[HN Gopher] Facebook's PR feels broken
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook's PR feels broken
Author : cjbest
Score : 138 points
Date : 2020-01-10 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (themargins.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (themargins.substack.com)
| cjbest wrote:
| This part really struck me:
|
| > It feels like finance in 2009.
|
| > One one side, you had smart, ambitious people who ended up
| there simply because you were told to go. On the other, you had
| the classic Gordon Gekko-ish types reciting Liar's Poker
| anecdotes ad nauseam.
|
| > Enter the crisis and everyone was equally tarred as the bad
| guys. The former have slowly made their way out (mostly over to
| tech), while the latter remain[...]
|
| It does feel like the tide of public opinion might be turning
| from "too uncritical" to "too critical".
|
| At least, as somebody who spends too much time on both Hacker
| News and Twitter, this seems believable to me.
| brundolf wrote:
| > "too critical"
|
| That wasn't my takeaway. My takeaway was, "Good. Pressure is
| finally getting through to the masses of complacent co-
| conspirators who still have enough of a soul to care. Maybe
| things will finally start changing."
| throwaway122378 wrote:
| Facebook's PR isn't broken, Facebook's just doing some really bad
| stuff
| MBCook wrote:
| Are you disagreeing with the argument in the article? Or is
| this just a comment on FB in general.
|
| I agree they're doing bad stuff but I think the argument in the
| article makes a very good point about how they used to be good
| at handling PR for their evil and getting away with it and now
| they seem to have lost that touch.
|
| I doubt the level of evil has changed dramatically in the last
| 18mo but the PR reactions have.
| cjbest wrote:
| Yup.
|
| > something noticeably changed. They got combative. They got
| sloppy.
|
| An interesting take, whatever you think of the underlying
| merits of the company and the complaints against it.
| cjbest wrote:
| In fact, _unless_ you think that the company was better
| before and is worse now, it should be striking how much the
| narrative has changed without any underlying change.
| throwaway122378 wrote:
| Could be both. Ultimately PR is ineffective when the level of
| issues outweigh the amount of damage control PR can contain
| xwowsersx wrote:
| > Those last two lines. We all know that style of communication.
| Sardonic. Snarky. Sneering. Derisive. Whatever you want to call
| it, that mocking tone captures a dangerous combination of
| insecurity and arrogance. It feels like when Trump ends a tweet
| with SAD!. You read that and just think, what a dick.
|
| I get that's it's kind of sarcastic, but I don't really think
| "what a dick". It's not great for someone in his position to be
| sarcastic like that, but I think more "he must be hounded by
| people who are ready to burn him at the stake for having lunch
| with certain people so.."
| creaghpatr wrote:
| >Boz posted an explanation on Facebook, where he advertises the
| post as an organizational, internal call-to-debate. But while
| it's great to have a safe space for internal, organizational
| debates, it's still hugely concerning when that internal debate
| is whether we should all have a free and fair election in the
| U.S.
|
| Was Facebook having an internal debate over whether we should all
| have a free and fair election in the U.S.?
| svachalek wrote:
| I think the argument goes like this:
|
| 1. The US Presidential election is decided by a small
| percentage of voters who have an open mind and live in the
| right districts.
|
| 2. Facebook's targeted advertising allows advertisers to
| efficiently buy the votes of these select voters.
|
| 3. Without Facebook, this wasn't already happening.
|
| Personally, I believe #1 is more or less indisputable, and I'm
| willing to believe #2. But I'm not so sure about #3.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| You left out the part where they captured all the web traffic
| and they monetized toxic garbage "news"
| asaramis wrote:
| The other two major parts of this:
|
| Facebook's ad model is built to reward "virality" - meaning
| being over the top and salacious means lower costs. Even Boz
| acknowledges that was part of the Trump team's genius - they
| used the platform, as it was built, perfectly. The Democrats
| naturally have equal access to this platform, so I don't
| think its as much a left-right thing, vs a crazy-calm divide.
|
| The other thing is just disinformation / identity
| verification - making sure all advertisers are who they say
| they are (and you don't get russians posing as black lives
| matter, etc.)
| Seenso wrote:
| > 3. Without Facebook, this wasn't already happening.
|
| > Personally, I believe #1 is more or less indisputable, and
| I'm willing to believe #2. But I'm not so sure about #3.
