ZuckBot has already put out there that Meta is padding its DAU numbers with Fake Bot Accounts, so these numbers are meaningless.
Not to mention the sheer number of times they’ve already been caught faking numbers in the past. Great comment from That Yellow Bastard Site.
Facebook faking viewership numbers is really an under-reported story. So many publishing companies had moderately successful business models. Then Facebook came along with their amazing viewership numbers. Everyone “pivoted to video”, switched to targeting native Facebook views, and chasing those unbelievable viewership totals. The views ended up being well lower than reported which means the promising revenue never materialized like expected. By the time companies realized this, it was too late to pivot back to hosting their content on their own site because the behavior of their users had already been broken by Facebook. This destroyed countless publishers including CollegeHumor and the similar Funny or Die. It is amazing that Facebook only paid a $40m settlement for this fraud.
Similar story from Adam Conover of CollegeHumor:
My former employer CollegeHumor did this. In order to beat YouTube, Facebook faked incredible viewership numbers, so CH pivoted to FB. So did Funny or Die, many others. The result: A once-thriving online comedy industry was decimated. A $40m fine is laughable; shut Facebook down.
Anyone who buys the increased user numbers less than a month after they promoted fake AI generated profiles is a fool.
I left Facebook years ago but I still.have to use its marketplace because up where I live, it is the only way to buy and sell used stuff. I fucking hate that.
Yeah same, I live in a small town and in addition to marketplace, I need to check it every couple months to keep up with local events. My town has a website with a calendar but they never add anything besides “weight training at the senior center”, no matter what else is going on
Numbers may rebound, but users having kicked the tires on other options means they’re less tightly bound than they were before. It’s up to us to create a welcoming and interesting environment in the spaces that they’ve looked at to get them to shift their usage.
I logged out on the 12th I think. I did log back in briefly to update my business’ auto reply to give out my linktree.
“The majority secretly agrees with me, only a minority of idiots disagree” is a bad assumption no matter which “side” of an issue you’re on. I’m always glad to see options become available but we shouldn’t expect everyone to want them.
