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So without ANY facts your conclusion is that Facebook is fraudulently deceiving advertisers. And that they are doing this using experience from working with th

So without ANY facts your conclusion is that Facebook is fraudulently deceiving advertisers. And that they are doing this using experience from working with the NSA/CIA in order to cover up the fact that $800 million dollars of Facebook's yearly profits will disappear overnight once people realise the truth. And as such they are willing to pay out the ad-bot companies in order to hide this conspiracy. Right.

samstave 14y ago
>...without ANY facts... What about the farking article? Where they proved that 80% of their clicks were from bots. Then several others confirm they ahve the same experience? What about those facts? I also speculated on what FB is doing. Them giving user data to the NSA/CIA - that is a supposed fact, sure, but I am not the only person who believes this. Am I extremely distrustful of Facebook? Of course! Maybe you have not followed their track record or the character of their founder.
- heelhook 14y ago
  If you are into conspiracy theories then how about maybe this is Google directing a massive bot net to make facebook ads useless? > I also speculated on what FB is doing. Them giving user data to the NSA/CIA - that is a supposed fact, sure, but I am not the only person who believes this. Great argument! A lot of people believe it, so it must be true! Are you for real?!
  - samstave 14y ago
    It is not my responsibility to educate you on modern internet history. This has been argued here on HN prior; Do you recall the backdoors that AT&T put at 600 Folsom, in SF? And the backdoors in Cisco's equipment that are a requirement by the federal government? Maybe you thin this shit is "conspiracy theory" and if you do, you're simply a naive fool. Look around you at what governments are doing. The NSA has records on everything you do online. They had a system in 2005 which could trace communications between users to 6 degrees, automatically.
    - dboat 14y ago
      It's odd to me that your posts aren't more downvoted than they are.
      - samstave 14y ago
        You think I make this shit up? There are some really naive and stupid people on HN that have zero grasp on the history of intelligence agencies.
        SwellJoe 14y ago
        So, this is why people don't take you seriously. I know a couple of guys like you in my local activist community, who take a very hostile "I know the truth and you're all fools!" attitude, despite the fact that their audience is mostly very sympathetic to most of their assertions. We know spying on the Internet takes place; HN is full of cantankerous old Internet geeks who've seen, first-hand, plenty of examples of the state (whatever state you may choose, as it happens all over the world) behaving unethically on the Internet, spying on people and punishing people for things that shouldn't be crimes. But, your paranoid approach is counter-productive. You might as well be working for the people you claim to be afraid of, for all the good you do (negative good; you're convincing people that the folks who believe the government is spying are all paranoid nutjobs who scream at anyone who has the gall to mention other possible explanations). So, let's review: 1. Just because spying has taken place, and is currently taking place, and may even have the complicity of facebook in that spying, it does not mean that facebook is running a botnet to steal advertiser dollars. The simplest explanation is that facebook looks the other way while others run the botnets. facebook wins (a lot, as long as most advertisers don't know it's happening), botnet owner wins (a little), and the advertiser loses. But, there are other plausible explanations, including incompetence. 2. When you paint things in a "Either you accept my theory in its entirety, or you're all idiots", you force people to choose a side. Nobody wants to be on the same side as an asshole, so you force them to choose the other side. You make people who may even agree with you (to a greater or lesser degree) to begin to formulate plausible reasons for why you're wrong about the crazier stuff you're spouting...further convincing themselves that you're entirely wrong. The best you can hope for is people ignore you and don't have the chance to be inoculated against your ideas; having you as their first exposure to these concepts guarantees they will be less likely to believe them in the future, even if they come from a more credible source. Humans are funny creatures. Thus, I would point out that there are some really naive and stupid people on HN that have zero grasp of effective argument, persuasion, and even basic logic. You might be well-served by reading about non-violent communication: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication Edit: Removed the word "schizophrenic" as it was an insensitive use of the term, and was counter-productive to making my point.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
phenom 14y ago
I think problem is more deep, I do not want to make other Conspiracy Theory but here some story from other huge Russian social network (vk 150m. users). There is one small, not that big group (like fb groups), users made agreement, that no one will post next day (something like honeypot), and those who post would be considered as bot and baned forever. So next day couple or so bots generated comments encouraging others do not go on strike against some political party [0]. I do not know is it applies to FB, but those who have like 100k bots have some power too. [0] http://imgur.com/Vvkbx http://imgur.com/Vvkbx screenshot in russian Edit: spelling Edit2: proper link

