Shout out to the indefatigable Dylan Reeve, who did the hard yards to show that Meta's Facebook really doesn't care that it's scam central these days. Dylan collected over 100 scam ads from Facebook, went through the really rather meaningless process of reporting them, only to be fobbed off with "community standards" by the social network's PR people and managers.
One important point of the story which I encourage you to read at The Spinoff, is that Facebook says ads are vetted. There's no other way to read that than Meta/Facebook being complicit in the scamming of its users.
I recently made some enquiries on behalf of an operator of a Wellington radio station whose Facebook advertising account was hit by a string of unauthorised charges. That is, the actual Facebook account showed no transactions, but the person's bank account did. There were references next to the transactions and you'd think Facebook would be helpful and respond. Nothing was done. The only response was from Meta/Facebook's PR agency:
"Unfortunately, Meta aren’t able to dig into individual cases."
Apparently this is a known scam that's been around for years.
That attitude is costing all of us dearly, as more people fall prey to scamming which in New Zealand alone is an annual business in the hundreds of millions.
What's more, since our politicians are on Facebook and subject to scamming like everyone else, public money is being spent on online protection and to clean up compromised accounts. The responsibility for that should lie with Meta/Facebook and not the people who the social network sells as the product, bringing in a mind-boggling US$36.5 billion in revenue for the first quarter of this year alone.
The tech industry is eating itself
Life in the tech biz is not super merry at the moment, not in that exuberant fashion of just a few years ago at least. The layoffs are coming in hard and fast, with thousands of people losing their jobs left, right and centre. Over a quarter of a million jobs are gone, and the human cost of that is horrific.
For an appropriately gloomy take on what's going on, read Polish engineer and humanist Adam Trojanczyk's take.
As others have noted, a key reason for the current tech industry downturn is inflation. Which of course affects the entire economy that uses information technology to be productive. Increased costs are the only things that trickle down in any economy.
Inflation is now waning worldwide, but does that mean the tech industry will again start to spin its wheels, start skidding around the corners at high speed?
Regular reminder for the 'Robbo caused inflation' crowd. Most 'advanced' economies have followed the same inflationary track. Why? Because imported fossil fuels shot up in 2021 and they are a *very significant* input cost for so many of the things we buy. [🧵1/3] pic.twitter.com/LrRFKgTO7D
— Musical Chairs (@MusicalChairs14) August 22, 2024
If AI is meant to form part of that, probably not. This needs to be qualified with the usual "there are absolutely legit uses of AI, as has been evidenced for many years now".
However, Trojanczyk's interviews with 50 managers over seven months point to AI, particularly the generative variety that can spit out text, images, audio and video, being oversold and it'll underdeliver. That's one thing, but GenAI is hugely costly for those getting into that business.
There's only so much money floating around, and it ain't cheap at the moment and won't be again for a very long time. Something has to be cut to pay for the AI investment and that's jobs. Share market investors seem to have cottoned onto that being a suboptimal state of affairs.
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That attitude is costing all of us dearly, as more people fall prey to scamming which in New Zealand alone is an annual business in the hundreds of millions.
Arguably, Meta is not much better for legitimate paid advertisers either. Veteran adman Bob Hoffman has a free book entitled "Inside The Black Box: How marketers waste billions on online advertising." It's about the dodgy, stinky, corrupt programmatic advertising apparatus.
It assuredly isn't going to get better: this is the take from MIT Technology Review about the use of AI to create and manipulate sites to drag in advertising dollars.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/06/27/1075545/next-gen-content-fa…
I wonder if the days of the web as a viable marketing tool are over - order placing and fulfilment: sure. Getting you message out to your target audience: maybe not any more.
If AI is meant to form part of that, probably not. This needs to be qualified with the usual "there are absolutely legit uses of AI, as has been evidenced for many years now".
Maccas Japan first AI-driven advertising content is making some waves. I think the final output for this execution is very good and checks all the boxes on good TVCM content for a Japanese audience. Apparently it cost approx USD50 to make. But as I pointed out, the ad is offering a 34% discount on McDs fries. Who in their right mind wants to spend silly amounts of money on content when your promotion is basically giving product and profit away?
https://www.synthads.ai/post/mcdonald-s-japan-launches-first-ai-driven-…
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