier, because they don't want to pose their ads as an annoyance you have to pay to get rid of, they want to pose them as a value add. Not trying to argue whether it is indeed a value add for users or not, just theorizing how FB product team sees it and tries to pose it. P.S. I don't work in ads or anything even tangentially related. And neither do I have a stake in FB or any other ad-related business. Just describing my genuine user experience.
nitwit005 5y ago
I started hearing the idea that people wanted more personalized ads when I joined an ad tech company, and I have only heard it since from people working in the space. It doesn't seem to be an idea that normal people voice. I have heard the opposite, which is people getting creeped out due to things like getting ads for infant products before they've told their family they're pregnant (presumably inference from browsing).
klelatti 5y ago
> Despite their whining, most people want free stuff, and ads are almost free (a small attention cost). > Most consumers cannot afford to pay for software or news subscriptions. > Don’t work for adtech, block all your ads, pay for everything. All this is false. Growth hacking has created products that are addictive and which people don't really need. These are then justified by saying that consumers can't afford to pay for them (fact is that they wouldn't do because deep down they know they're not worth much). And in the meantime society suffers the consequences whilst FB etc profits hugely.
- cm2012 5y ago
  "In my ultimate wisdom, I know what people need better than they do. Products I don't like shouldn't be allowed to exist"
  - testific8 5y ago
    Are you quoting the opinion of Advertisers? Advertising could only be benifical to society if advertisers knew better about what a person needed then the person itself. Certainly if this were not the case, people seek out advertisements themselves (classifieds).
  - klelatti 5y ago
    "All possible services are good for society and the only valid criteria use as to whether they are offered is whether they make someone (probably Facebook or Google) money"
analog31 5y ago
Is it really conceivable that the Web would have been stillborn without ads, or with limits to the externalities of ads? Does "software will eat the world" only mean "software will eat the world if it can sell ads?" I'm pretty sure ads don't support the cell phone industry, or at least didn't support its exponential growth phase, yet the middle class and poor have cell phones.
- originalvichy 5y ago
  Cellphone industry? No. The smartphone industry? Definitely. There are two major OSs for phones. One by a hardware-software company and the second from an adtech company. Guess which one is the cheap/free OS and which one is the more premium product of the two. :) Android destroyed its competition by having excellent support for Google's "free" software and because of their huge ad income they can pay to develop it further. So yeah I believe the modern phone industry has to thank the freemium adtech world for pushing Android into the world.
  - analog31 5y ago
    Indeed, it's arguable that things that cost money will tend to come from an industry that's flush with money. So I can't really dispute your point. Before Android, smart phones were evolving, but outside of iOS, a phone came with a bespoke OS and a handful of apps. I'm still not convinced that even smartphones would have been stillborn. The apps might have been more klunky, but I'm not sure that's important. For instance, I would be happy to receive my daily news in a giant flat text file, and don't need the features that generate "engagement" or tell me what other people are reading. People who are "in the know" about computing tend to use less flashy interfaces, and more of the terminal window. But of course the ultimate answer is... I don't know. It's interesting that the freemium model kind of contradicts that idea that we benefit from ads, since we are willing to pay money to get rid of them, rather than the other way around. Maybe the industry could be funded by making ads available to those who want them, for a price.
sophacles 5y ago