|
| I think you overstate #3 a little bit. It could have been
| happening without Facebook, but at a lower scale and not
| effectively enough to matter.
|
| I think there's also a #4:
|
| 4. Facebook ad-targeting allows the influence to be covert,
| because watchdog group members are probably not part of the
| targeted demographics.
| sp332 wrote:
| 4 isn't right (anymore) because they made all political ads
| available to anyone who wants to see them. https://www.face
| book.com/business/help/2405092116183307?id=2...
| Seenso wrote:
| > 4 isn't right (anymore) because they made all political
| ads available to anyone who wants to see them.
|
| I think #4 is still valid:
|
| 1. Facebook may not be to correctly identify political
| ads vs other ads.
|
| 2. Their Ad Library seems to be missing important
| information [1].
|
| 3. A disclosure like the Ad Library still obscures
| influence campaigns by greatly reducing the ability of
| watchdogs to _passively monitor_ the political discourse.
| Instead they have expend much more manpower to actively
| monitor the library with the right search terms, and if
| they fail to do that they 'll miss things.
|
| [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-blocks-
| ad-transp...
|
| > Facebook has launched an archive of American political
| ads, which the company says is an alternative to
| ProPublica's tool. However, Facebook's ad archive is only
| available in three countries, fails to disclose important
| targeting data and doesn't even include all political ads
| run in the U.S.
|
| > Our tool regularly caught political ads that aren't
| reflected in Facebook's archive. Just this month, we
| noticed four groups running ads that haven't been in
| Facebook's archive:
| r00fus wrote:
| If you accept the premise of #1 and #2, #3 may simply be
| analogous to how money laundering was possible before
| bitcoin, but now it's easier/cheaper and harder to trace.
|
| So the argument could be said they disrupted that black
| market but are a publicly listed company.
| manfredo wrote:
| > Without Facebook, this wasn't already happening.
|
| This double negative is a bit confusing. Targeted political
| messaging absolutely was a thing before Facebook and even the
| internet. Correlate info on zip code demographics, the
| readership demographics of different publications and media
| outlets and one can provide messages that target specific
| groups.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Harder to track the impact of 'analog' misinformation like
| leaflets/handouts too.
| frabcus wrote:
| I'd add that for #2 they don't need to persuade people to
| change their vote with the adverts, or even mislead them
| (although the latter may help).
|
| All they need to do is target adverts reminding you to vote
| to the people who will vote the way they want.
|
| Facebook ran an experiment in 2010 that shows they can
| definitely increase the chance of individual users voting:
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-a-
| facebook...
| deltron3030 wrote:
| <But I'm not so sure about #3.
|
| It was happening, but it was done by people from political
| parties visiting those voters in person at their doorsteps (I
| know of it from documentaries), obviously way more expensive
| and time consuming than ads, and ineffective when done in a
| foreign accent or language or without other means of
| identification/verification, so people outside the US had it
| a lot harder to influence those voters.
| manfredo wrote:
| There are a significant number of tech workers I know that do
| genuinely believe that companies should leverage their
| technology to benefit the candidates that they feel would be
| better for the country, and do things like ban Trump's social
| media accounts. This is what Bosworth was addressing:
|
| > But he maintained that the company should not change its
| policies on political advertising, saying that doing so in
| order to avert a victory by Mr. Trump would be a misuse of
| power, comparing it to a scene from "The Lord of the Rings."
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/technology/facebook-andre...
| Marsymars wrote:
| Banning Trump's social media account wouldn't require bias
| against him, it would simply require him to stop receiving
| special exemption from platform rules.
| chc wrote:
| People are downvoting this, but it's just a matter of fact.
| Jack Dorsey has repeatedly said that the "newsworthiness"
| of Trump's tweets outweighs the ordinary standards of
| propriety that get applied to other people's tweets.
| Somebody asked Jack point blank whether Twitter would take
| action if Trump made a tweet explicitly asking his
| followers to murder a journalist, and Jack's response was,
| "We'd certainly talk about it."
| (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/01/18/would-
| calli...)
| quanticle wrote:
| I would encourage you to read the memo itself [1] and find out.
