KEY POINTS:
- Facebook likes comments and shares of articles from news outlets that regularly publish falsehoods and misleading content roughly tripled from the third quarter of 2016 to the third quarter of 2020.
- Far more Americans distrust than trust Facebook as a source for political and election news.
- FB’s lies and misrepresentations about its advertising business have continued year after year.
- Now Congress is going after big tech, including Facebook.
- Too many marketers still use Facebook for vanity metrics.
I’m proud that I have been in Facebook jail many times. If someone, I feel, is stupid, I’m going to call them out. Like Mr Churchill said “you have enemies? Good. It means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
Facebook has bigger problems than someone calling someone else stupid. According to the NY Times,” Facebook likes comments and shares of articles from news outlets that regularly publish falsehoods and misleading content roughly tripled from the third quarter of 2016 to the third quarter of 2020.
Pew Internet reported “far more Americans distrust than trust Facebook as a source for political and election news, according to a survey in October and November 2019. Around six in ten adults (59%) said they distrust the platform as a place to get this kind of news, while only 15% said they trust it. Another 19% said they neither trust nor distrust it. Democrats and Republicans alike were much more likely to distrust than trust Facebook for political and election news.
Facebook is a corrupt as the Trump administration was. The Ad Contrarian wrote ” newly released court documents gave us a peek at the depths of depravity inside Facebook. We’ve known for years, and have documented ad nauseam, FB’s lies and misrepresentations about their advertising business. This week, new information came to light.
TechCrunch reported that according to emails and other info unsealed for the first time in a court case…
– COO Sheryl Sandberg knew for years that Facebook was over-estimating the reach of FB ads.
– Facebook’s product manager for their tool that estimated “potential reach” warned the company that it was making fraudulent representations to advertisers.
– An email from one employee asked, “how long can we get away with the reach overestimation?”
– In 2017 Sandburg “acknowledged in an internal email she had known about problems with potential reach for years.”
– Although they knew their reach estimates were bullshit, they refused to implement fixes proposed by employees.
– Facebook resisted correcting their lies because fixing the problem would reduce their “estimated reach” by 10% and would have significant impact on revenue. When a proposal to correct the lies was rejected, the executive making the proposal said, “It’s revenue we should have never made given the fact it’s based on wrong data.”
The court case in question seems to be based substantially on absurd claims that were reported here back in 2017 when Facebook claimed it reached more people than actually exists.
Facebook has never allowed industry-standard 3rd-party auditing of its audience claims. Why? Because they’re full of shit and always have been. Facebook is permeated with liars, con men, fraudsters, and bullshit artists. Anyone who believes a word that comes out of their mouths is an idiot.
Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian
Now Congress is going after big tech, including Facebook. Long overdue. Facebook can’t stand that a competitor has succeeded with a new app or social media tactic. They immediately go after them with a copy on their own website, but most have been failures to date.
Facebook can’t be a social media bulletin board on day while suspending people the next for calling someone stupid which they did is “bullying”. My God do they even know what real bullying is?
My inability to post on Facebook or even like a post has demonstrated that I could care less about Facebook. Unfortunately, brands and marketers are still planning to give Zuckerberg a bunch of money because they are brain dead. CEOs responsible to shareholders understand that there is a huge disconnect between using Facebook and metrics that count like sales. Unfortunately, too many marketers still believe in brand-building horse manure.
I’m sure tons of money is going to be flowing into the pockets of Congress as big tech fights regulation but when it comes to Facebook the restrictions need serious implementation, NOW.
