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There's a whole ecosystem of businesses that rely on Facebook that are going to start hurting a lot over the next few years. I used to work at a publisher wher

There's a whole ecosystem of businesses that rely on Facebook that are going to start hurting a lot over the next few years. I used to work at a publisher where 80% of their website traffic came from Facebook. They haven't seen audience growth in years and their audience is skewing older and older, which is bad for their advertising business Businesses like that are going to get steadily squeezed both by Facebook's declining audience share and Facebook's own efforts to change what people see.

altdataseller 5y ago
Yeah publishers like BuzzFeed are in deep trouble, as less ppl are discovering content on FB
Nextgrid 5y ago
Good riddance? People will keep finding & buying things they need. If nobody’s buying anything from these businesses without invasive advertising & tracking then maybe whatever goods they were selling aren’t actually necessary? Of course there is nuance and edge cases to this, but in general I wouldn’t be surprised if society and the planet was better off once we stop producing useless garbage.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  I don't know... I've seen some interesting products thanks to Facebook that I wouldn't have otherwise. Life would be pretty boring if we all only bought what we need.
  - OzCrimson 5y ago
    The question is more about the trade-off. 1. I see an ad for some really nice pens. COOL! 2. I go to a website that allows me to opt out of tracking but I'd have to opt out of their 300 affiliates one at a time. 3. The privacy policies that state: we do not honor do-not-track signals because we don't know if it was the user or a browser default. For me: not worth the tradeoff.
  - troyvit 5y ago
    That seems to imply that we need to buy stuff to create excitement in life. Is that what you meant?
    - missedthecue 5y ago
      No, but buying stuff makes me happy.
      - simpss 5y ago
        buying stuff makes me sad 15~30% of the time. Neither feeling is invalid.
- chillage 5y ago
  I don't think you've ever started a company with a new product. What if you make the world's best cheese grater. Nobody knows about it. You don't have connections to supermarkets. Smaller stores don't want to carry your niche item. You have $5000 budget to get your cheese grater out. How do you let people know about it? Online targetted advertising is basically the current established way to find those people who actually would care about your special cheese grater and start to get your business going. If you're looking at alternatives those would be either untargetted online advertising (incredibly inefficient, only people who don't care about cheese graters would see your ads and that's your $5000 down the toilet) or real world advertising like... Door to door salesmen? Or take out fliers in your local newspaper? That's what people used to do If you feel cheese graters are useless and somehow deserve to remain unbought, then replace it with any other item which does match your bar for utility value.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    I think this covers how it's supposed to work, but the reality is far messier and worse. In particular, the hypothetical cheese grater manufacturer would probably be have to pay Google to advertise on their own brand name adword so a generic competitor doesn't steal customers that already know about their great cheese graters. Oh, and about 90% of the people who see your cheese grater ads would be people who just bought one of your cheese graters. Even worse, cheesegraterreviews.com would be paid off by your (larger) competitors to review their cheese graters better and this site has much better SEO than forums.graterenthusiasts.com so they would list higher in organic cheese grater search. All of this is to say that targeted advertising for niche, high-quality brands is only viable (at least if you're targeting someone like me) in an environment where search isn't beshitted by SEO, Google doesn't run a trademark protection racket, and reviews aren't 90% noise. Unfortunately, that's not the world we find ourselves in. At this point I'm more likely to just go to the kitchen store and physically examine cheese graters to find one I like than relying on the internet.
    - chillage 5y ago
      You are right of course, it's not a perfect situation and, yes, many times may still not be able to get your cheese grater off the ground. My question remains though - if you are not allowed targeted advertising, what practical alternatives do you have to mass market your useful product? We are not looking at this from the point of view of your personal preference where you would rather the product was in a store already, but from the point of view of a legitimate, useful small business which does not have access to a store and which is trying to match their product to consumers.
Lio 5y ago
Really what you're saying is that there's a whole ecosystem of businesses that depend on unavoidable surveillance. All Apple have done is allow users to say no. They haven't even stopped anyone opting into surveillance if they want to. It just turns out that, when given the choice, people don't like being snooped on.
- hollowdene 5y ago
  I agree. Some businesses are addicted to Facebook and the data it provides, but they certainly have no right to it.
- streamofdigits 5y ago
  this seems to be the main new data point that is now evident for all to see I mean it is sort of obvious to anybody not captured and with basic morals but such is the allure of greed that for ages people were cynically and hypocritically pretending otherwise
- hackerfromthefu 5y ago
  Stalking! Snooping is a one off or occassional thing whereas continual obsessive profile building is actually stalking.
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
and that's ok.
yokoprime 5y ago
> There's a whole ecosystem of businesses that rely on Facebook that are going to start hurting a lot over the next few years. Good riddance, what a bunch of bottom feeders.
mtberatwork 5y ago
> There's a whole ecosystem of businesses that rely on Facebook that are going to start hurting a lot over the next few years. Starting? Did these publishers not learn anything from the whole Facebook Video debacle? [1] Also, who at these companies thinks tying their core business to a single, third party is a good idea? [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17989712/facebook-inaccurate-video-metrics-inflation-lawsuit https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17989712/facebook-inaccu...
- hollowdene 5y ago
  Video on Facebook is still very big, though. A lot of publishers have taken to recycling TikTok videos and turning them into compilations for Facebook and Instagram. It's all low quality stuff, but it works. It's hugely ironic that some of the most popular content on Facebook's platforms is coming from TikTok.
iamacyborg 5y ago
> They haven't seen audience growth in years and their audience is skewing older and older, which is bad for their advertising business Older people have more money to spend and are therefore worth more to advertisers.
nottorp 5y ago
> their audience is skewing older and older Been reading that facebook is out of fashion for the young uns for several years, way before any privacy changes on part of anyone. Also, question: how do they know their audience's average age? From invasive tracking?
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Most people just put their age in their profile right? If not it's usually easily identified from their content using AI.

