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This is part of a larger pattern for Facebook and other "large scale" advertisers where it's clear they are breaking laws at some rate and are protected from pa

• ricardo81 2y ago
  It does seem like many of the web scale FAANG's had no scaling solution. Facebook and Google in particular are egregious beyond their marketing. e.g. YouTube, how much copyrighted content does G profit off from. And then the 100 variations that slip the 'copyright algo.' I see stuff on there that as a UK TV license payer I've already paid for, and then have to suffer ads. They could not give a hoot.
  • nadermx 2y ago
    YouTube is probably a bad example in terms of copyright. They in fact have the most restrictive system of reuse of others work in your work, as a large portion of the videos that are auto struck would probably err more on fair use.
    • ricardo81 2y ago
      I would disagree on the simple fact there's TerraBytes of copyrighted content on there, uploaded by people that don't own the content and subject to a fairly weak black box.
    • rout39574 2y ago
      I'm not in this space, but from the user's perspective I thought that youtube's "Demonitization" doesn't mean the ad doesn't show, just that the channel doesn't get any benefit from the show of the ad. So they're actually incentivized to have many creators struck, because struck media means ad impressions whose revenue they need not share. Am I misunderstanding the landscape?
      • gretch 2y ago
        > So they're actually incentivized to have many creators struck, because struck media means ad impressions whose revenue they need not share. This revenue would go to the copyright claimer. EG if Warner bros struck you for showing their movie, the ad revenue from the video would go to Warner, not simply YouTube
        • SoftTalker 2y ago
          But YouTube still gets their cut, which is better for them than just deleting the video.
        • LeifCarrotson 2y ago
          I'm not privy to their deal, but while I'm confident that Warner Bros' has negotiated a revenue sharing agreement better than a typical Youtube Partners' 55% rate, I also suspect it's not 100%.
          • connicpu 2y ago
            But that's the point really isn't it? It's no longer illegal once you have a negotiated contract with the copyright holder.
  • ronsor 2y ago
    The last thing I'd complain about is YouTube not doing enough copyright enforcement. If anything, they do far too much, beyond what is reasonable or necessary! And in a lot of cases, the studios don't care, because they slurp up most of the profits, not Google.
    • ricardo81 2y ago
      They may do a lot of false positives but it doesn't excuse the fact their system can't scale correctly.
    • aftbit 2y ago
      They basically do copyright enforcement in two cases: 1. Automatically, based almost entirely on sound, using ContentID - this is heavily weaponized, gamed, and generally over the top. 2. "Manually" (but really automatically) in response to requests from "verified" (sure) rights owners - this one is also heavily gamed, but seems to make up a much smaller fraction of takedowns.
  • myaccountonhn 2y ago
    Same with providing support. They can't provide proper support at the scale they operate at, so they just neglect it completely and get away with it. Also Amazon just completely gives up on quality assurance and let people ship whatever.
• RobRivera 2y ago
  Ubers Greyball was an eye opener for me
• jbpnoy6fifty 2y ago
  Music has always been a great way to advertise drugs and other criminal acts, however, they never get chosen to get arrested.
  • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
    Meta has an obligation to ensure those they do business with are not criminal enterprises. The "advertising" you mention doesn't have a specific illicit enterprise paying for a call-out in the songs; it's just people expressing themselves.
  • meroes 2y ago
    I’d call that promoting drugs, which is not illegal. Advertising means there is a product for sale through the advertiser.
• mulmen 2y ago
  Seems pretty simple to me. They should pay crippling fees until their business shrinks to a point they can operate it legally. It’s unclear what benefit there is to society that an organization like Meta can scale beyond responsible operation. There is a natural self-regulation to hyperscaling. At some point you’re too big to exist. I see no reason we should forgive Meta’s incompetence. They’re not a natural monopoly. Let them fail.
• AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  The flaw here is in expecting Facebook to be the police. Here's what happens if you make Facebook do it. They become aware of someone running an illegal ad and ban them. But the advertiser is a criminal and still wants to make money, so they make a new account or find some way to avoid detection, and the ad ends up back in the system, and the advertiser can do this forever because they're making a net profit by continuing to play the cat and mouse game. Here's what happens if you have law enforcement responsible for enforcing the law. Someone runs an illegal ad on Facebook, law enforcement subpoenas Facebook to find out who it was, and the advertiser gets arrested. This provides an actual deterrent because there is a penalty in excess of a ban, so it exceeds the profits from the criminal activity, and criminals dumb enough to not be deterred go to jail where they can't run any more ads. Why are we trying to do it the stupid way and expect a non-stupid result? Corporations are not law enforcement. Stop trying to make it otherwise.
  • squigz 2y ago
    I don't believe GP was suggesting Facebook do it; rather just pointing out that the second option is extremely costly and difficult, which is a consequence of the scale and influence of Facebook
    • AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > the second option is extremely costly and difficult, which is a consequence of the scale and influence of Facebook Is it? Suppose that instead of Facebook we had a federated social media with ten thousand independent operators and ten thousand ad networks. Then there would be ten thousand ad agents (really automated websites) who compete on price and whose job it is to place your ad in the ten thousand ad networks. Drug dealers would still try to run drug ads, wouldn't they? What would be any different? The internet has the scale that it does whether the service is centralized or not. Centralization/monopolies are the cause of many problems but not every problem.
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• anigbrowl 2y ago
  companies can reach a scale where it's very costly to definitively assess who is to blame for crimes and can therefor commit any profitable crime up to a certain threshold Succinctly put. Just as LLCs function as a legal device to distributing and limiting financial risk (but strangely, not profits), they increasingly perform the same function for other kinds of legal liability. It's the worst of both worlds.
• rqtwteye 2y ago
  "This is, I think, the real moral hazard you saw back in the 2007 financial crisis: companies can reach a scale where it's very costly to definitively assess who is to blame for crimes and can therefor commit any profitable crime up to a certain threshold. It both makes a mockery of the rule of law as a concept (along with many other things in the US legal system) and is an enormous competitive advantage for large companies. I'd include Uber's grey area stalking[2] and the eBay stalking campaign[3] in this category. " If a company is too big to be managed properly it shouldn't exist. We saw that in 2008 with "Too big to fail" banks. I also remember the AG back then stating that some companies are too big to prosecute which is also big problem. Seems health insurances also have reached that scale where they can screw with people without consequences.