Skip to content

Archives

Links for 2021-02-19

  • Facebook knew for years ad reach estimates were based on ‘wrong data’ but blocked fixes over revenue impact, per court filing | TechCrunch

    Via Colman Reilly — this really sounds like outright fraudulent behaviour by FB:

    The filing also reveals that a Facebook product manager for the “potential reach” tool warned the company was making revenue it “should never have” off of “wrong data”. The unsealed documents pertain to a U.S. class action lawsuit, filed in 2018, which alleges that Facebook deceived advertisers by knowingly including fake and duplicate accounts in a “potential reach” metric. Facebook denies the claim but has acknowledged accuracy issues with the “potential reach” metric as far back as 2016 — and also changed how it worked in 2019. […] Redacted documents from the lawsuit, reported by the WSJ last year, included the awkward detail that a Facebook employee had asked “how long can we get away with the reach overestimation?”

    (tags: fraud facebook ads ad-fraud bots revenue metrics via:colman)