
Mark Zuckerberg Speaks Down to Users and Misses the Point - panarky
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/wsj-op-ed-mark-zuckerberg-speaks-down-users-and-misses-point
======
crazygringo
> _He starts with one of his greatest hits: “People consistently tell us that
> if they’re going to see ads, they want them to be relevant.” This
> perpetuates the ad industry’s favorite false dichotomy: either consumers can
> have “relevant” ads—targeted using huge collections of sensitive behavioral
> data—or they can be bombarded by spam for knock-off Viagra and weight-loss
> supplements. The truth is that ads can be made “relevant” and profitable
> based on the context in which they’re shown, like putting ads for outdoor
> gear in a nature magazine._

I disagree, it's not a false dichotomy, it's a real one.

Most Internet content isn't nearly as "contextual" as a nature magazine.
Probably 99% of the content I read won't help target ads much at all, because
it's mostly NYT news articles and the like.

I'm probably in a tiny minority here on HN, but I accept that ads are
currently necessary to fund companies (even though I wish it weren't true),
and I genuinely _prefer_ ads targeted towards my interests (I've gone so far
as to customize my interests on Google to help it serve me more relevant ads
-- most of them were accurate but there were a handful that weren't).

Targeting obviously isn't always perfect -- they still don't have the kink
ironed out where I keep seeing ads for something on Amazon even after I bought
the thing or a similar thing -- but it really does benefit users, if they've
got to put up with ads in the first place.

~~~
pdonis
_> I accept that ads are currently necessary to fund companies_

I don't. Facebook (and Google and Twitter) have inflicted the ad-supported
business model on themselves. If they were really concerned about their users,
they would figure out how to allow their users to pay directly for their
services, without seeing any ads or having any personal information collected.
Call it the "premium option" or something, like so many app developers do.
These companies are perfectly capable of doing that; they're just too lazy to
try.

~~~
ams6110
Google has YouTube Red (maybe it's called "Premium" now?) which is offered as
an ad-free version, with some other benefits such as offline viewing, and I do
pay for it. So that supports your thesis.

~~~
pdonis
_> Google has YouTube Red...that supports your thesis. _

I don't want to pay for YouTube. I want to pay for basic Google Search without
ads cluttering up every search page.

~~~
gbin
Is Google Contributor what you are looking for?
[https://www.zdnet.com/article/sick-of-ads-now-you-can-pay-
go...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/sick-of-ads-now-you-can-pay-google-not-
to-see-them-plus-sites-can-charge-ad-blocker-users/)

~~~
Semaphor
It doesn't seem to include Google in their list of sites? The whole concept
sounds interesting but it needs a way better selection of sites, I don't think
I've visited any of the few on that list [0].

Also, I'd need tracking disabled as well as the ads.

[0]
[https://support.google.com/contributor/answer/7324995](https://support.google.com/contributor/answer/7324995)

------
Barrin92
You know the thing I don't get about this is, Mark says that he didn't plan to
build a global company and wants to connect the world and serve people and all
of that, but he could do that right now. All the things that people don't like
about Facebook, he could get flatout rid of it. If he really cares about
making the world a better place and cut some profits, that can happen right
now.

I find it comical that Mark thinks targeted ads are even the controversial
part. We have children gambling their parents money away, data landing in the
hands of Russian psyops campaigns, political violence in the developing world
being organised etc..

If targeted advertisement was the most concerning thing coming out of Facebook
that'd be a great improvement. And yet they're not even able to get rid of
'friendly fraud'.

~~~
jplayer01
Wait, why are you taking what he says at face value? Why is anybody? He doesnt
care. He. Does. Not. Care. He's just saying what he needs to, just like
anybody else in his position trying to protect his business.

~~~
Barrin92
I mean, throwing our arms up and walking out of the room isn't going to make
companies like Facebook better either. So instead of being just cynical I
think everyone who works in tech, or has some influence in tech should just
keep pressuring people to live up to their word.

I don't think all tech leaders are evil and I do think Facebook has legitimate
use cases, so might as well advocate to at least get rid of the worst aspects
than just skip the debate altogether.

