News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by ericmay on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @04:39PM (#34618229)
Yikes. Good lesson learned for them there I hope.
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by mensetmanusman on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @04:46PM (#34618333)
The philosophical lesson is that certain businesses just can’t exist without targeted advertisements, and that society might decide that is a price they are willing to pay.
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by blululu on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @06:48PM (#34619919)
This feels like a cheap take. Consider any number of small businesses just starting out (a local juice bar, a fitness service, a mobile app, a game...). They have a good product that makes their customers happy. The problem is they only have 5 customers and that won't pay the bills. They could hope that they just get lucky and people just discover them (it happens but its rare), or they can go out and promote their product. So they invest in marketing and sometimes this means buying ads. Can this business exist without targeted ads? Of course it can, but the odds are stacked against them. Saying they can't exist is an exaggeration.
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by mensetmanusman on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @08:35PM (#34620875)
If it’s not targeted but only 1/10000 people would be interested, general advertising could be too expensive.
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by rubidium on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @08:53PM (#34621007)
For local businesses, direct mail, signage, and door to door is still totally an option.
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by mensetmanusman on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @10:31PM (#34621676)
Not if you cnc manufacture obscure custom bike mods or the like.
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by juve1996 on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @09:10PM (#34621154)
I'm sorry but personal privacy trumps someone's business.

People may hate apple but we're continuing down an advertising hellscape. I feel bad for the small business owners. But that's life.

Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by disgruntledphd2 on Thursday February 02, 2023 @05:08AM (#34624532)
I really don't understand this. Like, Facebook and Google don't have teams sitting down examining each user to assess what ads they like.

They just shove vast amounts of data into towers of ML models and a prediction comes out. They use that prediction to rank ads.

In this scenario, how was your privacy violated?

This isn't a troll, I'm genuinely interested in your answer.

Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by smoldesu on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @04:49PM (#34618371)
The lesson: "Always pay tribute to the bigger company"
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by jiscariot on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @05:27PM (#34618881)
The lesson is you want to own the platform. Because then you get to brand the META/GOOG ad opt-in "tracking" and yours "enhanced digital experience".
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by dnissley on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @04:56PM (#34618486)
What do you think the lesson is?
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by nerdix on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @05:57PM (#34619281)
That they should go directly to Apple for targeted advertising when iAd 2.0 launches.
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by threeseed on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @06:34PM (#34619747)
Except that Apple has no plans to compete with Facebook or Google.

It is just first-party advertising for App Store, News+ etc.

The sort of channels small businesses were never going to use anyway.

Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by bryan_w on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @09:43PM (#34621371)
> just first-party advertising for App Store, News+

And stocks and weather. They also have a video platform they could expand into, and music oh don't forget books. Don't they also make a web browser?

Hmmm.... Yeah, i guess it's no big deal that it's only apple's first party apps.

Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by threeseed on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @10:53PM (#34621822)
They are all first party and combined represent ~0% of the advertising market share compared to Meta and Google.

Apple is irrelevant and until one of those channels gets billions of users looking at it every day it will remain irrelevant.

Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by hyuuu on Thursday February 02, 2023 @12:51AM (#34622634)
of all the brands, apple cult brand is the strongest, it's hard to argue when it's already spelled out word per word in their leak internal memos that their intention to stop tracking was because they wanted a cut of FB's ad revenue.

Their execution under the guise of caring for user privacy is a master class though, it's impeccably done, there should be a case study done about this.

Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by whywhywhydude on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @05:14PM (#34618716)
Yeah, great lesson that unless you are a billionaire who is ready to spend millions on superbowl ads, you have no business starting a new brand.
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by rightbyte on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @06:22PM (#34619613)
How about, unless you can pay someone to spy on prospective customers, you have no business starting a new brand?
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by ericmay on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @06:23PM (#34619629)
I’m not sure where that tangent came from but that certainly wouldn’t be the lesson learned.

The lesson learned is that these small “brands” that can only exist due to adware (fake demand) will eventually be culled by increases in prices or de-amplification of their products.

If your “brand” is one of these then you should be learning that you need to actually make a good product at a good price that doesn’t rely on advertising to succeed in your marketplace. Otherwise you are always at risk of being squeezed and potentially shut down.

Many (certainly not all) of these companies are parasites in that the rely on Meta to utilize algorithms to get you addicted and alter your purchasing habits. They don’t actually offer a good product at a good price, they offer copies of other products with different labels, or in some cases outright, disposable junk.

Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by wtetzner on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @07:43PM (#34620422)
> you need to actually make a good product at a good price that doesn’t rely on advertising to succeed in your marketplace.

How do you create a product that doesn’t need advertising? People need to find out about it somehow.

Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by ericmay on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @07:50PM (#34620495)
Get creative I guess
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by mensetmanusman on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @08:57PM (#34621036)
Too risky unless you are rich.
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by hyuuu on Thursday February 02, 2023 @12:49AM (#34622613)
not sure if you are being serious or sarcastic, but ads are pretty much essential, especially in this extremely competitive attention span of a market
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by ericmay on Thursday February 02, 2023 @09:23AM (#34626846)
I'm being serious. The competitive nature that you mention proves the point. Don't compete.

Are you a local coffee shop or clothing designer? Why would you be advertising on Facebook when you should be partnering with a local news site or city/town interest site, or going to meetups, or sponsoring local events?

Relying on Facebook ads builds artificial demand, subjects you to extreme competition, and ultimately either you have to spend too much to maintain or you eventually lose customers because the only reason they were interested in your product was the ads in the first place. Live by the ad, die by the ad.

Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by wtetzner on Thursday February 02, 2023 @11:29PM (#34637155)
> you should be partnering with a local news site or city/town interest site, or going to meetups, or sponsoring local events?

All of that is advertising.

I was replying to this:

> If your “brand” is one of these then you should be learning that you need to actually make a good product at a good price that doesn’t rely on advertising to succeed in your marketplace.

Maybe I misinterpreted the meaning.

Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by ericmay on Friday February 03, 2023 @04:06PM (#34647700)
Yea I was talking about advertising via Facebook and social media but obviosuly see how that could be misread. cheers
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by juve1996 on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @09:08PM (#34621142)
Millions of small businesses started just fine before Facebook existed.
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by anaganisk on Thursday February 02, 2023 @12:26AM (#34622467)
Niche and local Business didn't exists before facebook?
Re:Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results by disgruntledphd2 on Thursday February 02, 2023 @05:06AM (#34624518)
They did, but the explosion of very specific businesses is almost entirely down to Google and Facebook changing the cost structure for these businesses by providing global advertising reach for companies that are small but have products that can be purchased anywhere.