> I think people comparing ads to guns, plagues, and locusts need to check their own values. Ads support free stuff for the poor and middle classes. Until i can ACTUALLY opt out by paying money, you need to get off your high horse. My data is clearly more valuable to you than my dollars - otherwise I'd have a choice. > If you hate ads, lean into that. Don’t work for adtech, block all your ads, pay for everything. I support you and respect that! I do, pls continue to support me by: 1. making it possible to not have my data constantly collected and sold by facebook in exchange for dollars. 2. Stop tracking me after my account has been deleted. 3. Stop acting like you are part of something good while I don't have a "no surveilance" option. Until then, YOU are the problem.
- jefftk 5y ago
  > My data is clearly more valuable to you than my dollars - otherwise I'd have a choice. Alternatively, people are just not that willing to pay money to avoid ads. FB's revenue per user in the US is ~$5/month, but users who would pay to avoid ads tend to be richer, so to break even FB might need to charge, say, $20/month. I'd bet too few people are willing to pay $20/month to justify the costs and complexity of offering an ad free product. Especially when you consider the bad publicity that would come from offering something "overpriced".
  - w0de0 5y ago
    "Per user" implies a relationship between the mark and the platform - a continuation of the fiction of consent that pervades Facebook and Google. So I'd rephrase your apologia this way: "FB's revenue per human datum in the US is ~$5/month, but discrete datums who both know they are tracked by Facebook and are rich enough to pay protection money for privacy are few. To protect everyone, they would need to pay $20/month."
- originalvichy 5y ago
  I think the displeasure you feel should be directed towards website developers. As far as I know the "no surveillance" option is there: the person who wrote the website can choose whether to inject a tracking program to the code or not. People are misdirecting their hatred towards ad-tracking towards ad developers when in reality the people who decide to use ad trackers in their websites should be asked questions. I understand some giant sites will always come with "we will track you" (Facebook is the easiest example) but even those Facebook spy buttons appear on websites because the developer of the site agreed to it and embedded it there.
npunt 5y ago
Ads pit platform owners against their users because their incentives drive platforms to employ addictive designs that prey on psychological weakness to maximize user time on site. This is the fundamental misalignment that drives a lot of downstream effects. On the other hand, a fixed fee would cap the incentive to push the upper bounds of user time on site, thereby respecting users time and inherent interest in whatever platforms offer, absent addictive designs that try to alter that inherent interest. Features that nag you to invite people into groups, add non-friends via PYMK, push low quality notifications to reengage, show you outrage-inducing content, push you to constantly engage or share private details of your life, check out related groups and drive you deeper down rabbit holes, etc wouldn’t have the same oxygen if the fixed fee model was used. And a service to chat with and find out what your friends were up to wouldn’t be costly at scale; likely pennies per month [1]. I appreciate your thoughtful comment and the logic you’ve laid out but disagree. I believe we’ve settled on a lucrative, low friction, easy to implement incentive model with ads but it is far far from the ideal model with way too many negative externalities. Note this only goes for ad models with unlimited appetite for user time. I wouldn’t have a problem with ad models that have an upper bounds, eg 5 ad impressions a day max. [1] see: WhatsApp $1/yr model prior to FB acquisition
originalvichy 5y ago
I would add one more thing to your arguments: people who don't like ads should simply ask web devs of their favourite sites not to serve ads at all. Even if ads and trackers exist it is still ultimately the developers choice to include ad code in their websites. I sense A LOT of misdirected anger towards ad companies when the "enablers" of ad companies – the web developers willing to monetise traffic with ads – are not getting any blame directed at them. As long as you guys at Facebook are transparent about what happens if you embed your like buttons or comment sections in blogs and forums etc. the onus is on the developers to serve their visitors with safe content.

jonny_eh 5y ago

> Ads support free stuff for the poor and middle classes. Rich coastal elites can tell themselves they will pay for everything, and that’s great (most don’t). Why doesn't FB offer a "premium" tier for people to buy their way out of ads?

filoleg 5y ago
>Why doesn't FB offer a "premium" tier for people to buy their way out of ads? Warning: here goes my armchair theory. Because as soon as you put a price tag on it, people will instantly see that they can actually get that "premium" tier for free by using an adblocker, which will lead to more people using adblockers. If something is just free, most people don't really care for it. But if it is something that is free while it is normally not free, people will flock to it. Just think about random just that people wouldn't care to buy normally, but end up buying it because it is on a "90% off sale" (even if the "sale" price is the same as it would've been without a "sale"). Which sort of makes sense with FB, because you get a clear price tag attached and you feel bad for spending those money, when you can get the exact same experience "for free".
- elzbardico 5y ago
  A think this is a brilliant hypothesis. It makes a lot of sense
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  Except you can't really do this with FB - they serve the ads from the same place they serve the content. AFAIK, ad blocking in FB/IG/WA doesn't work except on Desktop?
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  That's only really true for Web. Mobile ad blockers can't work since their ads are served from the same hosts as the content. And most of their usage is on mobile.
- fomine3 5y ago
  For additional paid feature, change the Facebook logo to "Facebook Premium" and bundle music subscription service.
- creato 5y ago
  Why doesn't (or does?) this apply to youtube, spotify, or other similar services?
  - filoleg 5y ago
    My guess is because for those services you listed, ads explicitly stop the experience and make you watch ads to continue to be able to use the service normally. If I watch a Youtube video and it gets interrupted by an ad, I am stuck until it is over and cannot consume my content. Same with Spotify. So understandably, people would be willing to pay for the premium tier. I, myself, pay for premium on those services to not deal with ads, as they steal my time and interrupt my normal usage of those services. With FB, ads aren't interrupting the experience. They are just there, but you are welcome to completely ignore them and proceed consuming your content. I wouldn't pay premium to get rid of FB ads, even if it was just $1/mo. Especially given that, more than once, I got genuinely useful ads that helped me with making a good purchasing decision (the final decision came down to me doing my independent research before buying, but the ads pointed me towards the type of stuff I was looking for). So I don't gain much by getting rid of FB ads (as they are non-interruptive), while potentially losing out on some stuff. I think the last bit I mentioned is kind of the key to FB strategy. They don't want to offer the "no-ads" premium tier, because they don't want to pose their ads as an annoyance you have to pay to get rid of, they want to pose them as a value add. Not trying to argue whether it is indeed a value add for users or not, just theorizing how FB product team sees it and tries to pose it. P.S. I don't work in ads or anything even tangentially related. And neither do I have a stake in FB or any other ad-related business. Just describing my genuine user experience.

nitwit005 5y ago

I started hearing the idea that people wanted more personalized ads when I joined an ad tech company, and I have only heard it since from people working in the space. It doesn't seem to be an idea that normal people voice. I have heard the opposite, which is people getting creeped out due to things like getting ads for infant products before they've told their family they're pregnant (presumably inference from browsing).

klelatti 5y ago

> Despite their whining, most people want free stuff, and ads are almost free (a small attention cost). > Most consumers cannot afford to pay for software or news subscriptions. > Don’t work for adtech, block all your ads, pay for everything. All this is false. Growth hacking has created products that are addictive and which people don't really need. These are then justified by saying that consumers can't afford to pay for them (fact is that they wouldn't do because deep down they know they're not worth much). And in the meantime society suffers the consequences whilst FB etc profits hugely.

cm2012 5y ago
"In my ultimate wisdom, I know what people need better than they do. Products I don't like shouldn't be allowed to exist"
- testific8 5y ago
  Are you quoting the opinion of Advertisers? Advertising could only be benifical to society if advertisers knew better about what a person needed then the person itself. Certainly if this were not the case, people seek out advertisements themselves (classifieds).
- klelatti 5y ago
  "All possible services are good for society and the only valid criteria use as to whether they are offered is whether they make someone (probably Facebook or Google) money"

analog31 5y ago

Is it really conceivable that the Web would have been stillborn without ads, or with limits to the externalities of ads? Does "software will eat the world" only mean "software will eat the world if it can sell ads?" I'm pretty sure ads don't support the cell phone industry, or at least didn't support its exponential growth phase, yet the middle class and poor have cell phones.

originalvichy 5y ago
Cellphone industry? No. The smartphone industry? Definitely. There are two major OSs for phones. One by a hardware-software company and the second from an adtech company. Guess which one is the cheap/free OS and which one is the more premium product of the two. :) Android destroyed its competition by having excellent support for Google's "free" software and because of their huge ad income they can pay to develop it further. So yeah I believe the modern phone industry has to thank the freemium adtech world for pushing Android into the world.
- analog31 5y ago
  Indeed, it's arguable that things that cost money will tend to come from an industry that's flush with money. So I can't really dispute your point. Before Android, smart phones were evolving, but outside of iOS, a phone came with a bespoke OS and a handful of apps. I'm still not convinced that even smartphones would have been stillborn. The apps might have been more klunky, but I'm not sure that's important. For instance, I would be happy to receive my daily news in a giant flat text file, and don't need the features that generate "engagement" or tell me what other people are reading. People who are "in the know" about computing tend to use less flashy interfaces, and more of the terminal window. But of course the ultimate answer is... I don't know. It's interesting that the freemium model kind of contradicts that idea that we benefit from ads, since we are willing to pay money to get rid of them, rather than the other way around. Maybe the industry could be funded by making ads available to those who want them, for a price.

