You’re speaking with a pretty authoritative tone there as though you’re absolutely sure that Facebook has had a change of heart and only wants to host quality content, and there’s no other reason why the pages were removed. Do you have some sort of proof for that, or are you just speculating? If you’re speculating, don’t you think it would be a good idea to match the tone of your post to your true amount of confidence in what you’re saying, so as not to misinform people who might read your comment?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Curious conversation requires a certain lightness of touch. You can still make your same point that way; actually it will work better that way.
> You’re speaking with a pretty authoritative tone there as though you’re absolutely sure that Facebook has had a change of heart and only wants to host quality content, and there’s no other reason why the pages were removed. Do you have some sort of proof for that, or are you just speculating?
Isn’t in the HN guidelines to “respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize”?
Are you an official representative of HN? Because it appears that the vast majority of your comments are nothing but comments about other people's comments, or directives to follow guidelines.
Frankly, it seems more positive for the community to vote with their feet on comments and posts vs one individual continuously navigating through posts and threads telling people how to behave.
I'm serious about the first question...
Yes, he is. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25225775
He is the senate.
It's interesting to ask why. I thought about that for years and I think I found an answer. It's because although the community has many smart and well-intentioned people, each is giving only a fragment of their attention to HN (at least I hope they are). Some critical functions, like optimizing the site globally rather than just reacting to specific stories or comments, require someone whose job it is to give full attention to HN [3]. It's not that we're better—except in the sense that one gets better at anything with practice—it's that we play the role of looking out for the community as a whole.
Actually the system has three components: community, moderation, but also software. That's interesting too, because it has always been a property of HN that the core moderators were also the programmers. We rely heavily on software to help manage the portions of the problem that can be handled that way, with the intention of freeing more of our attention for the optimization problem. It only works up to a point, but without it we'd be doomed.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Yet even based on this "you" think downvotes are a good idea to keep them, compounding the issue of partial attention with laziness by allowing a single click for a dopamine hit to satisfy someone's half-or-less attention interpretation of something - not required to spend the mental effort to actually qualitatively reply (that you/HN are seeming to strive for) where they'd be forced to pay more attention or their lack of attention will be exposed for fair ridicule via getting responded to; or the qualitative reply will help educate or cause the author being responded to hopefully learn something (that a downvote won't teach them) even if that is that they weren't clear enough with their writing and it's being misinterpreted. I'd implore you to do a multi-month to year trial of no downvotes on comments - I'm sure it'll piss off those who like to think they're right at half-or-less attention and regularly downvote click for that sweet sweet dopamine - and ironically those who normally downvote may actually comment their grievances/complain that there aren't downvotes.
I'm not trying to pick a fight, though I'm really curious how you see these truths I explained above? Having downvotes seems to support a lower quality, less discussion, and less requirement for attention - which seems contrary to what you seem to be working towards?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...
An alternate hypothesis is that most of the spend referenced by OP is ancient and relevant only for old-time sake. Again. OP didn't say that exactly, but it's a fair thing to question based on how the OP wrote the posting and selected the relevant time period.
This was the realization that finally tipped me over into getting off Facebook.
I realized that every time I was posting pictures of my life to share with my friends, I was providing the bait that drew them in and forced them to watch ads and other drivel.
Therefore it makes them money.
IMO, this should be part of the HN guidelines. HN would certainly be a better place if everyone followed this rule.
Facebook didn't decide anything as far as we know, he's presenting his opinions as facts, they aren't.
"Facebook decided they don't want to be a part of this type of content distribution" - That is not stated as an implied opinion, it is stated as a fact with absolutely nothing to back it up. Certainly Facebook is just as filled with this kind of low-quality content today as it was yesterday or three months ago. There is just nothing to support your speculation that this is part of some movement by Facebook to improve quality of content.
I wish you were right, but I actually think most of the time the exact opposite is true: appearing highly-confident about speculative things makes someone seem more credible, rather than less.
The higher confidence you presented your wrong statement, the higher the hit to your credibility will be.
https://religiondispatches.org/a-year-after-the-non-apocalyp...
I suspect it has to do with the reddit / youtube generation becoming adults. Polite disagreement seems to be on the way out.
ie, I downvote things that I feel have an aggregate S/N degradation multiplier.
I kinda miss /.'s moderation qualifiers.
And some of the most disagreeable people on my social media are old farts, too :)
Used to be part of the guidelines. Seems as though they've removed it.
Instead of treating the comment section as a dumping ground for your purely speculative opinions masquerading as authoritative takes, and pushing the burden of nuance onto readers by asking them to downvote if they disagree, I think one should clearly state their opinions in an intellectually honest way. Then there is no need for downvoting if others disagree.
> They just aren't going to bring themselves down to the level... and I don't blame them.
Without being familiar with Shared, I'm willing to take you at your word on the company. I do question your conclusion though. I've seen no indications that Facebook has any standards and if anything they seem to promote crap content not bury it. If it drives engagement and doesn't bring legal trouble to their doorstep, Facebook seems to be all over it.
Which makes me think there is something else going on here.
Almost 80% of the ads I see on Facebook are of similar quality. If they're trying to reduce low quality content on their platform, than they should just say that.
I am afraid you failed to read the fine print ;) I think the average legalese boilerplate is along the following lines: All characters and events depicted in this film are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All "episodes of Galaxy Quest are true historical documentaries".
Classic.
If you hate the people, that’s not the reason you tell them. You tell them you don’t have sufficient resource to provide the level of support you would want to put on the project, or that you don’t feel you can be price/quality competitive because of some factor and don’t think you are a good fit compared to your competitors.