samstave 14y ago

>...without ANY facts... What about the farking article? Where they proved that 80% of their clicks were from bots. Then several others confirm they ahve the same experience? What about those facts? I also speculated on what FB is doing. Them giving user data to the NSA/CIA - that is a supposed fact, sure, but I am not the only person who believes this. Am I extremely distrustful of Facebook? Of course! Maybe you have not followed their track record or the character of their founder.

heelhook 14y ago
If you are into conspiracy theories then how about maybe this is Google directing a massive bot net to make facebook ads useless? > I also speculated on what FB is doing. Them giving user data to the NSA/CIA - that is a supposed fact, sure, but I am not the only person who believes this. Great argument! A lot of people believe it, so it must be true! Are you for real?!
- samstave 14y ago
  It is not my responsibility to educate you on modern internet history. This has been argued here on HN prior; Do you recall the backdoors that AT&T put at 600 Folsom, in SF? And the backdoors in Cisco's equipment that are a requirement by the federal government? Maybe you thin this shit is "conspiracy theory" and if you do, you're simply a naive fool. Look around you at what governments are doing. The NSA has records on everything you do online. They had a system in 2005 which could trace communications between users to 6 degrees, automatically.
  - dboat 14y ago
    It's odd to me that your posts aren't more downvoted than they are.
    - samstave 14y ago
      You think I make this shit up? There are some really naive and stupid people on HN that have zero grasp on the history of intelligence agencies.
      - SwellJoe 14y ago
        So, this is why people don't take you seriously. I know a couple of guys like you in my local activist community, who take a very hostile "I know the truth and you're all fools!" attitude, despite the fact that their audience is mostly very sympathetic to most of their assertions. We know spying on the Internet takes place; HN is full of cantankerous old Internet geeks who've seen, first-hand, plenty of examples of the state (whatever state you may choose, as it happens all over the world) behaving unethically on the Internet, spying on people and punishing people for things that shouldn't be crimes. But, your paranoid approach is counter-productive. You might as well be working for the people you claim to be afraid of, for all the good you do (negative good; you're convincing people that the folks who believe the government is spying are all paranoid nutjobs who scream at anyone who has the gall to mention other possible explanations). So, let's review: 1. Just because spying has taken place, and is currently taking place, and may even have the complicity of facebook in that spying, it does not mean that facebook is running a botnet to steal advertiser dollars. The simplest explanation is that facebook looks the other way while others run the botnets. facebook wins (a lot, as long as most advertisers don't know it's happening), botnet owner wins (a little), and the advertiser loses. But, there are other plausible explanations, including incompetence. 2. When you paint things in a "Either you accept my theory in its entirety, or you're all idiots", you force people to choose a side. Nobody wants to be on the same side as an asshole, so you force them to choose the other side. You make people who may even agree with you (to a greater or lesser degree) to begin to formulate plausible reasons for why you're wrong about the crazier stuff you're spouting...further convincing themselves that you're entirely wrong. The best you can hope for is people ignore you and don't have the chance to be inoculated against your ideas; having you as their first exposure to these concepts guarantees they will be less likely to believe them in the future, even if they come from a more credible source. Humans are funny creatures. Thus, I would point out that there are some really naive and stupid people on HN that have zero grasp of effective argument, persuasion, and even basic logic. You might be well-served by reading about non-violent communication: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication Edit: Removed the word "schizophrenic" as it was an insensitive use of the term, and was counter-productive to making my point.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

phenom 14y ago

I think problem is more deep, I do not want to make other Conspiracy Theory but here some story from other huge Russian social network (vk 150m. users). There is one small, not that big group (like fb groups), users made agreement, that no one will post next day (something like honeypot), and those who post would be considered as bot and baned forever. So next day couple or so bots generated comments encouraging others do not go on strike against some political party [0]. I do not know is it applies to FB, but those who have like 100k bots have some power too. [0] http://imgur.com/Vvkbx http://imgur.com/Vvkbx screenshot in russian Edit: spelling Edit2: proper link