SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the if-the-gains-outweigh-the-penalty-it-becomes-business-as-usual dept.
Facebook vastly exaggerated the number of viewers it had on its video platform in order to lure producers away from competing platforms like YouTube. Facebook's exaggerations were off by 150% to 900% from the actual figures, and apparently knew it at the time. Facebook is proposing a settlement of a meager $40 million to avoid facing larger penalties. Fines or not, these exaggerations — or more precisely, lies — contributed to crippling or eliminating several video-oriented areas of activity.
According to a brief in support of the settlement, Facebook would pay $40 million to resolve claims. Much of that would go to those who purchased ad time in videos, though $12 million — or 30 percent of the settlement fund — is earmarked for plaintiffs' attorneys.
The suit accused Facebook of acknowledging miscalculations in metrics upon press reports, but still not taking responsibility for the breadth of the problem. "The average viewership metrics were not inflated by only 60%-80%; they were inflated by some 150 to 900%," stated an amended complaint.
Earlier on SN:
Facebook Discloses Additional Advertising Metric Miscalculations (2016)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 15 2019, @12:36PM (3 children)
They have no reason to not inflate and misrepresent everything as long as there are no consequences, or the penalties are less than what they gain. Fines for their misbehavior would have to number in the billions for them to take notice, or there would have to be a real possibility of the government splitting up the company.
The reality of government now is that something like that would never happen unless the CEO of a misbehaving company had personally insulted the head of a major government agency at a cocktail party.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Tuesday October 15 2019, @01:10PM (1 child)
Oh, there are plenty of consequences, just not for Facebook. Many of those groups, projects, and individuals who did not have enough resources for two or more video services and fell for the lies lost their audiences when they dropped their existing service and disappeared into Facebook.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 15 2019, @02:41PM
Yeah, but the only one I know of was CollegeHumor and well... they're not missed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday October 15 2019, @07:16PM
That seems to be the key. This smells like fraud, which is a criminal offence so maybe senior executives from Facebook should face criminal charges, but of course no prosecutor is going to do that because everyone involved will have some sort of plausible deniability.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Alfred on Tuesday October 15 2019, @06:06PM
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday October 15 2019, @08:37PM (3 children)
so, what are some alternatives to Facebook? Diaspora?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 16 2019, @08:27AM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 16 2019, @02:15PM (1 child)
And the alternative to using a car is?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 16 2019, @02:44PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves