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Comment by Lxr | Hacker News Reader

Why is there even a separate field for "Display Link", is there a reason this can't be parsed from the actual URL (like HN)?

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Because the actual URL is often some metrics or ad-billing service which is supposed to redirect to the target. This is quite common on Google as well as on Facebook.

While this is a good answer to the people saying "clearly facebook is trying to abet fraud by making these fields independent of each other", there is no technical reason why you couldn't parse the target URL from the actual one -- it's easy to hit the actual URL and parse the redirect you receive.

That opens you up to a URL which redirects you somewhere trustworthy when you check it but redirects later ad-clickers somewhere shady when they check it; mitigating that is harder but approachable.

I wonder if Google sample checks where those redirects go. They usually do seem to end up where they're supposed to.

The problem with checking them is that if you make the check look just like a normal click-through, the advertiser gets billed for a click by their ad broker.

Facebook is already getting their own data from clicks, why support competitors' data-gathering services?

If they don't support it, advertisers won't use the platform

That assumes, of course, that the underlying paying customer is even aware how the network is luring its clicks.

Correct. While we do use Facebooks tracking for ads placed on Facebook, traffic from all other source is piped through a partner that does referral tracking and ensure that we aren't paying out commission to more than one referrer per sale. I easily imaging someone wanting to funnelling everything through one advertising/tracking partner for simplicity.

Facebook needs to ensure that their setup works in a way that the rest of the business expects. What Facebook seems to lack is the resources and dedication of Google to find the fraudulent ads.

Then the possible check would be simply for FB to follow the original link and see if it matches the display link after the redirect from the tracker

But of course they won't do that.

then you'd send facebook's checker to the real url, and then redirect everyone else

Check using a random referrer and random IP, also possibly recheck later

Also, for example, if they claim to be CNN, it should go to a relevant page, not just cnn.com

That's also something that would be relatively easy to game as well.

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