~~~
jplayer01
I'm not saying we shouldn't hold Zuckerberg accountable. We absolutely should.
But we shouldn't be measuring him by what he says. What he says is just a
bunch of hot air. There are plenty of values worth protecting that doesn't
rely on him being true to his word (which is worth less than zero, it's
actively harmful).

------
kfkdkfkfn
I wonder how many Facebook employees are lurking on hacker new, ready to
downvote people that speak badly of facebook. I once had a comment on Facebook
that got flagged that ended up with a ton of upvotes after it was clear it a
genuine comment.

~~~
6cd6beb
An important thing to note is that whether facebook has employees doing this
or not, there's no shortage of services for hire that will do this for anyone.

Literally any social media site that's popular is guaranteed to have accounts
whose influence is for sale.

~~~
ppod
While this is true, just for a second consider on which side the groupthink in
these comments falls. The mentality that anyone who disagrees with you must be
"brigading" or a paid shill is very dangerous. It's also a consistent sign of
the lowest quality debate on both sides --- everyone thinks everyone else is a
Soros/Mercer/Russian/Clinton shill or bot.

~~~
kekrjfjd
While I agree with your premise, I don’t think it applies in this case. It is
good that people are more weary of what they read online. For one, the
internet is rarely the source of truth. There are too many bad actors around.
Second, if someone disagrees with a comment, they should reply to that comment
with another well thought out comment. Downvoted and flagging require no
effort and is an emotional reaction more than a logical argument. This can be
gamed easily. Upvotes and downvotes are unhelpful in that herd mentality can
easily game the system. Flagging people’s genuine comment is bad faith and has
nothing to do with disagreement.

------
kakaorka
Facebook will not change anything until it is forced to. It simply is in their
best interest to disregard their users privacy just like they currently are
doing.

~~~
est31
Yup. It's their business model. The "users want relevant ads" is just a
convenient lie that they can tell... with much less data you can do ads that
are still highly relevant. But maybe you can't _sell_ them any more, and maybe
that's where Facebook is making a lot of money from. Of course, officially
they claim to be not in the selling business, but that's a lie. They happily
rent out their ad space to people who use the ads to collect those data.

~~~
throwaway123mmm
It's not a lie. You have to understand that the majority does not think like
you and actually appreciates targetted ads (me included).

~~~
asdff
>the majority I really wonder if that is the case. Here are some numbers from
popular adblockers on the chrome extension store:

"Adblocker for Chrome - NoAds" \- 6,545,443 users "AdGuard AdBlocker" \-
5,611,340 users "Adblocker Genesis Plus" \- 236,373 users "Fair AdBlocker" \-
1,922,094 users "Adblock Plus - free ad blocker" \- 10,000,000+ users (Google
stopped counting, apparently, but their page description boasts over 500m
users) "Ublock origin" \- 10,000,000+ users

These are all huge numbers of people who are going out of their way to install
software to never see an ad on the internet. There are probably many more
people who share the same disdain for ads but don't know about adblockers, and
there is likely a chunk of users who might not care very much either way.

I think it's safe to say that the proportion of people who genuinely
appreciate targeted advertising on the internet is pretty small.

------
Meekro
Google is in a great position here-- if the EFF gets everything they want in
terms of privacy, Google can still show ads relevant to my current search
query without remembering my search history.

But what would they suggest Facebook do instead of tracking? What ads are they
supposed to show me if they're not allowed to remember things about me?
There's nothing analogous to "outdoor gear in a nature magazine" that they
could do instead.

I just looked through my Facebook Ad Preferences as the article suggested, and
there's nothing there that would shock me. Yes, they know that I have an older
model iPhone because I've used it to access their website. They know I'm a
frequent traveler because they remember what IPs I've accessed their website
from. They know that I'm recently married, and which zip code I live in
_because I told them those things_. Using my zip code and some public records
that anyone could Google, they can make a good guess about my race and income
level. None of this is very scary because they only know what my friends and I
told them about me. They can't read my email or listen to my phone calls.

