20 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
game_the0ryNov 2025Recommends
Veritasium had a really good video on how facebook benefited from people buying legitimate (not fraudulent, click-farm) likes from fb. [1] Its over 10 years old now, but really good. Basically, you could pay fb to boost your fb page, which is the "legitimate" way to get more reach. The problem was that click farms would like your page anyway, Why? Bc liking pages they were not paid to like would help hide fraudulent activity. So if one click farm clicked many likes on one page, that would be eady to spot as fraud, so that same click farm would like many other pages as well, ones that fb customers paid to boost and also got in front of the same click farms. This created a dynamic where buying legitimate traffic from fb would hurt reach anyway bc the algo would key off of engagement, which would plummet bc the click farms saw the post that the page legitimately paid for. But that just incentivized the page owners to pay for more reach, thus fb would get paid more - fb had no incentive to stop this and paying fb in the first place would be worse tha not paying them at all. LAWL. I guess the moral is -- never pay for boosting. And makes you question the quality of meta's revenue. But the flip sides is that many companies (mine included) rely on instagram ads for revenue. [1] ▶ this video
in “Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams” · View on HN
sean_patelNov 2016Recommends
> Is that for real? Is everyone else's experience with Facebook advertising similar? Yeah. It's called "Facebook Fraud". See a real live experiment someone did, to figure out the true reach and ROI on Facebook Advertizing. => ▶ this video I too did a similar experiment using a pre-paid Visa card (for 50$) so that FB doesn't keep charging my Credit Card and/or lets it get stolen from bad security practices. My results were similar to the guy in the Youtube Video. Facebook's likes and "reach" are mostly automated or from in-house click-farms in South-east asia (think India, Vietnam, Phillipines etc)
in “We turned $140k on Kickstarter into $40k debt and broke even” · View on HN
lingbenAug 2015Recommends
facebook as a platform and business is hollow, but very few realize it. this is similar to Enron, Madoff, the financial crisis, Groupon, etc. history has shown that 99.99999% of people totally miss these business models that are built on a MASSIVELY fraudulent or hollow foundation. When the music stops thousands and thousands of gallons of pixels will be spilt trying to explain how nobody saw their collapse coming and why they are not to blame. Here are two videos that succinctly introduce the reality of facebook's mirage: ▶ this video [link]
in “Why Facebook’s video theft problem can’t last” · View on HN
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vacriApr 2014Recommends
Veritasium on youtube has a couple of videos breaking down the numbers - not only do you have to pay to get views now, but the views delivered above and beyond what you usually get are fraudulent. He showed the usage of his page beforehand, with users clustered in Western countries, generally 20-40% of whom interacted with his page in some way. After paying for more views, they were all from developing countries, a profile of users he'd never seen before with very little (0-1%) engagement with his page. It's worth checking out his videos if you want more detail on the patterns he found. It's pretty clear that it's fraudulent. [link] (explores problems he sees with FB as a marketing platform) ▶ this video (massive influx of unengaged developing-world pageviews)
in “Facebook earnings gain as ad sales surge 82%; CFO is stepping down” · View on HN
hdjjhhvvhgaOct 2022Cites it
> and now we are getting these accusations thrown at platforms etc. What?! This problem existed for so many years! And it wasn't some niche knowledge but pretty mainstream already in 2014 (Veritassium video "Facebook Fraud" with 6M views): ▶ this video
in “Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots” · View on HN
mandeepjAug 2016Cites it
It is not just advertising. It is the click farms that facebook has deployed. If you have not spent money to advertise on facebook then please do not down vote. Update 1: Sources (Sorry, I missed them earlier) - 1. Self experience. 2. ▶ this video
in “Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]” · View on HN
roymurdockJan 2016Cites it
How many people do you know that have ever purchased anything from a Facebook ad or clicked on one other than by accident? Ads are increasingly about product placement, brand presence and being top of mind. Especially when you can be sure that 80% of your clickthroughs on Facebook are from some bot network that Facebook doesn't bother to crack down on because it adds to their userbase metric, which is what the derive such a high valuation from. [1] I'm sure coke, nestle, and other branded basic commodities (food, drink, clothing) would love a way to show ads to this low-income segment. [1] ▶ this video
in “Facebook's Free Basics Shuts Down in Egypt” · View on HN
pdkl95Jan 2016Cites it
Facebook has a history of fraud in their other services. Veritasium fell victim to FB's scams as a publisher a couple years ago[1]. I know first-hand that Facebook's advertising model is deeply flawed. When I paid to promote my page I gained 80,000 followers in developing countries who didn't care about Veritasium (but I wasn't aware of this at the time). They drove my reach and engagement numbers down, basically rendering the page useless. They also have a history of encouraging video fraud[2][3]. [1] ▶ this video [2] [link] [3] [link]
in “Facebook ad click numbers are inconsistent with other analytics” · View on HN
sly_foxxJan 2016Cites it
Facebook is the biggest scam for most businesses. 1) They've pulled bait and switch when they decided to charge to reach users that have already liked your page. Most of those users liked your page because you've posted a link to FB on your site. 2) Click fraud is rampant [1] 3) They make money on copyrighted videos + ripping off YouTube content creators [2] [1] ▶ this video [2] [link]
in “Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue” · View on HN
hayksaakianJan 2016Cites it
like fraud and click fraud are two separate issues. like fraud is highly pervasive, there's tons of evidence on it. source: ▶ this video click fraud less so. i've run marketing campaigns and you do see some clicks missing in google analytics, but it's not as bad as the like fraud.
