shareholders want real users, not bots. Facebook has to tell shareholders that real eyeballs are looking at ads, not virtual ones. Facebook is an adtech company—all tech they develop further establishes their advertisement empire, if advertisers (or more specifically, investors) find out ads on facebook aren’t worth their value, then facebook dies.
Absolutely but so does reddit, they all make a great effort to not notice bot accounts.
It would be easy to identity many bots by their browsing habits and other digital markers but they obfuscate all data that may give an indication of real users because, as you say, any drop in reported users is a drop in ad value.
because people used to do this all the time with ads: serve up an ad click, get paid… so spin up a bunch of clients and have them click ads on your site, easy money!
My guess: it is a low hanging fruit and then they can say “Look! We blocked X million bots! So you can trust the users that are left… please don’t look into it any more”
I do find it interesting that thousands of discrete devices is somehow easier than them virtualising them devices.
Probably it’s cheaper to get 60 used low-end devices than one device that can run 60 copies of the Facebook app.
Bingo. People treat phones like they’re disposable, and buying pallets of old functional phones is shockingly affordable
People trade their old phones in when they buy new ones or donate them to random causes.
This here is where those old phones end up.
Virtualization is easily detected.
Yeah but why would facebook/x bother to check? Engagement is engagement. They already know there are millions of bots and don’t care.
Pretty sure they only care because they could get in trouble for shareholder faud
No that’s why they never release any data about bots. That way they can pretend every account is a real user.
shareholders want real users, not bots. Facebook has to tell shareholders that real eyeballs are looking at ads, not virtual ones. Facebook is an adtech company—all tech they develop further establishes their advertisement empire, if advertisers (or more specifically, investors) find out ads on facebook aren’t worth their value, then facebook dies.
Absolutely but so does reddit, they all make a great effort to not notice bot accounts.
It would be easy to identity many bots by their browsing habits and other digital markers but they obfuscate all data that may give an indication of real users because, as you say, any drop in reported users is a drop in ad value.
They obfuscate for us. There is no way they don’t know. But bots do drive engagement.
because people used to do this all the time with ads: serve up an ad click, get paid… so spin up a bunch of clients and have them click ads on your site, easy money!
My guess: it is a low hanging fruit and then they can say “Look! We blocked X million bots! So you can trust the users that are left… please don’t look into it any more”