| It's not that long. In it Bosworth acknowledges that Facebook,
| as a new medium for propagating information, had a role in
| shaping the outcome of the 2016 election. He said that it was
| no longer tenable for Facebook to claim that it had no effect,
| and that as the 2020 election approaches, Facebook should be
| conscious of its role and formulate specific policies
| proactively so that it doesn't find itself in the same position
| it found itself in 2016, as it reacted to candidates and third
| parties using the platform in ways that hadn't been
| anticipated.
|
| If Bosworth is calling for an "internal debate over whether we
| should have a free and fair election in the U.S.", it's exactly
| the same sort of debate that is occurring in newsrooms, radio
| and television studios all across the country. Every new media
| offends the old. Newspapers were offended by radio. Radio was
| offended by television. Now they're all ganging up on Facebook.
|
| [1]: https://www.facebook.com/boz/posts/10111288357877121
| ggggtez wrote:
| > it's exactly the same sort of debate that is occurring in
| newsrooms
|
| I'm going to have to contradict you there. Anyone who was
| following the 2016 Russian Interference campaign, and related
| news stories, would know that Facebook _used_ to pay people
| to moderate news stories, perhaps in a manner that was like a
| news room... But then they fired those people because they
| were not promoting conspiracy theory news stories, and so
| conservatives claimed FB news was "biased".
|
| This essentially created the environment where no one at FB
| was willing to fact check for fear of losing their jobs. When
| you hear about FB saying they will not fact check political
| content, it's _specifically_ because if they did, they 'd
| have no choice but to point out all the lies and inaccuracies
| in Trump's statements. So instead, they simply refuse to
| touch any of it, which leaves the door wide open to political
| actors to spread any disinformation they want.
|
| A few related stories, for the interested: [1] https://www.th
| eguardian.com/technology/2016/may/09/facebook-... [2]
| http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/facebook-will-
| reintro...
|
| As the [2] reference says, unless FB has suddenly grown a
| backbone with regards to standing up for truth over dollars,
| then any new effort will fail in the same way it did last
| time. Facebook has never been able to demonstrably prove it
| cares about election meddling, and you shouldn't believe
| empty words in their press releases.
| quanticle wrote:
| > As the [2] reference says, unless FB has suddenly grown a
| backbone with regards for truth over dollars, then any new
| effort will fail in the same way it did last time
|
| I find it somewhat sanctimonious for the traditional news
| media to be calling out Facebook for favoring dollars over
| truth when they themselves were just as key as Facebook was
| to normalizing and publicizing Trump. CNN executives made a
| conscious decision to give Trump lots of coverage, in an
| effort to compete with Fox News. They too presented Trump's
| views as being just as legitimate and valid as the views of
| those opposing him.
| kichik wrote:
| Other countries have rules about political advertisement
| especially before elections. Those include budget limits,
| content, attribution, locations, and more. It's weird to
| think the rules are so lax here.
| smacktoward wrote:
| The difference is that the U.S. has this pesky thing called
| the First Amendment that makes restricting political speech
| difficult.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| An advertising ban ahead of an election feels like a
| logical solution, or at least a simple-to-understand one.
| People would try and circumvent it still but the burden
| would be on the ad vendors to not be liable for a
| violation.
| Marsymars wrote:
| And if they don't want to risk liability, they always
| have the option to not show _any_ ads to the relevant
| population ahead of an election.
| iso1824 wrote:
| Newspapers, Radio, and Television all have a named editor who
| is responsible for output. Facebook doesn't.
| cbhl wrote:
| Facebook, at one point, did curate the news that was shown
| in the News Feed. It stopped doing so after one side
| complained.
| elpool2 wrote:
| Why does it matter if they have an editor?
| creaghpatr wrote:
| I think there's a legal distinction. Just like phone
| companies don't have a responsibility to censor
| misinformation being spread over the phone.
| hcnews wrote:
| Wow, that post is pretty deluded. To paraphrase crudely, he
| is doing mental gymnastics to justify and invest in
| his/facebook's current position. An easy example of this is:
|
| > If I want to eat sugar and die an early death that is a
| valid position.
|
| Sure, if you want to make an informed choice, go for it.
| Nothing prevents a person from buying and consuming 10lbs of
| sugar everyday. However, the obvious problem which a lot of
| people have been focussed on is how do we prevent unhealthy
| amounts of sugar from being present in all food.
|
| All of this sidestepping from Facebook and its execs reminds
| me of tactics used by Trump (and Republicans).
