
How Facebook Helps Shady Advertisers Pollute the Internet - kgwgk
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-27/ad-scammers-need-suckers-and-facebook-helps-find-them
======
fortythirteen
Now we see the propaganda machine at work.

Not satisfied with sticking to the important story of FB's monstrous track
record with personal data, the news media must turn each cycle into a full on
character assassination. Regardless of how I feel about FB, I'm more disturbed
by the media pattern.

~~~
bogomipz
>"Now we see the propaganda machine at work."

No, it's called public interest journalism. In the wake of the Cambridge
Analytica scandal it's quite logical that the public has an interest in
knowing more about the inner working of of an opaque and powerful entity.

>"the news media must turn each cycle into a full on character assassination."

A "character assassination " by its very definition is an attack on a singular
individual. You can not have a character assassination on a corporation.

>"Regardless of how I feel about FB, I'm more disturbed by the media pattern."

I'm more disturbed by your labeling something as "propaganda" simply because
you yourself didn't feel it merited reporting on.

~~~
fortythirteen
> No, it called public interest journalism.

There is little to no "public interest journalism" anymore, only click
interest journalism.

> You can not have a character assassination on a corporation.

This is metaphor for the pattern of behavior. They are taking the same methods
they use for the news cycle's "horrible person of the week" and turning it on
Facebook.

> I'm more disturbed by your labeling something as "propaganda"

Considering the media's hyper focus on how the RNC used FB with the CA story,
and an almost complete omission of how the DNC did the same thing, and more,
with CTR, I'm comfortable sticking with "propaganda".

~~~
bogomipz
>"There is little to no "public interest journalism" anymore, only click
interest journalism."

What an incredibly uninformed and naive statement to make. Just because
inferior sources of something are abundant does not mean that quality
alternatives don't exist. This is as absurd as drawing the conclusion that
fine dining doesn't exist any more and pointing to the prevalence of fast food
restaurants as evidence of this.

There is no shortage of quality public interest journalism or entities
committed to it. Here are some examples - The Marshall Project, First Look
Media and ProPublica.

>"Considering the media's hyper focus on how the RNC used FB with the CA
story, ..."

There was no mention of the RNC in the news piece being discussed here.

~~~
gcb0
if the article had done minimal research, they would have included taboola,
which is the affiliate scam of news publishers. the fact that they didn't hint
that this thread assumptions are correct, and you are being slightly naive

~~~
bogomipz
So a 3,500 word piece that written over a 6 month period is suspect because a
single vendor was omitted from the piece during? Right. It sounds like you
definitely naive about both how the editorial process and how journalism
works.

~~~
gcb0
6mo and missed something under their nose that plays a huge part on the
topic... but I now know the scammer latest diet at least :(

------
bhouston
The guy featured in the article is using Facebook as the bad guy instead of
him. Just because Facebook allows you to post these if you are tricky enough
doesn't mean Facebook is responsible for people being scammed by them. It is a
weird type of projection or something like that -- a denial of responsibility.
Weird guy.

~~~
AlexandrB
It's becoming pretty apparent that regulation is necessary in the advertising
space. Left to their own devices the biggest, most well-funded ad companies
are doing little to combat scams, misinformation, and outright fraud.

> It is a weird type of projection or something like that -- a denial of
> responsibility.

There's denial of responsibility at every level. What's funny is that Facebook
has absolutely taken on the responsibility of censoring content - blocking
nudity and certain other topics. But at the same time has denied
responsibility for misleading or fraudulent ad content that gets on its site.
I think the difference is that one is cheap to do (object classification via
machine learning) and the other would require some real manpower.

~~~
oblio
Not sure it would require more manpower, but it would surely decrease their
revenues.

People refuse to accept it, but there's a reason there used to be millions of
spam messages sent out each day 10 years ago and there's probably even more
sent today, we just don't see it as much. Shady business brings a lot of
money. Heck, entire (smaller) countries kick-started their wealth by
collecting from shady people.

~~~
55555
> Heck, entire (smaller) countries kick-started their wealth by collecting
> from shady people.

I have no doubt, but am very curious to read more if you've got any examples.

~~~
oblio
Cyprus is a somewhat classic example:
[https://euobserver.com/justice/139688](https://euobserver.com/justice/139688)

Malta seems to be doing something similar.

Switzerland was quite prosperous but it upped its level by 1 notch by being
neutral (and therefore both safe from destruction and a safe haven during 2
world wars) and also through some “minor” dirty banking:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Jewish_Congress_lawsui...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Jewish_Congress_lawsuit_against_Swiss_banks)

Basically every banking center our there hasn’t really had any qualms with
money laundering until international organizations put the squeeze on them.
Panama, Seychelles, Curacao, etc.

