> Part of this was Zuckerberg outright lying to everyone about video's impact.
Perhaps I'm missing some important aspect, but what would be the benefit of lying about this? How would serving video that didn't promote engagement help FB at all? Just more storage and bandwidth without increased opportunity to serve an ad -- backwards from how I understand FB's model.
People do say something false for a believed gain all the time. But usually when I hear something false it's a misunderstanding or misspeaking. So based on my (relatively naïve) model of how FB works as a business, "lying" doesn't seem like the right word here.
they've admitted to knowingly reporting impossible metrics, which is lying as far as i'm concerned.
these specific metrics were used to indicate to business accounts what kind of content was appreciated, and cited in executive keynotes, essentially demanding an internet-wide "pivot to video".
one lawsuit has already settled with a payout and it seems like a second one is ongoing.
i believe the intent was that video embeds are watched in the feed, whereas articles are more often links out.
it was incredibly destructive as nearly every news outfit cited this as the motivation for gutting their investigations and writing staff.
There are many reasons why Facebook would want to push videos at the time. There was probably a strategy shift to video at the board level then it trickled down into this.
Facebook gets paid for showing ads and videos were playing automatically on hover. It looks like more engagement but the call to actions is lower (no one clicks on a link).
Perhaps I'm missing some important aspect, but what would be the benefit of lying about this? How would serving video that didn't promote engagement help FB at all? Just more storage and bandwidth without increased opportunity to serve an ad -- backwards from how I understand FB's model.
People do say something false for a believed gain all the time. But usually when I hear something false it's a misunderstanding or misspeaking. So based on my (relatively naïve) model of how FB works as a business, "lying" doesn't seem like the right word here.