| muglug wrote:
| Facebook is just transitioning to becoming the digital equivalent
| of an oil company. They make a product that billions consume, but
| that many people think is doing damage to the environment (even
| though many of those critics still consume the product).
|
| That's why their PR machine is now switching to these slightly
| astroturfy campaigns. The next step is an advert along the lines
| of "They call it pollution. We call it life".
| zartar wrote:
| One interesting aspect of FB's externalized cost structure is
| that the damage is both to society (like pollution as you
| mention) and also the individual consumer (more like
| cigarettes) because the product is designed to be addictive and
| while releasing momentary dopamine to the user, makes them more
| depressed on the whole.
| r00fus wrote:
| Analogies in fiction to the "oil company uber alles" -
| Technocore in the _Hyperion Cantos_ [0] as well as Phyrexian
| Unlife [1] in Magic the Gathering CCG.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos [1]
| https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?mult...
| webdva wrote:
| > Facebook is just transitioning to becoming the digital
| equivalent of an oil company. They make a product that billions
| consume, but that many people think is doing damage to the
| environment (even though many of those critics still consume
| the product).
|
| I like that analogy or narrative. The aesthetic value of the
| analogy is appealing to me.
| protastus wrote:
| Oil so useful that modern society would collapse without it.
|
| Facebook is not meeting a core need. It's peddling something
| entirely optional to society. At best it provides entertainment
| value, while being extremely addictive and dangerous.
|
| Facebook is like crack.
| jzwinck wrote:
| In Southeast Asia, Facebook is the main or only online
| presence for many, many businesses. They don't have their own
| websites, just a corporate Facebook page, a phone number (for
| Whatsapp/SMS mostly) and a Google Maps entry. I'm not saying
| all these businesses would disappear if Facebook did, but
| it's not clear how they'd be online. Most of them have zero
| IT.
| muglug wrote:
| Human connection is a core need. Facebook provides it (or
| something a lot like it).
| jf wrote:
| And yet, after not using Facebook for over a year, I don't
| miss it one bit and feel like my human connections have
| _improved_ as a direct result.
| protastus wrote:
| Human connection can be had in many alternative ways, with
| a lot less drama and controversy.
|
| Reading these posts full of hyperbole, one would think
| human society couldn't exist without Facebook.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| It certainly could and did for thousands of years... but
| it would be very different. If facebook went away you
| would just get other companies springing up to fill the
| void (Snapchat, Tiktok, etc). That's how you know it's a
| core need.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| I don't understand how "it would be very different" if
| other companies were to just spring "up to fill the
| void."
|
| Doesn't this phenomenon merely indicate that some market
| forces believe that the industry Facebook works within
| has potential for more profits than are currently being
| extracted?
| cronix wrote:
| Facebook is human to computer.
|
| I consider human connections to be person to person, where
| you can see, talk to, hear, gauge body language and nuance,
| and adjust to that in _real time_. Facebook is a substitute
| for human connection, and a poor one at that. I see a lot
| in the news about how people feel more depressed and alone
| than ever, and are online more than ever and checking their
| devices every few minutes. So much so that it 's to the
| point that when they actually DO have person to person
| contact they're still tied into their devices instead of
| being present in the moment with undivided attention and
| enjoying that other persons company. I agree that human
| connection is a core need. I just think we're conflating
| facebook as somewhat fulfilling that need. I'd argue it's
| doing the opposite and destroying human connections, in
| general.
| netcan wrote:
| I haven't seen a tv ad in years.
|
| Back then, facebook had a tv ad series. It was a vague, "
| _what 's this ad for?_" kind of ad. The jist of the ad was
| " _friendship is great_ " with some sort of
| facebook=friendship reveal at the end.
|
| The ad was creepy. The suggestion that facebook is
| _providing_ the core human need of friendship is creepy.
| Facebook is incidental.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I'd argue that's an improvement, their previous PR regime
| sounded like the Soviet information ministry.
| notadoc wrote:
| > Facebook is just transitioning to becoming the digital
| equivalent of an oil company.
|
| Seems more analogous to a tobacco company. Some people think
| it's bad and they use it anyway.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Seems more analogous to a tobacco company_
|
| They have an addictive product in common. But oil seems more
| apt.