------
21
Wonderful example of Machine Learning being used to harm, the banality of
evil:

> Affiliates once had to guess what kind of person might fall for their
> unsophisticated cons, targeting ads by age, geography, or interests. Now
> Facebook does that work for them. The social network tracks who clicks on
> the ad and who buys the pills, then starts targeting others whom its
> algorithm thinks are likely to buy. Affiliates describe watching their ad
> campaigns lose money for a few days as Facebook gathers data through trial
> and error, then seeing the sales take off exponentially. “They go out and
> find the morons for me,”

~~~
ThomPete
What in that is evil?

~~~
mbel
Using AI to weed out people most susceptible to manipulation via ads doesn't
really seem to be something that falls under "good & moral" category.

~~~
dfxm12
There are a lot of choices on this spectrum between "good & moral" and "evil".

~~~
Fnoord
True, but consider the following:

1) The people _themselves_ don't know how easily they are manipulated.

2) Facebook analyses this about them, and helps other businesses to use this
_against them_.

3) They do not know Facebook helps other businesses to use this against them.

That's problematic. At the very least, #3 should be solved ie. they should be
informed beforehand because then at the very least they're informed about the
malpractices. You can then make a case about it being allowed, or not. But you
cannot make any informed case if you don't even know it is _occurring_.

------
common_
This actually seems more damaging and disgusting than all of the Cambridge
Analytica news. Facebook employees actively working to help scammers get
billions of dollars out of uneducated poor users. Despicable.

~~~
gambiting
Hey but all those users agreed to have their information used this way, so
what's your issue?????

/s

~~~
herbst
You call it sarcasm however it is true. Nobody forces anyone to visit that ad
invested shit hole. Even less without adblock.

~~~
AlexandrB
> Nobody forces anyone to visit that ad invested shit hole.

That's a little simplistic. In the social media space there are no widely-used
competitors to Facebook. Companies that could be called competitors in scale -
Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, Snapchat - target different demographics and use-
cases[1]. You're not likely to find too many older family members on Snapchat
for example. Even so, Facebook also owns several former such competitors like
WhatsApp and Instagram.

I try to avoid Facebook like the plague, but it gets harder every year. Just
about my entire extended family currently uses WhatsApp for messaging and
phone calls to save money on overseas phone bills. I'm trying to push them
towards Signal - but it's like pushing a boulder uphill because all of _their_
friends use WhatsApp also.

[1] None of these vet their ads with any rigor either, by the way. If I'm
looking for a company that uses personal information and displays ads
carefully and ethically such a beast doesn't exist.

~~~
herbst
For me it is the exact different. More and more people are available outside
of the Facebook eco system because at this point the media conception is bad
enough that you don't need to argument anymore.

Due to hangouts we are all connected in a social media like but private
environment anyway. This only works because nobody i know has a iPhone anymore
tho.

Literally the only reason I used facebook were low effort marketing actions.
However they widely lost their effect the last years.

Tldr: from my point of view it never was easier to not use Facebook.

And I highly believe everyone can just not use it if they actually wanted to.

------
black_puppydog
As much as I dislike facebook, a lot of these articles these days just seem
like "piling on" (albeit deserved) and quite frankly unsurprising to most
people _here on HN_.

~~~
netsharc
Earlier I realized, the lesson to be learned is, if you have an online
platform, you should care about users' privacy even if you're small, because
who knows, one day it can lead to an international scandal with you as the bad
guy.

~~~
black_puppydog
So I guess at least someone here learned something from all this. :)

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zombieprocesses
This is getting annoying. Is anyone else sick and tired of the FB related
propaganda? 6 out of the top 30 stories are FB related. It was like that
yesterday. The day before. Usually the mods are very good about getting rid of
the clutter but for some reason, FB related spam is allowed.

------
manigandham
And yet again, this is nothing to do with Facebook but the global advertising
industry that is largely unregulated and has no consequences.

There is the FTC (in the US) and guidelines for TV, radio, print work well
enough along with the natural time and effort barriers, but digital
advertising has far greater reach, scale, and precision with almost 0
oversight. This must be fixed with actual consequences (as in prison time for
offenders who run scams and malware) otherwise nothing will change.

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julienfr112
There is one thing i don't get : If users get scammed by a facebook ad, they
should lose trust in the platform, and share that mistrust. I get that you can
earn some money with new users as they enter the platform, but after a while,
you should not find any more suckers, because every one will be educated (at a
cost of a cheese)

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ungzd
I see lots of Russian scam ads ("earn money easily blah-blah") on Instagram
(which uses Facebook's unified ad network). Other category of ads I see here
often are ICOs.

------
guilhermetk
A bit off topic, but, is logging off from a facebook account in the browser
enough to stay away from FB's radar or they can still track users through
scripts running on others websites?

~~~
jcsnv
People run the FB pixel scripts on their site

