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Comment by xvector | Hacker News Reader

I've worked at most FAANG companies, including Google, Apple, and Meta in the past (not currently).

In my experience working at these companies and diving into the reported incidents/issues (e.g. Batterygate, Myanmar, Cambridge Analytica), I have found that comments like yours present an overly reductive worldview. You are likely entirely informed by ragebait news articles that grossly misrepresent the issues as opposed to a nuanced understanding of (1) the widely reported incidents, and (2) the services these companies provide and those that rely on them to make a living.

No, it would not be replaced "in an instant" with other options, and any other options would quickly evolve into the same state as FB/IG today unless you make targeted ads illegal (which - again - would collapse millions of small businesses and centralize power for wealthy large businesses).

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My experience using Facebook is that every third post is an advertisement, often for something I can't even buy (common one: a tax adviser specialising in US citizens living in the UK, when I'm British and live in Germany), or are not gender appropriate (they've shown me ads both for boob surgery and for dick pills).

Another third are "recommendations" for groups that are often not merely of zero interest, but geographically irrelevant — a page for a team I've never heard of in a sport I don't follow in a state I've never even visited, that kind of thing.

The remaining third are mostly from just one person, because everyone else I know seems to feel much the same way about the website and have mostly stopped posting content there.

My actual, literal, spam folder is less irrelevant than what Facebook shows me on the default feed.

> No, it would not be replaced "in an instant" with other options, and any other options would quickly evolve into the same state as FB/IG today unless you make targeted ads illegal (which - again - would collapse millions of small businesses and centralize power for wealthy large businesses).

1) It's already centralised, that's the problem.

2) We managed OK before the internet enabled targeted ads. Back then, local newspapers were a thing (I still get them around here), and you could put an ad for your barber shop or dance hall in that. Local forums that you can find on a search engine are still able to serve local ads, without targeting or profiling users. Biggest problem with that is that spam was already a problem 20 years ago (personal experience trying to host a phpBB forum), and now we've got LLMs that make it increasingly difficult to even know if you're talking to a fellow human let alone a fellow resident of ${local area} or member of ${specific interest group}.

> We managed OK before the internet enabled targeted ads. Back then, local newspapers were a thing (I still get them around here), and you could put an ad for your barber shop or dance hall in that

To be fair, we are in a wholly different world today. The small business landscape has changed dramatically - most of them are online. I get instagram ads for my really niche hobbies, and I don't mind.

Example: Let's say you're into "titanium miniature puzzles" (https://www.lazels.com/)

There is no chance of that business surviving based off of local newspaper ads alone - the likelihood of finding a viable customer base in your town is low. Generalized ads would be totally unaffordable to reach widely enough to cover your viable target customer base, which is sparse and global. Search based ads don't work because people don't even know this exists until they see it.

But good ad targeting enables instant global reach to the specific people that are likely to be interested in what you're selling. There may only be 1k-10k people globally interested in buying $500 titanium miniature puzzles, but if you can reach them, that's enough for your small business to survive.

Lots of small businesses rely on this. I'm not sure about "millions" but on the order of 100k seems likely, if you assume there's one interesting niche business for every 80k people.

That kind of example matches what I was saying about forums.

Targeting ads to a forum is (with consent) fine, in the way that targeting a person isn't.

I see what you mean - but I am not sure it would work for the "you don't know what you don't know" cases, or cases where the user isn't invested enough to follow the relevant forum.

I personally wasn't interested in miniature titanium puzzles until I saw the ad - I'm not interested in puzzles in general, so I wouldn't have found it via a puzzle forum.

The same pattern can be seen in my other hobbies (tritium collecting, mokume and titanium/zirconium Damascus items, unique independent watches, flashlight collecting, rocks).

I'm involved enough to buy something from an ad while scrolling through my friends' timelines or reels, but certainly not enough to frequent a forum on these topics. So I am not sure forums suffice.

> would collapse millions of small businesses

How? And do they have the right to exist if their only income is targeted ads?

How do you expect small businesses to acquire customers? Spending tens of millions of dollars competing in generalized ad space to reach the same audience they can reach today with $1000?

Most small businesses that exist today would become nonviable overnight, and that is a huge chunk of the economy. Sure, you can say "they shouldn't have the right to exist" because they use targeted ads, but I have yet to hear a solid argument for why such ads are an infringement on our fundamental rights such that the whole SMB segment of the economy is worth destroying.

Let me guess, there were no small businesses in the whole world before the advent of digital automated targeted ads?

More like targeted ads enabled hundreds of thousands of small businesses to exist.

Do you seriously think that ? My experience is so dissociated that I think it unbelievable. I don't remember ever seeing an ad for a small business on the web, even less discovered one through them.

I discovered most small businesses that I use through word of month, seeing them while traveling or active search through google or google maps. The ones that I may have discovered through ad where through local physical add such as any box fliers or fliers/posters in other local businesses.

in order for to see small business ads you really have to have your browser fully exposed in order to be targeted - small business are local and feeding ads for a massage parlour in sam diego to me 3,000 miles away is not a good allocation of marketing money. I am 50 and have never, not once discovered a small business through an online ad

Because small businesses didn't exist before meta?

A tech bro true believer comes to the rescue to set us all straight. Of course the world would fall apart if Thanos snapped his fingers and disappeared Meta.

Thinking about I might watch that movie, a Thanos redemption arc maybe...

>You are likely entirely informed by ragebait news articles

Sure. Do you think I haven't experienced every aspect of Meta properties? Instagram reels, for instance, is a racist hellhole full of the most vile content and snuff videos. It seems to have zero moderation, profiting off of the worst of humanity[1]. Facebook actively runs obvious scam ads for scam businesses and does absolutely nothing if you report it.

Meta at this point is basically a criminal operation.

And it's hilarious how much fear mongering there was about Tiktok (which is a positively benign platform compared to Meta's garbage platforms). I recently uninstalled Instagram after it fed me an endless stream of 51st state propaganda, despite the fact that I Not Interested/Blocked every single occurrence (this was around the time that Instagram turned up the "snuff" dial so millions were getting feeds full of violent deaths[2], which is a mechanism that immediately should subject Meta to government inquiries). Meta properties should be banned everywhere outside the US purely based upon the fact that they're enemy propaganda at this point.

>and any other options would quickly evolve into the same state as FB/IG today

No, they wouldn't. Like literally somehow loads of other sites manage to not be the cesspools of garbage that Meta properties are. This is by design. Here in Canada, engagement on Facebook has dropped to negligible levels outside of the 51st state/conspiratorial sorts. Reddit is an enlightened intellectual promised land compared to the shithole that Meta properties all are.

>which - again - would collapse your small businesses

This is such nonsense. The only businesses that are reliant upon Meta are largely scammy new-age bullshit. And your rhetoric is like saying that if McDonalds closed millions would go hungry because surely there is no way for people to eat otherwise.

And again you've tried to pull other companies in. Google offers enormous value to the world. They are largely a responsible company. Apple offers value. Netflix offers value. Microsoft offers value.

META...blinked out of existence and the world would be much better. Meta is the world's digital Purdue Pharma.

[1] And to be clear, I'm a free speech person. That fringe sites exist where people ply this content is fine. That a major corporation seems to build a business around it, however, monetizing nuts and mental illness and racism and conspiracies and violence, is absolutely disgusting, and I cannot comprehend how someone could work at Meta without feel shame every moment of every day.

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/27/instagram...

Reddit can be astroturfed to hell, I don't trust it. Mods are shared across subreddits, they ban you for unjustified reasons, as does the site in general

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