sophacles 5y ago

> I think people comparing ads to guns, plagues, and locusts need to check their own values. Ads support free stuff for the poor and middle classes. Until i can ACTUALLY opt out by paying money, you need to get off your high horse. My data is clearly more valuable to you than my dollars - otherwise I'd have a choice. > If you hate ads, lean into that. Don’t work for adtech, block all your ads, pay for everything. I support you and respect that! I do, pls continue to support me by: 1. making it possible to not have my data constantly collected and sold by facebook in exchange for dollars. 2. Stop tracking me after my account has been deleted. 3. Stop acting like you are part of something good while I don't have a "no surveilance" option. Until then, YOU are the problem.

jefftk 5y ago
> My data is clearly more valuable to you than my dollars - otherwise I'd have a choice. Alternatively, people are just not that willing to pay money to avoid ads. FB's revenue per user in the US is ~$5/month, but users who would pay to avoid ads tend to be richer, so to break even FB might need to charge, say, $20/month. I'd bet too few people are willing to pay $20/month to justify the costs and complexity of offering an ad free product. Especially when you consider the bad publicity that would come from offering something "overpriced".
- w0de0 5y ago
  "Per user" implies a relationship between the mark and the platform - a continuation of the fiction of consent that pervades Facebook and Google. So I'd rephrase your apologia this way: "FB's revenue per human datum in the US is ~$5/month, but discrete datums who both know they are tracked by Facebook and are rich enough to pay protection money for privacy are few. To protect everyone, they would need to pay $20/month."
originalvichy 5y ago
I think the displeasure you feel should be directed towards website developers. As far as I know the "no surveillance" option is there: the person who wrote the website can choose whether to inject a tracking program to the code or not. People are misdirecting their hatred towards ad-tracking towards ad developers when in reality the people who decide to use ad trackers in their websites should be asked questions. I understand some giant sites will always come with "we will track you" (Facebook is the easiest example) but even those Facebook spy buttons appear on websites because the developer of the site agreed to it and embedded it there.

npunt 5y ago

Ads pit platform owners against their users because their incentives drive platforms to employ addictive designs that prey on psychological weakness to maximize user time on site. This is the fundamental misalignment that drives a lot of downstream effects. On the other hand, a fixed fee would cap the incentive to push the upper bounds of user time on site, thereby respecting users time and inherent interest in whatever platforms offer, absent addictive designs that try to alter that inherent interest. Features that nag you to invite people into groups, add non-friends via PYMK, push low quality notifications to reengage, show you outrage-inducing content, push you to constantly engage or share private details of your life, check out related groups and drive you deeper down rabbit holes, etc wouldn’t have the same oxygen if the fixed fee model was used. And a service to chat with and find out what your friends were up to wouldn’t be costly at scale; likely pennies per month [1]. I appreciate your thoughtful comment and the logic you’ve laid out but disagree. I believe we’ve settled on a lucrative, low friction, easy to implement incentive model with ads but it is far far from the ideal model with way too many negative externalities. Note this only goes for ad models with unlimited appetite for user time. I wouldn’t have a problem with ad models that have an upper bounds, eg 5 ad impressions a day max. [1] see: WhatsApp $1/yr model prior to FB acquisition

originalvichy 5y ago

I would add one more thing to your arguments: people who don't like ads should simply ask web devs of their favourite sites not to serve ads at all. Even if ads and trackers exist it is still ultimately the developers choice to include ad code in their websites. I sense A LOT of misdirected anger towards ad companies when the "enablers" of ad companies – the web developers willing to monetise traffic with ads – are not getting any blame directed at them. As long as you guys at Facebook are transparent about what happens if you embed your like buttons or comment sections in blogs and forums etc. the onus is on the developers to serve their visitors with safe content.