Chronotope’s avatarChronotope’s Twitter Archive—№ 123,318

                              1. …in reply to @bmorrissey
                                bmorrissey larakiara Have you ever heard that pitch in person? It's fascinating to me because I think every Facebooker pulls it out, even down to technical discussions, the idea is that more user tracking makes list measurement possible and the more accurate that is the cheaper the ads are.
                            1. …in reply to @Chronotope
                              bmorrissey larakiara It's fascinating b/c the first time I heard it I realized that Facebook thinks the race to the bottom for ad pricing is a *good thing*. They have full control over inventory numbers, and they believe they have infinite demand, so their priority is to increase the count of buyers.
                          1. …in reply to @Chronotope
                            bmorrissey larakiara So the pitch is all about "small businesses" because cross site tracking is fundamental to giving those small businesses cheaper ad space (both for targeting precision decreasing the count of ads needed to generate a click and lift ML prediction to minimize inventory use).
                        1. …in reply to @Chronotope
                          bmorrissey larakiara It's a really excellent argument for them to make because it is sort of bulletproof. It's right, this does provide cheaper advertising to small business enabling them to potentially increase their customers cheaply...
                      1. …in reply to @Chronotope
                        bmorrissey larakiara And the first counter argument supporting local pubs is "well, they should go to support their fellow local businesses" but of course that *costs more* and small businesses aren't going to like that. Smart planning on FB's part! It's a hard argument to counter *on its own merits*
                    1. …in reply to @Chronotope
                      bmorrissey larakiara But there are flaws! What if privacy is a moral imperative more important than cheap advertising? What if supporting your local publication feeds into a complex hard to define ecosystem that creates a healthier/more stable community?
                  1. …in reply to @Chronotope
                    bmorrissey larakiara What if Facebook is really bad at using prediction to avoid fraud? What if Facebook itself, regardless of price, is somehow causing problems that otherwise impact small businesses, like spreading misinformation about a pandemic that costs those businesses by keeping them closed?
                1. …in reply to @Chronotope
                  bmorrissey larakiara So when I think about questions like this the only way to think through the answer is by seriously playing out the consequences. pilhofer/1290632339874357249?s=19
              1. …in reply to @Chronotope
                bmorrissey larakiara Because this is both correct and incorrect at the same time. pilhofer/1290632880847310848?s=19. But the way in which it is answered is by considering the 2nd order problems. And how this also means that Facebook is most successful the more people *depend* on it.
            1. …in reply to @Chronotope
              bmorrissey larakiara And the thing about advertising locally, even if it is more expensive, is at the end of the day that money *comes back*. It is going into the community and therefore will eventually find its way back to the local business. But if it goes to Facebook... it's gone.
          1. …in reply to @Chronotope
            bmorrissey larakiara But w/hedge funds' managers sucking money out of local publications and basically emptying them of employees, even that idea no longer fully holds water. It's a tidy proof for Facebook's efficacy. It's also a depressing indicator that mby capitalism is incompatible with the web.
        1. …in reply to @Chronotope
          bmorrissey larakiara I agree! None of the counter arguments are very weighty without deeper proofs for my questions, or an acceptance of the fact that maybe the problem is a fundamental flaw in the structure of our economy whereby the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. pilhofer/1290635390148370433?s=19
      1. …in reply to @Chronotope
        bmorrissey larakiara At the end of the day you can't both believe in our current form of capitalism and not believe in Facebook... So I guess I am one of the few people out there who will tell you this but: understanding ad tech has made me a socialist! There's more to society than cheap ads!
    1. …in reply to @Chronotope
      bmorrissey larakiara A lot of the problems in ad tech are because it is still a very inefficient market on every level. But I'll admit, that's not true of Facebook, it's a very efficient market, one made more so by absolute control over supply! It's very efficient to be able to scale supply at will.
  1. …in reply to @Chronotope
    bmorrissey larakiara But I dunno, when something is a good market but bad for society, isn't that exactly when regulators are supposed to step in? Unless you believe modern antitrust ideas that anything that makes it cheaper for the consumer is automatically good? I don't.


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