Facebook Accused of Inflating Ad-Watching Metrics by 900% to Deceive Advertisers

cageymaru

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A new lawsuit accuses Facebook of inflating ad-watching metrics by up to 900%. Facebook allegedly knew for over a year that its average-viewership numbers were wrong and simply remained quiet. Facebook then leveraged these lies to sell premium video advertising on its platform because advertisers thought the ads were being viewed for longer periods of time by Facebook users. The advertisers had initially filed an lawsuit in 2016, but Facebook documents released through the court process shined new light on the grievances. Of course Facebook released a statement downplaying the validity of the lawsuit "Suggestions that we in any way tried to hide this issue from our partners are false," the company said in a statement. "We told our customers about the error when we discovered it -- and updated our help center to explain the issue."

Facebook knew by January 2015 that its video-ad metrics had problems, and understood the nature of the issue within a few months, but sat on that information for more than a year, the plaintiffs claimed in an amended complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Oakland. "Even once it was decided to take action on the metrics, Facebook did not promptly fix its calculation or disclose that the calculation was wrong," the filing alleged. "Instead, it continued reporting miscalculated viewership metrics for another several months, as it developed a 'no PR' strategy to avoid drawing attention to the error. That "unethical, unscrupulous" behavior by Facebook constituted fraud because it was "likely to deceive" advertisers, the filing alleged.
 
Lets see if people say no evidence no crime (hoax, witch hunt) or if they blindly go with it cause it suits the narrative.
 
Facebook knows who you are, where you go, who you talk to, what you eat, when you sleep, and when you take a shit. But apparently they can't even figure out how long a video is playing for. Nice...
 
Lets see if people say no evidence no crime (hoax, witch hunt) or if they blindly go with it cause it suits the narrative.
I know where you are going with this and all I am going to say is

[R]ejected


This is not the first time Facebook has been called out on bad behavior....nor will it be the last....
 
Facebook knows who you are, where you go, who you talk to, what you eat, when you sleep, and when you take a shit. But apparently they can't even figure out how long a video is playing for. Nice...
Oh they know that also but what they told advertisers was a different report. Scam indeed but will anything come of this? $$$ will shut them up.
 
Who sits and watches ads on FB, or any platform? I dont click on ads on FB


I have ad blocker on my laptop so I dont see ads on Youtube and websites. I have Youtube Vanced app on my android phone, no ads either.
 
I actually sort of look forward to seeing the specifics of this, but also how Facebook reports. Provided people don't wander off to look at something shiny we could learn more about Facebook's internal workings.
 
I know its not right, but that facetwitt guy i never liked him solely based on his look / appearance, too much backstabbing weasel about him.
But on that account i write myself out of a lot of things, and thats alright too.
 
Kappa: Hey, Vegeta, by how many percent did Facebook inflate its ad viewership numbers?
Vegeta (angrily): It's over 9000!
 
Only time i watch an ad is due to a misclick when scrolling with phone.

Damn touchscreens.
 
They did this to me years ago when I tried multiple times to use their paid advertising for my events. Views went up, but no real engagement from the actual target audience I configured. I was getting likes from people that didn't even like video gaming. It was a fucking total rip off.
 
I do not nor have I ever booked my face. My social media presence outside of Hardforum and Slickdeals is a twitter account that I have logged into about 3 times in the last 5 years.
 
I wish this company and all like it would just fucking die. They exist on smoke and mirror tactics, making 'money' that just doesn't exist. This whole house of cards needs to be pulled down...a second .com bubble needs bursting. Fakebook.
 
Lets see if people say no evidence no crime (hoax, witch hunt) or if they blindly go with it cause it suits the narrative.

Eh, just do a basic search for facebook ads are a scam/waste of time/worthless etc.. People having been pointing this out for 4-5 years that I can remember.
 
What's Facebook? What are those ads they speak of? Seriously, I spend about 12 minutes a week total on Facebook and most of that is the running groups I belong too.
 
Not surprising...here's to hoping Facebook dies a quick and painful death.
 
only advertisers cares, as for the users, we don't care, in fact we try to block ads on everything now days cause we all do not like ads, its annoying and in your face all the time. Ads is a great method to earn money, and great if your business is promoting a website that needs to generate money but they just have to be careful not to force users. Ex. Youtube puts ads during video, excuse me but that's wrong, ads should only appear once before the video and never during video playback.
 
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