Speaking of which, does anyone remember Edward Snowden? Remember when we were
(rightfully) angry about NSA surveillance, the thing that _does_ read your
email and listen to your phone calls whether you consent or not, and the thing
that you can't opt out of by deleting an app on your phone? They never stopped
spying on us when the outrage machine moved on, and all this Facebook stuff
seems petty by comparison.

~~~
floe
>But what would they suggest Facebook do instead of tracking?

Why do they need to care whether Facebook is successful?

~~~
dralley
They don't. Facebook can join the club everyone else is in - having to get by
on standard ads... or pioneer a new business model that makes it possible.

I'm not going to cry over Facebook making a few billion less considering the
degree to which traditional journalism has been demolished by the reduced
margins on internet advertising, and how much they encourage spreading
clickbait and misinformation.

I'm not sure Twitter needs to exist, either.

------
falcor84
> Over a quarter of respondents said the categories “do not very or at all
> accurately represent them.”

Wow, I actually find this to be much more impressive on Facebook's side than
what I had imagined. So that means that Facebook has personalized ads
categories so accurate that 3 out of 4 users themselves rate them as very
accurately representing them 3. That's close to 2 billion users being
precisely targeted, right? I find this to be extremely disconcerting.

~~~
kbsletten
That's generally not how things go. I don't know the details of this exact
thing, but generally there will be two "very yes" responses, a "kinda yes", a
"kinda no", and to "very no". You throw out all the "kinda"s and pay attention
to the "very"s. 25% "very no" is a serious black eye, it's probably like 60%
"kinda"s.

~~~
Deimorz
The breakdown is here: [http://www.pewinternet.org/2019/01/16/facebook-
algorithms-an...](http://www.pewinternet.org/2019/01/16/facebook-algorithms-
and-personal-data/pi_2019-01-16_facebook-algorithms_0-04/)

13% "Very accurately"

46% "Somewhat accurately"

22% "Not very accurately"

5% "Not at all accurately"

 _(and 3% Refused, 11% Not assigned categories)_

~~~
falcor84
As someone who studied some formal logic and some psychology, I have to say
that providing the "Not very accurately" option is both bad logic and bad
research methodology.

------
makecheck
At this point it’s safe to say that much of the data Facebook has was acquired
in ways that are _questionable_ , and that between their treasure troves and
data leaks from other companies it’s impossible to get the cat back in the
bag. Simply put, your data, _in current formats_ , is _out there_ and it’s not
under control _at all_.

After breaking up Facebook and punishing credit agencies whose _job_ it was to
secure data, the only path forward I see is to introduce new data formats for
all the things we took for granted and push _hard_ for the adoption of those
replacements. (Facebook has all your pictures; well, do they have them in
$NEW_KEYED_IMAGE_FORMAT that has your new revocable authorized keys injected
by modern cameras? Facebook has your phone number; well, do they have a new
2nd-factor token that makes the phone number useless without the token?
Facebook has your full name; too bad, the government has moved on to a new
system that requires several new government-issued identity tokens that
Facebook can’t have, making them unable to correlate your name with other
aspects of your modern identity. And so forth.) Ruin it all. Make _every
single spec of data useless_.

~~~
floe
>Facebook has your phone number; well, do they have a new 2nd-factor token
that makes the phone number useless without the token?

Useless? They already used it to infer my social graph by correlating it with
my friends' contact lists. They don't really care if now there's a new token
needed to actually call me.

I guess I'm saying that we can patch our problems with ID and authorization,
like you're suggesting, but privacy harms go way beyond just that.

------
rixrax
Lawmakers should probably ban and break up FB as harmful, just like we do with
some controlled substances and other things.

But the scary thought is that in this unlikely scenario (or in bankruptcy),
what would happen to all the data they hoard? Sold to highest bidder maybe?
Published under Creative Commons license?

#toomuchdatatofail?

~~~
jasonlfunk
Nonsense. Why should the government ban Facebook? Unlike a lot of industries
that consumers must use, Facebook is 100% optional. If you don't like what
Facebook does, close your account and tell your friends to do the same. But if
others want to use the services that Facebook offers, who are you to tell them
that they can't?

