Hacker News Reader

Comment by mola | Hacker News Reader

Like any other commercial entity in the west, and especially in the US, it's a machine for making money. All other values are subjugated to that purpose. As long as some other value isn't hurting the bottom line, it'll be tolerated. Once it does, all those other values go out the window.

This is what makes these machines so effective. This is what makes liberal western values vulnerable.

View on HN

The money is real, but the other important aspect is that any government can compel these companies to restrict free speech. One of the governments is the board of directors of the company itself. Unless you truly own your phone, the speech/software allowed on it is determined by the government. If you have complete control of the software running on it such as FOSS, then you own/control the phone. Otherwise you are basically renting a device that is controlled by government.

Google left China in 2010 and hasn't really gone back, other than some hardware manufacturing there. Bing on the other hand is available and fully complies with Chinese censorship.

Google was still collaborating with the CCP until early 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

Did Google actually talk to the CCP about launching this, or was this just Google wondering how easy it would be to sell out on their values and reclaim all that revenue they gave away to Baido? My understanding was that this was more of the latter. Unsettling that they would even consider this, but still better than basically every other large tech firm.

Dragonfly was a prototype that never even left the design stage. How could they have been collaborating with the CCP with something that wasn't even released?

What you say is true but did you didn't follow the logic all the way.

Apple doesn't care about it because their customers don't care about it. Stop buying and they start caring.

Then why did they pull Twitter ads? Surely they're losing sales from that?

"Brand safety". Apple cultivates their image and don't want it damaged. Twitter isn't valuable enough as an advertising space to take a risk for. That is, they pulled twitter ads because they think advertising on Twitter isn't worth the price and might reduce the value of their brand.

I think this is correct but I also think that means the US public has strange, contradictory values.

How is it contradictory? You’re free to say what you want to. I’m free to go somewhere I can’t hear you if I want to.

The fact that Apple is more than willing to work with a violent repressive dictatorship is cool, but we won't advertise on Twitter because they are evil...

Brand protection isn’t a value judgement about the service. It’s the recognition that ad dollars are poorly spent if your ads end up next to damaging content.

That said, of course the us population has contradictory positions. It’s hundreds of millions of people.

We denounce dictators and oppression and champion human rights and democracy. Companies that work with oppressive rulers have tarnished brand names. For example: software companies that worked with the Saudis or CBP and ICE. Apple has determined that Twitter could cause brand reputation damage because Twitter is accused of having disinformation or hate speech on it.

On the other hand, Apple works cooperatively with the Chinese government to suppress human rights. The update to air drop and the separate icloud and app store as well as appearing to work closely with the CCP does not seem to be pro human rights.

So I think it's contradictory that there is no brand reputational damage for cooperation with a government accused of violations of human rights but there is for allowing Twitter on the App Store ostensibly because it is a threat to democracy. Maybe that changes as a result of people pointing this logic out, but I won't hold my breath. I don't think it's nuanced, I think it's straightforward. You can't be a champion of global human rights except where it is inconvenient. Or maybe the human rights and pro democracy stuff is all BS.

In what way contradictory?

I think it should be noted that "brand safety" is entirely theoretical. It doesn't necessarily mean that anything actually happens. What it means is that certain people in Apple's marketing department believe that their ads being pictured next to things that they think people might not approve of might harm their image and possibly lead to a loss in sales. There is no proof that this will actually happen though. For all we know, the only solid reason is that their trendy cocktail party friends won't approve of them if their ads are next to something they don't like.

How does shameless hypocrisy help their brand-image?

It does not, but the calculation is that any loss in value of brand is sufficiently offset by profits in the Chinese market.

Assuming any of the claims are even true.

Their customers are hypocrites too.

Twitter Ads really have low value and always did. The investments, relative to other social channels, are low and the ROAS is terrible. Brands were just there because they felt they had to cover the bases, not because they were truly having any impact.

Twitter has been dead on that front forever and El Musky is definitely not helping things.

To add some context to this, I met a woman a few years back who worked in marketing for Kingsford Charcoal. Kingsford had something like 94% USA marketshare at the time, but they still spent millions on marketing. They already dominated their space, and I could totally see Kingsford blowing six or seven figures USD on Twitter advertising, just in case.

An aside, but if you like grilling with charcoal, chunk "natural" charcoal produces a hotter fire than briquettes like Kingsford.

Seems like Musk is focussed on cost reduction. Which might actually save a lot more than the ad losses. Or might not.

“Engagement” and “page views” and blah blah don’t pay the dividends, leftovers after expenses are paid do.

Advertising losses are not Musk's only financial concern.

FTC, EU commission and EU member states are all circling as a result of them losing trust in the companies ability to enforce previous agreements. And it's a legitimate concern since all of those employees responsible for this are all gone.

Apple have issued guidance that they can’t make enough iphone 14s to meet demand. They likely don’t need to advertise on Twitter right now anyway and this way they get free PR advertising from news orgs covering the Twitter story instead.

If the marketing works, reducing it reduces their pricing power.

Lots of ways of doing that without raising list price (removing promos/discounts, keeping the price higher longer).

And an iPhone 14 ad still spills into other iPhone and apple product sales.

You can "lose sales" and save money by spending less on marketing at the same time.

> Then why did they pull Twitter ads? Surely they're losing sales from that?

Probably not really? Compared to Google, Facebook, and even traditional TV, Twitter is a drop in the advertising bucket.

They could also be losing sales for having ads on Twitter.

Are there people who actually won’t buy an iPhone if they advertise on Twitter? That sounds so absurd, but I guess we’re talking about Twitter users

That’s a very limited point of view. Think of brand management. What if suddenly people start seeing tweets from very problematic people, and Apple ads next to that?

And imagine if that makes the news cycle after that?

Biggest problem that my friends in marketing/sales explained to me - if there’s no proper conversion from ads to sales, huge problem with bots AND negative targeted ads, then it’s not worth it. Honestly, I have close to 0 knowledge in terms of marketing and advertisement, so mostly rely on others’ opinions and tactics.

Conversely, how effective are Apple advertisements on twitter anyway? At least half of the install base is probably already tweeting from an iPhone.

Apple was the largest ad-buyer on Twitter. Up until recently of course.

a) Widespread reports from the advertising industry that the Twitter ad engine is falling apart. ROAS and engagement have significantly dropped whilst inauthentic bot requests have significantly increased. And some are seeing data inconsistencies in the dashboard and so they are unable to effectively audit campaigns. So for many it is simply not worth the effort compared to investing in other channels.

b) Larger ad buyers depend on account managers being there to assist with getting the most out of the platform and helping to understand changes. They are all gone.

c) It is a proven fact that brand association matters. If your ad is next to CSAM people will remember that and de-value your brand. Given Musk has fired the entire Brand Safety team, hollowed out the Content Moderation team, empowered ultra-right-wing people like Andy Ngo to make moderation decisions and is now sole arbiter for all decisions companies are simply believing it is too risky to stay. And advertising groups like Omnicom, WPP, Publicis etc agree ranking the platform as "high-risk".

d) Apple wanted to send a message to Musk that this direction Twitter is going on is not going to end well. There is a risk, albeit small, that they can be held legally responsible for the behaviour of the applications on their store. Allowing apps that take no responsibility for content moderation is untenable for them.

Until public companies aren't legally mandated to make money or get sued by shareholders, this will keep happening.

There needs to be a new model for public companies

"Pecunia non olet".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com