in “Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue” · View on HN
FilterSweepSep 2015Cites it
It appears their interest lies in: (a) having a competitive advantage in raw, large-scaled _metrics_ that Google does not have (see also: Facebook's emotion and behavioral studies[0]) (b) Being able to monetize their advertising platform better. They are well aware that their current numbers are blown up by fake likes, and clickfarms [1] At least this is just my take. I'm sure there are also other interests behind the scenes. [0]: [link] [1]: ▶ this video
in “Philippines to Roll Out Nationwide Free Wi-Fi Service by 2016” · View on HN
pen2lJul 2015Cites it
Did you watch his video where he explains his views himself? I find it pretty convincing: [link] Interestingly, a lot of people are getting very frustrated with Facebook for other reasons as well. Famously, there's Veritasium's video: ▶ this video I can really appreciate what they're feeling. With piracy as we have traditionally known it, at least usually the pirate is not directly profiting from his act of piracy. With freebooting, Facebook is literally profiting from other people's work. It's directly diverting money flow from the creator (who REALLY NEED THE MONEY) to Facebook. I think it's plainly ridiculous this is happening, and obviously Facebook will turn a blind eye to it because it's making them money. This is one of the reasons why I encourage whitehat security researchers to turn a little gray when it comes to Facebook and do things to bring them down, it'll be for the greater good to bring the behemoth down.
in “Facebook’s Piracy Problem” · View on HN
sillysaurus3Nov 2014Cites it
The advertising doesn't really help you, though. You're forced to pay for advertising which ends up targeted at people who don't engage with your brand. Check this out: ▶ this video Unless something has dramatically changed since that video was created 9 months ago, the situation is pretty grim.
in “New Facebook Rules Will Sting Entrepreneurs” · View on HN
rwinnOct 2014Cites it
Top comment (for me): Hello Zuck, I would like to ask that when our facebook fanpage's reach will be come back? its too frustrating having 100k -likes with only 1k, 2k reach ,& 1m likes with only 10k, 20k reach .. sometimes too low Don't destroy our hard work and efforts, we want organic reach back !!! im not the only one who is unhappy with pages post reach . , Hope u are not ignoring my comment . thanks (i also wanted to know that is there any source to reach you ? if there is, i want to know..and if none..do establish one... a good idea can come from anywhere..from anyone.. ) I've also experienced this, you're only able to reach 5-10% of your fans without paying. Only way of getting a message out to all your fans is to "boost" your post, which will cost you around 0.015 EUR per like the page has. [1] And on top of that if you ever used Facebook ads to get likes to your page, a majority of those are fake. [2] [1] Based on my rough calculations on a couple of pages I run. [2] ▶ this video
in “Q&A with Mark Zuckerberg” · View on HN
sparkieApr 2014Cites it
I mean, we're practically all advertisers in some way or another - every time we share a promotion with our friends, or even just discuss a new product we're interested in. Most of the time we're not advertising for the sake of profit, but just sharing interests with like-minded people. Social media outlets attempt to tap into our general ignorance of advertising profitability - and they act as the middle-man between companies wishing to advertise, and the people who're sharing with friends - but facebook take all of the profit by inserting themselves between these relationships, and the users who are sharing don't notice they done a large part of the advertising work, for free. Facebook can obviously provide some usefulness, because it knows where you are, what your interests are, and your recent activities - so it can target you for specific promotions. A recent video by Vertitasium[1] showed how this isn't without problems though, and does not directly correspond to ROI for advertisers. (Likewise with many advertising models, there's always people trying to game them to earn a quick buck). Facebook provide the "advertising seed", by predicting who is likely to share. I see a different potential model that could arise with the gaining popularity of cryptocurrencies and electronic transactions though - one where advertisers only pay when it results in a direct ROI, by tracing electronic signatures through a public, distributed ledger. If a company wants to promote a product,
in “Ask HN: Idea Sunday” · View on HN
selmnooFeb 2014Cites it
> It's just immoral to use children their images in adds. And I don't think that this fits Zuckerbergs original intentions when he started Facebook. Heh, really? Are we talking about the same Zuckerberg who got his start making webapps by having people rate illegitimately-gained pictures of his peers? ("The Kirkland dormitory facebook is open on my desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendiedous facebook pics. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of some farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive."). [link] Or the guy who called people who submitted information to his site "dumb fucks"? ( [link] ). This latest move is exactly the quintessential spirit of the Zuck. But honestly, I'm expecting a lot more to come as the secret comes out that they can't make a lot of money ( ▶ this video ) -- I think they'll sell private information of users to insurance companies.
in “Facebook made my teenager into an ad” · View on HN
MetaCosmFeb 2014Cites it
Summary of article: "No, because that would be awful for my business". I suspect Fang Digital has pushed this terrible notion on their clients for years and now look like idiots, so they are doubling down. FYI: The marketers I work with have near universally dismissed FB as anything but "brand building for when you have more marketing budget than sense"... well before this video (or the 2012 BBC one) put it into the commons. > Calling Facebook and its advertising “a fraud” because you choose to run a “like campaign” in a part of the world that is known for fraudulent clicks He ran it in US, CA, AU, UK targeting cat lovers (see: ▶ this video @ 6:00) -- additionally, this is a full on admittance that fraudulent clicks are a huge issue. > astute among us know that measurements such as “Likes” do not constitute anything Then maybe facebook shouldn't be selling them as the metric?
in “Popular Viral Video Cries “Facebook Fraud"...And Gets It All Wrong ” · View on HN