~~~
dylan604
Because Facebook also harms non-users. It's worse than 2nd hand smoke. It's
like the drug and the junkie at the same time. It's the drug to the users, but
then it's the junkie that steals things from others to continue its habit to
survive.

~~~
wilsonnb3
You must have drank some serious kool aid if you think that Facebook is worse
than second hand smoke.

One of those can actually kill you.

~~~
giornogiovanna
I agree - passive smoking poses a much bigger and more direct threat to our
health than Facebook, obviously - but Facebook is much more insidious, since
at the very least you can stay away from smokers, and at least the dangers of
smoking are well-known, but there is no escaping Facebook, and most people
think it to be harmless.

------
3xblah
"People consistently tell us that if they're going to see ads, they want them
to be relevant."

"If". This is a conditional sentence. What if the condition is not met?

What if they want to avoid ads? What do they tell FB when asked "Ads or no
ads, free or small fee, which would you prefer?"

I suspect the participants in Facebook's questioning were not asked that
question. Or, if they were, FB is not going to use the results in their PR and
lobbying efforts.

There is a slogan one might see on the FB homepage, something like:

"Facebook is free and always will be."

As if the user's primary concern would be that they would sometime have to pay
for using FB. (Not privacy or the security of their personal information.)

The slogan raises more questions than it answers.

If FB is "free" forever, then who covers the operating costs of FB?

Where does Zuckerberg's fortune come from?

Who finances the next FB acquisition of a perceived competitor or their risky
bets chasing "the next big thing"?

If it isn't you the user who is about to sign up or sign in, then how much
does your opinion matter to FB?

Wouldn't it stand to reason that FB would be catering to whomever is paying
the bills for FB? (Not you.)

FB is not free for them.

Of course investors and advertisers paying FB expect something in return for
their payments. They are not paying into FB's accounts just to keep FB afloat.
They are not paying FB simply to sustain a website and apps for people to
share photos, video, messages. (And that is probably all users want or need.
They certainly never told FB they wanted data collection, monitoring and
manipulation of their online behaviour, nor advertisements.)

Assuming FB has covered its operating costs, then whatever it is that FB must
then deliver -- i.e. not the webpage and apps to help people to communicate,
but the data collection, monitoring, manipulation, etc. -- comes at a further
cost, not necessarily a monetary one. The question is, "Who bears it?"

I think it is becoming clear that this "cost" is more than simply "attention"
or "time". There are serious impacts FB's work is having on an enormous number
of people. The jury is still out on whether this is a net positive or a net
negative.

~~~
tchaffee
"If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. You are the product."

~~~
anticensor
We are not a product either. We are just a subject as in a kingdom. Our
behaviour _is_ the product.

~~~
3xblah
In truth, you are a producer and you are working for free.

The "work" is using the Facebook website or app. FB tries to make your work
easy.

It is like particpating in a market study except you do not get paid for your
time and participation; you are like a volunteer.

Allowing FB to show you things and record everything you do, how you react,
etc.

------
johnchristopher
> The truth is that ads can be made “relevant” and profitable based on the
> context in which they’re shown, like putting ads for outdoor gear in a
> nature magazine.

The other truth is that a nature magazine that relies on outdoor gear ads to
operate is a conflict of interest.

I remember talking with a chief-editor of a 90's video game magazine: "It's
better for us and our readers to see ads for shampoo, cars or food than video
game ads. Less pressure.".

------
SolaceQuantum
I honestly don't care about certain tracking- if Facebook knows that I talk
about tea with someone, I do not mind receiving ads about tea. I strongly mind
ads that are targeted for demographics, especially real estate or insurance
ads whose targeted demographics explicitly exclude minorities or something.
That really worries me, and the amount of data Facebook has about a person
really opens up the door for discriminatory advertising.

~~~
ams6110
There are many legitimate reasons to target ads demographically, e.g. I'm
trying to sell certain hair care products to people of African descent, or any
number of feminine products to younger women, or Viagra to older men.

Even in something like real estate it can be valid, e.g. advertising a condo
in a retirement community to people over age 50.

------
rblion
The media is relentless. What if they are projecting their fears?

