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Experiment Alleges Facebook is Scamming Advertisers out of Billions of Dollars

22 points by yesplorer 13y ago

shenoybr 13y ago
This is being discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514 In reality, the researcher doesn't say by any means that FB is scamming advertisers. He merely explains and exposes flaws in their algorithm. The headline is flawed in my opinion.
Robadob 13y ago
The title is a bit of a link bait, the video which was posted in an earlier thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514) stated that, through Facebooks paid ads you also get likes from click farms (presumably because click farms like pages they aren't paid to like in order to avoid detection). This means that a higher percentage of your likes are from click farms than if you gained your likes organically, so when you pay for a post to reach a set number of your fans, a larger percentage of that is lost to click farm users who you don't want, than if you had purely organic likes.
darkstar999 13y ago
Bad headline. The end of the video, discussed here [1], concludes that the problem is that clickfarms masquerade their activities by clicking on random ads. The problem isn't that Facebook is scamming, it is the scammers scamming Facebook. Too bad I can't downvote this junk. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514
- pmorici 13y ago
  Wasn't the conclusion more that the scammers are scamming Facebook but Facebook isn't doing much/anything about it perhaps because they are benefiting financially from it?
james33 13y ago
This lost all credibility when it said "Facebook is rumored to be worth somewhere around $100 billion." First of all, a public company has a specific value, it isn't rumored to be anything. Second, the current value of FB on the market is north of $160B.
- redblacktree 13y ago
  You found one nit to pick and threw the baby out with the bathwater?

22 points by yesplorer 13y ago

This is being discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514 In reality, the researcher doesn't say by any means that FB is scamming advertisers. He merely explains and exposes flaws in their algorithm. The headline is flawed in my opinion.

Robadob 13y ago

The title is a bit of a link bait, the video which was posted in an earlier thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514) stated that, through Facebooks paid ads you also get likes from click farms (presumably because click farms like pages they aren't paid to like in order to avoid detection). This means that a higher percentage of your likes are from click farms than if you gained your likes organically, so when you pay for a post to reach a set number of your fans, a larger percentage of that is lost to click farm users who you don't want, than if you had purely organic likes.

darkstar999 13y ago

Bad headline. The end of the video, discussed here [1], concludes that the problem is that clickfarms masquerade their activities by clicking on random ads. The problem isn't that Facebook is scamming, it is the scammers scamming Facebook. Too bad I can't downvote this junk. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514

pmorici 13y ago
Wasn't the conclusion more that the scammers are scamming Facebook but Facebook isn't doing much/anything about it perhaps because they are benefiting financially from it?

james33 13y ago

This lost all credibility when it said "Facebook is rumored to be worth somewhere around $100 billion." First of all, a public company has a specific value, it isn't rumored to be anything. Second, the current value of FB on the market is north of $160B.

redblacktree 13y ago
You found one nit to pick and threw the baby out with the bathwater?