I would never tell a client that their website “doesn’t meet our quality bar” - that’s basically saying “we are too good for you” and I would personally think it’s incredibly condescending - just look at Berkshire Hathaways website!
10 years ago, that kind of site was called a "content farm". I don't hear that term used much lately. Google spent a lot of effort peeling dreck like that off of their search results with limited success. Facebook, it seems, has had use for them until recently.
The OP/CEO seems comes off as utterly delusional when he says... > "Until recently, we had more than 25 million enthusiastic fans on 11 pages."
Yeah, right, "enthusiastic" if he really means getting them to click on stuff by exploiting subconscious glitches in the human basal ganglia overriding cognition.
Facebook + Shared.com must have been good while it lasted, at their users' expense, but f them both.
Kind of genius, in a way.
I wish there was a global tracker for services that make money through ads, that reported the percent of ads that are for other services in the same category. All that data is secret though, probably.
I guess they do click scams via bots too?
> Facebook decided they don't want to be a part of this type of content distribution
Facebook's entire business model is built around the proliferation of "crap" content.
Also taking down personal accounts seems more like an automated action where a graph of related accounts are taken down.
They made a business decision to move on from this content platform. I love to hate on facebook with the best of them, but they really don't "owe" anyone anything.
There seems to be this pervasive attitude in technology circles that platforms "owe" other businesses and individuals something when they build businesses on top of said platforms. Just because you spent 54MM in ads on a platform doesn't entitle you to anything when a legal or business decision has to be made. Is it crappy not to communicate and give an explanation...? you bet it is. Did that 54MM in spend generate anything for Shared... you bet it did. Everyone was a winner until Facebook moved on.
I suspect that Facebook and Shared working to negotiate out of this will just result in a lot of spinning wheels, ammunition collection on both sides to pursue legal remedies, and nothing of real value changing. Facebook said we're moving on. Done.
1) I think it's very unhelpful to speak in terms of "not owing things" to people and defending anyone whoever does the absolute minimum until they're dragged kicking and screaming to extend the most basic courtesy. Part of being a decent human being is extending such basic courtesies to others even when there's no legal obligation to do so, and, when an org doesn't do that, it's absolutely right to call them out on it.
2) If you're right, that this only came after extensive negotiation in which FB did reveal their objections, then yes, it's fair to call the advertiser out on that, for misrepresenting what explanation FB gave him.
Edit: Also,
>With regards to this, my point was that Facebook doesn't want to get into a long drawn out discussion with whataboutisms and splitting hairs on policy.
That's not relevant, because FB can recognize when they're making a judgment call; my point was just that it's courteous to at least recognize when you're doing so.
?? I would expect to see $57,000 abbreviated as $57K.
They made that conscious decision after running away with the money.
After the first few mil wouldn’t you understand your partner a little better?
At 57 it’s a rocky divorce and you know full well who you were sleeping with.
At least that's how I understand what happened.
Isn't that essentially FB's goal too? Albeit crap content that hits your brain's pleasure center
If your ISP decides to pull out of your area and sends you a notice that your account will be closed at the end of the month, would you expect to be reimbursed for the years of service you paid for?
(I suspect you are right though, and this is more likely to be a “hot or not” type arbitrary decision from a management team developed around superficial face value judgements and zero empathy... Apple ended up with a “Jobs culture”, Facebook reflects Zuckerberg...)
I still see lots of these types of ads on Facebook, just from different publishers. Are they broadly going after it?
Isn't that a slippery slope? In my country, Facebook decided not to ban some right-wing posters for hate speech because the right-wing in power had managed to get one of their OWN into Facebook, who "advised" Facebook that fighting hate-speech from such people would adversely affect Facebook operation in India as the government in power won't be happy about it. This person also got Facebook to take down opposition ads during the elections, thus harming their electoral prospects.
Source: Facebook and Narendra Modi: How FB’s policy head in India allowed a BJP politician to spread hate online so that it would not hurt its “business prospects” - https://churumuri.blog/2020/08/15/facebook-and-narendra-modi...
They even give them a reason. How is:
>they kicked me and my pages off without warning or explanation
truthful?
The only message that I can find which might qualify is, *“Due to repeated Page violations, you can’t post to any Pages eligible for monetization.”
That doesn't explain what the violations might have been. And in the dashboard where they were supposed to see said violations, no pages were marked as having any violations.
Which boils down to, "Due to repeated violations that we won't tell you about..."
Yeah, in their position I wouldn't consider that an explanation either.
How do you know that?
I sense a need for a new Ralph Nader, someone who has the clout to take on these companies and put them in their place. That place is not in the halls of power, it is not at the dining table of lawmakers, in the ear of regulators. Their place is on the market where they are to compete with other companies, where developers and users use their power of choice to keep them from attaining too much power as they currently clearly have.
Ans: I can't pay for the $2M house I bought in Noe Valley on a normal salary.
They must have pissed off Zuck some other way because I don't think that he cares about that.
Facebook are, of course, not a publisher, yet they are now the editor?
Sounds to me they are whatever they want to be, depending on the audience.
Shared.com is in the business of producing and distributing crap content. That's a subjective term, but it's like the supreme court ruling on pornography, you'll know it when you see it.
These guys most likely "skirt the line" to just operate as a mediocre and crappy content distribution network, that at scale, makes a lot of money because there is a certain subset of the population that will eat up any content at any quality level.
Facebook decided they don't want to be a part of this type of content distribution, and they made a conscious business decision to not to engage with it's owners and operators because it will simply result in an exercise of splitting hairs and a reduction to the ridiculous. They just aren't going to bring themselves down to the level... and I don't blame them.