|
| The sale of tobacco is highly regulated. Oil, less so;
| Facebook, not at all.
|
| Oil became useful in the Industrial Revolution, and enabled
| downstream innovation. Facebook came about amidst the modern
| Internet and is likewise a platform. Tobacco is old and the
| end of the line; the ancillary market is limited.
|
| Finally, both oil and Facebook are tools (for some). Tobacco
| could be thought of as a tool, but it'a more universally
| hedonistic.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| DevKoala wrote:
| The author reads way too much on Zuckerberg's response. It Makes
| me question their perception of the events and as a result, the
| analysis as a whole.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| If _I 'm_ interpreting it correctly, it appears that the author
| is actually _offended_ at the suggestion of listening to
| viewpoints that conflict with their own in order to possibly
| learn things from it.
| blackbrokkoli wrote:
| I feel like the actual change is not really Facebook PR but the
| reporting about it? The TeenVogue affair seems to have caused a
| dam-break which shifted "reporting facebook as disfunctional"
| right into the middle of the Overton window all across the board
| regarding online media.
|
| Facebooks strategy was always running away from a trail of PR
| bodies via sheer sized based on "customers" (which should be
| called products, to be honest) which did and do not care. I mean
| sure, this PR debacle is not a bath in glory by any means. But I
| can not think of any PR campaign in response to the countless
| past scandals which made me think "Wow, nice catch". At least in
| Germany, their response to the accusation of manipulating
| elections was a billboard campaign advertising that in Facebook
| you have a settings page where you can click switches and thus be
| in full control of your privacy (:D).
|
| Was there ever any effective response to Zuckerberg abusing his
| company data to crack journalists accounts? I can even remember
| an age old thing where Facebook made all your posts visible
| forever on your board or something which was just drowned in the
| ongoing unchallenged growth of Facebook after some time...
|
| To clarify, I am glad that media is finally elevating from lizard
| memes but I reject the notion that this current affair is the
| first visible crack of rotten foundations one could have
| observed.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| PR is industry who aim is crafting lies and misdirection. It is
| broken and unethical by design. This is an article that basically
| is just "how can Fb do bad things better." A waste of time.
| drewrv wrote:
| It still amazes me that the line of reasoning they publicly went
| with, around their decision not to fact check political
| advertisements, is that no one company should have that amount of
| power. The logical conclusion of their own argument is that
| Facebook should be broken up.
| 2sk21 wrote:
| The level of power that Facebook has over global discourse is
| just chilling.
| LanceH wrote:
| I think logically the government shouldn't be threatening
| anyone with a breakup based upon speech. I'm not sure how you
| get there as a logical conclusion.
|
| I would rather risk total garbage in the public forum than
| establish a ministry of truth.
| farisjarrah wrote:
| While I agree Facebook is doing a bad job with regards to
| political advertising, I am actually really glad facebook isnt
| stepping in and deciding whats truthful or not. Does anyone
| really think that we should give Facebook any power over our
| political system or give them the power to be the gatekeepers
| of what political ads we see? I think facebook should do what
| twitter did and just totally get out of the political ads game,
| however, since theyre not, call me crazy but I am kinda glad
| they arent deciding whats "right" and whats "wrong". Facebook
| has already proved to us over and over that they don't know the
| difference between right and wrong and that they make decisions
| that are bad for society.
| spinningslate wrote:
| I think that's GP's point. The problem isn't that FB has
| declined taking executive power over deciding what's truth.
| The problem is that FB has too much influence. So the answer
| isn't to pressurize FB into taking even more power: the
| answer is to reduce its dominance.
|
| Of course, that requires a political system motivated by
| doing the right thing for the country's citizens. As opposed
| to being controlled (sorry, _lobbied_ ) by monopolistic
| corporations and, in particular, where few politicians dare
| take a stance against FB for fear of the misinformation
| campaign that would inevitably ensue. On Facebook.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Disagree. Since they have chosen to platform those ads, they
| should at least be held to the same standards as networks and
| not show ads that are provably false. It would be better if
| they didn't platform them, or better yet, they didn't have
| that much potential influence in the first place.
| sp332 wrote:
| I would certainly rather have someone outside the company
| making that decision. Make the FEC do it.
| Diederich wrote:
| > same standards as networks and not show ads that are
| provably false
|
| I was going to ask you for a reference on this, because I
| was pretty sure that no such standard existed.
|
| I was quite wrong!
