
Facebook: There must have been miscommunication with Limited Run - gr366
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook-limited-run-response-20120730,0,5059899.story
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Lewton
Their response focuses entirely on the issue of them charging them for a name
change, and almost completely ignores the bot issue.

I personally don't see that as a big issue, it would make sense that they
don't let pages change names willy-nilly. This response is peculiar

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fooey
yeah, makes you wonder if there's someone internally who's been scamming
companies

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JonnieCache
IMO it's more likely to be that they know full well those bots are skewing the
figures underpinning their valuation and their general popularity with
investors. They're trying to quietly move the narrative away from that part by
focusing on the naming issue.

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taligent
You seem to forget that Zuckerberg owns majority voting stock.

He could turn Facebook into a porn site and there isn't anything anybody can
do about it. So when you understand this you will see how ridiculous this
notion is that Facebook is complicit in scamming advertisers.

Also do people not remember when this was (and still is) happening with Google
? It's like spam. You can manage it but never really get rid of it.

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Retric
If he did change FB into a porn site the minority investors would sue and most
likely win.

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austenallred
There was a "miscommunication" about the name change. I'm a little bit more
concerned about the whole "80% of our clicks were a sham" thing. But that
could be just me.

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digitalengineer
No mention from FaceBook of bots and how they're planning on handling fake-
accounts in the future. Is FB trying to deflect the issue by muddying the
water with the "name-issue"? If so, bots must be a bigger problem for them
than I thought...

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mmcnickle
The sad thing is that this highlights one of the biggest problems with dealing
with big technology firms (Google/Apple/Facebook/PayPal). You need to gain
substantial media coverage before you get anyone from the firm willing to
address your issue.

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loceng
Isn't it always a miscommunication with Facebook, and always the user's fault
- not abuse by Facebook - and us users simply don't understand that it's
actually a feature they're so kindly providing us?

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chris_wot
When you consistently act in an unethical way, things like this ate even worse
than normal. I suspect Facebook is going to crash - gut feel, of course.

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w1ntermute
It seems likely this was a mistake, and not the result of dishonesty or
malicious intent. That said, such an enormous mistake should have never been
made in the first place, especially by a company such as Facebook.

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spaghetti
Can we please see some actual numbers! Given the advertiser's "popularity"
it's possible they were over-charged something like $4 for a few hundred
clicks in which case it's certainly not an enormous mistake.

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ForrestN
Err, I don't think people are up in arms over the damage done to this one
company. The story has legs because it implies that this is happening on a
larger scale, and that Facebook is making a significant portion of its revenue
from valueless clicks. Facebook should have had a system to avoid charging for
such clicks, and if it doesn't that's a huge nationwide story. And it wouldn't
be because they didn't realize they needed one.

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taligent
The problem is that this is no different to Google.

It also earns a tonne of revenue through fraudulent clicks many by
competitors. It's a big deal and Facebook needs to make attempts to fix it but
the problem will never be completely solvable.

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samstave
> _2\. FB may or may not be involved in the ad-bots, but, they will drop their
> $ contingency on ad-rev for the name and payout these guys to shut them up._

This was predicted.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4313405>

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jack-r-abbit
uh... you made three fairly different predictions of possible outcomes. You
were almost guaranteed that _one_ of them would be true. I'm not sure that is
all that significant.

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samstave
Not saying it was significant, only predictable.

Also I think this was the most likely outcome. Act like a minor mea culpa and
pay them off.

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halis
They can't be that crazy, if they pulled that bot scam on just one customer,
they risk alienating their entire user base. How could they possibly think
they could get away with something like that? It doesn't add up.

