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You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “Facebook blocks you from reporting bots, fails to provide rationale”.
I suspect, Jack, that this may boil down to a conflict of interest between its advertisers, which you know are Facebook’s primary customers, and its users.
I know that’s a pat suggestion and there’s likely more to it than that, but, I still think it’s about following the money, as you’ve said yourself, and that maybe they have some advertisers with practices that the Zuckerbergs just don’t feel like being transparent about, for whatever reason.
I can definitely understand the parallels with Vox, but, well, I e-mailed Daisy at great length about this; she told me that Vox essentially drew the short end of the stick when the Say Media merger came along. How she phrased it was that they kept TypePad, but Vox was progressively not needed. I doubt this would be similar to anything with Facebook unless the Zuckerbergs have another project under the hood they aren’t telling us about. Or, they do. It could be like Jagex and their flagship MMO, Runescape– maybe Facebook is still planning something big that will eliminate the bots.
Just ideas, Jack… I freely admit I have no idea as I refuse to use Facebook anymore, mostly because of not wanting to deal with pettiness of certain extended family, as well as some… acquaintances.
You’re right, J., that there is a massive Facebook con going on—and yet they are still making money despite consumer awareness of this. It may be dishonest, and in fact it can be shown to be illegal, but until someone takes them on, Facebook is going to keep selling its highly dubious “likes” and promotions.
I’m reading between the lines here: Vox was effectively starved of investment, and I just wonder if Facebook is now in the same boat. Why invest? It’s sitting pretty, each innovation is greeted with complaints (e.g. Timeline), and the business model seems decidedly short-term.
I hope they can eliminate the bots but the bot programmers are getting cleverer. The ones that they took 15 days to delete were quite smart: they posted random content and they liked and shared with each other.
There isn’t much point to Facebook if you aren’t on it already, unless you have something to promote, and even when you do, it’s a case of caveat venditor.