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/complaints-about-
| broadc...
|
| "Broadcasters are responsible for selecting the broadcast
| material that airs on their stations, including
| advertisements. The FCC expects broadcasters to be
| responsible to the community they serve and act with
| reasonable care to ensure that advertisements aired on
| their stations are not false or misleading.
|
| The FTC has primary responsibility for determining whether
| specific advertising is false or misleading, and for taking
| action against the sponsors of such material. You can file
| a complaint with the FTC online or call toll-free
| 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357)."
|
| So we have:
|
| "The FCC expects broadcasters to be responsible to the
| community they serve and act with reasonable care"
|
| and
|
| "The FTC has primary responsibility for determining"
|
| So...maybe we should give online advertising the same
| treatment?
|
| As an aside: this FCC regulation surprises me; I'm quite
| aware that there are numerous limits to free speech, but I
| didn't expect this to be one of them.
|
| I've always been an ardent believer in expansive free
| speech, and I still am, though age has allowed me to accept
| more limits. Though it doesn't feel right to me, the
| negative impact of (largely?) unregulated online political
| advertising is big and getting bigger.
| Keverw wrote:
| I think that's only for local TV though for the FCC ones,
| like your ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS affiliates. They have other
| obligation like providing children programming which is
| usually early on the weekend, in exchange for the
| airwaves too. So cable and satellite network stations are
| treated differently. So like cussing on the local TV
| stations is a no, no but a show on HBO can cuss all they
| want.
|
| Then also some states like Ohio it's illegal to sell ads
| to businesses that aren't solvent, Facebook is currently
| being sued by school districts for selling ads to a
| charter school that later ended up closing, which I feel
| is a huge overreach since most of it's automatic and the
| school themselves decided to buy the ads. So I guess you
| have to do a financial background check before selling
| ads. Probably easier to just exclude Ohio from selling
| ads, but the lawsuit hasn't been settled yet. So far no
| activity for 7 months but still on the docket as a open
| case.
| bduerst wrote:
| No, online ads do not get an exception with the FTC. The
| FTC enforces truth-in-advertising laws on ads across all
| mediums.
|
| Edit: FCC -> FTC
| Keverw wrote:
| That would be the FTC in that case but I see how people
| could mix up the FCC and FTC. For example that's why
| YouTubers disclose when they get paid to promote
| something. But sounds like the FCC has some of their
| rules for TV, and then the FTC ones apply on top of that
| in general.
| empath75 wrote:
| They decide through their algorithms and advertising platform
| what people see and what they don't see, already.
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| > The logical conclusion of their own argument is that Facebook
| should be broken up.
|
| Luckily you don't need logic when you can just throw money at
| lobbying. Sadly, this is incredibly effective in the US today.
| Seenso wrote:
| > Luckily you don't need logic when you can just throw money
| at lobbying. Sadly, this is incredibly effective in the US
| today.
|
| Even if that's true, it might not work for Facebook. The
| politicians that Facebook would need to lobby may feel
| personally threatened by Facebook's power over the electoral
| process. Penny-ante campaign contributions and a few face to
| face meetings probably aren't enough to overcome that.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Penny-ante campaign contributions and a few face to face
| meetings probably aren't enough to overcome that.
|
| True, but a promise to use that power to benefit particular
| politicians probably would.
| root_axis wrote:
| How does breaking up Facebook change anything in this context?
| Unless you're suggesting that the government seize and shut
| down the facebook domain and brand in addition to breaking up
| Facebook.
| JohnFen wrote:
| In my opinion, the problem with Facebook isn't really the PR.
| Yes, Facebook's PR is broken as the article describes, but the
| real problem started years ago, back when it was a "well-oiled
| machine".
|
| The problem is that there is a huge distance between what
| Facebook PR says and what Facebook does. The constant apologies
| for misbehaviors that never are never corrected, the apparently
| deliberate misinterpretations of much of the criticism leveled at
| Facebook, the continual discovery of new misbehaviors that should
| have been stopped, and so forth.
|
| That Facebook has now taken an official public stance of being
| antagonistic, dismissive, and condescending is bad, but it's just
| bad icing on an already bad cake.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah it seems like whatever rules there are ... there aren't
| many.