altdataseller 5y ago

Yeah publishers like BuzzFeed are in deep trouble, as less ppl are discovering content on FB

Nextgrid 5y ago

Good riddance? People will keep finding & buying things they need. If nobody’s buying anything from these businesses without invasive advertising & tracking then maybe whatever goods they were selling aren’t actually necessary? Of course there is nuance and edge cases to this, but in general I wouldn’t be surprised if society and the planet was better off once we stop producing useless garbage.

missedthecue 5y ago
I don't know... I've seen some interesting products thanks to Facebook that I wouldn't have otherwise. Life would be pretty boring if we all only bought what we need.
- OzCrimson 5y ago
  The question is more about the trade-off. 1. I see an ad for some really nice pens. COOL! 2. I go to a website that allows me to opt out of tracking but I'd have to opt out of their 300 affiliates one at a time. 3. The privacy policies that state: we do not honor do-not-track signals because we don't know if it was the user or a browser default. For me: not worth the tradeoff.
- troyvit 5y ago
  That seems to imply that we need to buy stuff to create excitement in life. Is that what you meant?
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    No, but buying stuff makes me happy.
    - simpss 5y ago
      buying stuff makes me sad 15~30% of the time. Neither feeling is invalid.
chillage 5y ago
I don't think you've ever started a company with a new product. What if you make the world's best cheese grater. Nobody knows about it. You don't have connections to supermarkets. Smaller stores don't want to carry your niche item. You have $5000 budget to get your cheese grater out. How do you let people know about it? Online targetted advertising is basically the current established way to find those people who actually would care about your special cheese grater and start to get your business going. If you're looking at alternatives those would be either untargetted online advertising (incredibly inefficient, only people who don't care about cheese graters would see your ads and that's your $5000 down the toilet) or real world advertising like... Door to door salesmen? Or take out fliers in your local newspaper? That's what people used to do If you feel cheese graters are useless and somehow deserve to remain unbought, then replace it with any other item which does match your bar for utility value.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  I think this covers how it's supposed to work, but the reality is far messier and worse. In particular, the hypothetical cheese grater manufacturer would probably be have to pay Google to advertise on their own brand name adword so a generic competitor doesn't steal customers that already know about their great cheese graters. Oh, and about 90% of the people who see your cheese grater ads would be people who just bought one of your cheese graters. Even worse, cheesegraterreviews.com would be paid off by your (larger) competitors to review their cheese graters better and this site has much better SEO than forums.graterenthusiasts.com so they would list higher in organic cheese grater search. All of this is to say that targeted advertising for niche, high-quality brands is only viable (at least if you're targeting someone like me) in an environment where search isn't beshitted by SEO, Google doesn't run a trademark protection racket, and reviews aren't 90% noise. Unfortunately, that's not the world we find ourselves in. At this point I'm more likely to just go to the kitchen store and physically examine cheese graters to find one I like than relying on the internet.
  - chillage 5y ago
    You are right of course, it's not a perfect situation and, yes, many times may still not be able to get your cheese grater off the ground. My question remains though - if you are not allowed targeted advertising, what practical alternatives do you have to mass market your useful product? We are not looking at this from the point of view of your personal preference where you would rather the product was in a store already, but from the point of view of a legitimate, useful small business which does not have access to a store and which is trying to match their product to consumers.

Lio 5y ago

Really what you're saying is that there's a whole ecosystem of businesses that depend on unavoidable surveillance. All Apple have done is allow users to say no. They haven't even stopped anyone opting into surveillance if they want to. It just turns out that, when given the choice, people don't like being snooped on.

hollowdene 5y ago
I agree. Some businesses are addicted to Facebook and the data it provides, but they certainly have no right to it.
streamofdigits 5y ago
this seems to be the main new data point that is now evident for all to see I mean it is sort of obvious to anybody not captured and with basic morals but such is the allure of greed that for ages people were cynically and hypocritically pretending otherwise
hackerfromthefu 5y ago
Stalking! Snooping is a one off or occassional thing whereas continual obsessive profile building is actually stalking.

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago

and that's ok.

yokoprime 5y ago

> There's a whole ecosystem of businesses that rely on Facebook that are going to start hurting a lot over the next few years. Good riddance, what a bunch of bottom feeders.

mtberatwork 5y ago

> There's a whole ecosystem of businesses that rely on Facebook that are going to start hurting a lot over the next few years. Starting? Did these publishers not learn anything from the whole Facebook Video debacle? [1] Also, who at these companies thinks tying their core business to a single, third party is a good idea? [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17989712/facebook-inaccurate-video-metrics-inflation-lawsuit https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17989712/facebook-inaccu...

hollowdene 5y ago
Video on Facebook is still very big, though. A lot of publishers have taken to recycling TikTok videos and turning them into compilations for Facebook and Instagram. It's all low quality stuff, but it works. It's hugely ironic that some of the most popular content on Facebook's platforms is coming from TikTok.

iamacyborg 5y ago

> They haven't seen audience growth in years and their audience is skewing older and older, which is bad for their advertising business Older people have more money to spend and are therefore worth more to advertisers.

nottorp 5y ago

> their audience is skewing older and older Been reading that facebook is out of fashion for the young uns for several years, way before any privacy changes on part of anyone. Also, question: how do they know their audience's average age? From invasive tracking?

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Most people just put their age in their profile right? If not it's usually easily identified from their content using AI.