Comment by blantonl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blantonl | Hacker News Reader

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With regards to this, my point was that Facebook doesn't want to get into a long drawn out discussion with whataboutisms and splitting hairs on policy.

They made a business decision to move on from this content platform. I love to hate on facebook with the best of them, but they really don't "owe" anyone anything.

There seems to be this pervasive attitude in technology circles that platforms "owe" other businesses and individuals something when they build businesses on top of said platforms. Just because you spent 54MM in ads on a platform doesn't entitle you to anything when a legal or business decision has to be made. Is it crappy not to communicate and give an explanation...? you bet it is. Did that 54MM in spend generate anything for Shared... you bet it did. Everyone was a winner until Facebook moved on.

I suspect that Facebook and Shared working to negotiate out of this will just result in a lot of spinning wheels, ammunition collection on both sides to pursue legal remedies, and nothing of real value changing. Facebook said we're moving on. Done.

Okay there are two separate issues here:

1) I think it's very unhelpful to speak in terms of "not owing things" to people and defending anyone whoever does the absolute minimum until they're dragged kicking and screaming to extend the most basic courtesy. Part of being a decent human being is extending such basic courtesies to others even when there's no legal obligation to do so, and, when an org doesn't do that, it's absolutely right to call them out on it.

2) If you're right, that this only came after extensive negotiation in which FB did reveal their objections, then yes, it's fair to call the advertiser out on that, for misrepresenting what explanation FB gave him.

Edit: Also,

>With regards to this, my point was that Facebook doesn't want to get into a long drawn out discussion with whataboutisms and splitting hairs on policy.

That's not relevant, because FB can recognize when they're making a judgment call; my point was just that it's courteous to at least recognize when you're doing so.

In what kind of Lalaland is 50 million nothing?

I guess parent comment is comparing facebook's quarterly revenue (~20 Billion) from ad sales, 50 million would be a fraction of a percent of 1 quarter of ad revenue I would imagine for a company like Facebook.

In the context of advertising, I read "57M" as $57,000. They would normally write 57MM if they meant $57 million, wouldn't they?

> In the context of advertising, I read "57M" as $57,000.

?? I would expect to see $57,000 abbreviated as $57K.

That's now how they roll in that business. CPM for instance = cost per thousand.

Maybe they all studied Latin or learned Roman numerals?

Yep, the 'M' means 'mille' as I understand it. 'MM' is 'mille mille', or 'thousand thousand.'

Do you mean like the Roman "M" for thousand and "MM" for million? That is mixing Arabic numerals with Roman numerals.

MM to denote millions is reasonably common in some fields: https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/ot...

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