------
0xfffff
I uninstalled all Facebook appps but WhatsApp so far - but with recent
happenings and announcements around WhatsApp, it needs to go too. Its a
bummer, since i always liked it a lot.

------
thoughtstheseus
Users prefer no ads... these business models are crazy, why would anyone want
to use a platform where every minute someone is trying to sell you something.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Most of the US still buys cable TV, even though ad free streaming sites are
cheaper and widely known. The average person really doesn’t care about ads.

~~~
dylan604
How many use their DVR to skip those ads vs watching live?

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
The statistics I've seen indicate only about half of households that have a TV
have a DVR. (And of course, not all households that have a DVR will fast
forward through every ad.)

------
ThrustVectoring
Ok, let's talk about the business model involved in detail, starting with the
decision process of a typical ad buyer. It starts with the value of a sale or
conversion - say, your company makes $100 with each mattress they sell. You
can then extrapolate based off past data how many people you need to do
specific upstream events in order to get that sale. Say, 100 people need to
view your website. Something like that.

So you turn around to some web advertising platform and buy an ad, and you
spend something like $30 dollars to buy however many website visits it takes
to drive one sale, and after adding a generous fudge factor to take into
account all the uncertainty and mis-attribution you expect you wind up with a
profit. There's both cost-per-click and cost-per-thousand-impressions pricing,
but both end up feeding into "buy $X of advertising, which flows through our
sale funnel resulting in $Y of profit, and $X is much less than $Y" at the end
of the day.

Why do these advertising platforms collect data? So that instead of a generic
"show this ad to whoever visits the website", you can break viewers into
different categories and sell those instead. If it takes 100 website visits
from a generic user to drive a sale, maybe it takes 50 instead if they just
performed a search for a mattress. Or if it takes 200 impressions to get a
click-through, maybe it takes 100 if it's done from a specific geographic
area. Or if you end up selling to a specific job title, the SaaS contract
tends to be more expensive. Whatever it is, certain slices of traffic are more
valuable to the ad buyer, so this ends up flowing through to the advertiser's
return-on-ad-spend math, which flows into higher ad bids. And so the
advertising platforms collect a lot of data, so that when a user can be shown
an ad, the platform can figure out what targeting options allow them to make
the most money.

If you follow the math again back the other way through, it implies that
there's a pretty powerful constraint on how relevant advertising can be to
you. Specifically, the pure relevancy metric will get skewed by the producer
surplus for converting a sale to you: doubling how likely you are to convert
is just as relevant to the business math as doubling how much money is made
off your conversion. A system that maximizes relevance of ads will not
maximize advertising platform income, since it would fail to prefer a five-
figure programming job placement fee over a $10 tee-shirt, and the difference
in conversion value flows through to a difference in advertising bids.

From a public policy perspective, I'm pretty pessimistic about preventing
these privacy issues. There's simply too much of an incentive to section out
users into specific cohorts and sell access to them to the highest bidder. In
other words, privacy-violating targeting is such a big deal because targeting
_works_ \- it reliably convinces people to take courses of action that result
in more producer surplus in the hands of the producer of the good advertised.
The only saving grace is that for certain products, it'd only change _which_
company gets the producer surplus, rather than convincing you to push _more_
producer surplus into corporate pockets.

~~~
chillacy
To go off your last point, it probably makes the economy more efficient by
bringing us closer to a state of perfect information. One might even imagine
that a consumer economy with this attribute can have more productivity than
another which does not.

------
mrhappyunhappy
Zuck knows the average Facebook use is a "fucking dumbass", hence this is
nothing more than his way of pacifying the herds. To give up precise targeting
is to leave a lot of money on the table and a drop in share value. There won't
be any drastic changes any time soon.

------
kevin_thibedeau
This is a man who regards his users as "Dumb fucks". No one should be
surprised.

~~~
dylan604
Zuck: "There's not such thing as privacy any more"

Zuck: Buy all of the houses in my neighborhood so I can have privacy.

~~~
anticensor
Said in different times, taken out of context. He realised he needs privacy
after he married and had children.

------
diogenescynic
The real question is whether Facebook is the worst invention of all time, or
just of the past 100 years.