|
| The whole VPN they ran that tracks kids ... that's not even a
| mystery as far as being a terrible idea.
|
| Then Apple told them to knock it off.
|
| So Facebook renamed it (sloppily too) and put it up on the app
| store again until they got caught again.
|
| Kids, users, other companies, they don't care.
|
| How can a PR person even craft a response like "hey we did
| wrong but we're sure we won't ... well yeah we probabbly will
| do that again, maybe immediately"
| artemisyna wrote:
| As someone that knows the person that originally tipped Apple
| off about the tracking... this is such a misinformed
| editorialization of what actually happened where I don't even
| know where to start.
| duxup wrote:
| Can you help clarify what really happened?
| ogre_codes wrote:
| One thing this piece really brings home to me is how unethical it
| is for media to sell sponsored content intermixed and
| indistinguishable from their own content. How do you trust a
| media outlet when their content is for sale? I know this practice
| pre-dates the internet, but it's hugely damaging to people's
| faith in the media.
|
| I think Facebooks' failure in PR is more a symptom of how far
| Facebook has slid down the ethical slope into outright
| corruption. As you do more and more heinous things, it becomes
| more difficult to defend those actions.
| [deleted]
| ar_lan wrote:
| The beginning of this article really plays out like the author is
| just against Zuckerberg simply talking to people with
| conservative viewpoints.
|
| Being willing (and encouraging) others to listen to other
| viewpoints should not be considered a PR issue.
| ptcampbell wrote:
| That is what Zuck thought. And it would be missing the point.
| That is not what the author took issue with.
| wffurr wrote:
| I didn't get that at all. What the author was against was
| Zuckerberg's defensive, belittling tone in his post
| "explaining" why he's meeting with people with conservative
| viewpoints.
| notadoc wrote:
| Just their PR?
| mihaaly wrote:
| Not everything is run by PR or fixed by PR or even measured by PR
| (except for PR personnel of course).
|
| Sometimes things are just bad and it takes time to realize.
|
| Regardless of the packaging.
| wffurr wrote:
| I was wholly unsurprised to see that last tweet coming from
| someone on the Hillary 2008 campaign. It reads just like the kind
| of defensive use women as human shields to deflect criticism
| attitude that came from the campaign when faced with a real
| primary challenge both in 2008 and 2016.
| biznickman wrote:
| LOL "Before 2019, it felt like the Facebook communications
| machine was a well-oiled, unstoppable juggernaut." Umm how about
| Cambridge Analytica?
|
| Facebook's PR has been troubled for a very long time. To suggest
| that they has a stellar image before 2019 is a joke. I can list
| many other slip ups where Facebook could have come out and said
| something (or even better, did something) and then weeks later
| they come up with a weak statement. If that's great PR, I'd like
| to offer my services to anybody who needs it.
|
| While I'd agree that "No one ever broke rank. The messaging was
| crystal clear.", the message was always an awful one and now they
| have a relatively negative reputation despite being a remarkable
| success.
| danso wrote:
| Cambridge Analytica is one of FB's most known debacles but how
| did the PR team specifically fail?
| hinkley wrote:
| Stifling a glib, sarcastic response, who do we feel has good PR
| that's working, and not in some sinister meaning of 'working'?
|
| What groups and activities do people who think this way hold up
| as positive role models?
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| It's not English, unfortunately, but Berlin's subway operator
| (BVG) has been doing an excellent job at PR for the past 5
| years or so.
|
| They use mostly (self-deprecating) humour, both on billboards
| as well as individually as Twitter messages.
|
| This strategy seems somewhat risky. There were some where I
| thought "funny, but I wouldn't want to be the one posting
| this".
|
| Hard to describe, because it's mostly a function of each tweet
| being really good. They must have some larger advertising
| company behind this, with tons of talent.
|
| They have seen a spectacular improvement in public approval,
| and even on such measures as violence against employees, fare-
| evasion, and vandalism.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Theoretically, the best PR would rarely be identified as such.
| hinkley wrote:
| Trying to answer my own question, I'd say Digital Ocean's paid
| documentation and whatever SEO they're doing that gets those
| documents highly placed in Google results might qualify as
| benevolent PR.
|
| Dev blogs for a couple of projects like Github might also
| count.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-01-10 23:00 UTC)