The article doesn’t seem to make any factual claims about why Facebook is wrong in claiming that small businesses will be affected negatively by the disruption in personalized ads.
It’s clear that making tracking opt in instead of opt out will make most users chose to not enable tracking leading to lesser personalized ads, which would affect the ability of smaller businesses to reach a targeted audience that they care about without needing to spend more than necessary. That’s the point being made by Facebook and I do see the logic there. I expected a better rebuttal to Facebooks argument.
Small businesses are negatively affected by all sorts good things: food safety laws, truth in advertising laws, employee protection laws, needing to pay taxes, etc. Something being bad for the profitability of small businesses isn't a strong argument by itself.
They're not wrong; but the implied alternative argument is that individuals should have a right to privacy, which as a right supersedes the privilege of small businesses to serve targeted ads. To me that's a lot more compelling than what Facebook is advocating.
Why doesn't a small business owner engage in more direct interaction with his/her customers? Its not like a mom and pop shop is supposed to sell nationwide and all that?
Support local artists, give out free stuff to local revievers, join local hobby groups, community groups where a customer is supposed to be and take it from there. Facebook doesn't want a small business to do that, instead dial in a few parameters and call it a day. I would rather do business with a seller who is genuinely interested in selling a good product, provide service, handle issues, instead of the other "hey... you bought a rice cooker yesterday, would you like a juicer? ".
Facebook does not care about small businesses - so instead of responding to the thin veil of "but think of the small businesses!", people are responding to the underlying concern that Facebook really has - their own welfare (which .. they have described in their quarterly filing to the SEC with estimated loss of revenue)
I don’t necessarily disagree with the characterization per se but I don’t think it makes for a convincing argument to most people who don’t particularly care about morality when dealing with what a corporation does.
It is up to you what you find convincing or acceptable, but as a strategy I don’t like yours - Facebook can come (and does) come up with bad faith arguments. If you keep responding to them, they waste your energy evaluating and responding to each argument. They have unlimited resources, in comparison.
The only reasonable way, in the long term, is to ignore the specifics and address the essence. Some of us have been observing this behavior (with many companies and politicians) for decades, and choose bot to play the game dictated by the other side.
I think FB is being disingenuous. If ads are less targeted then the cost of impressions is going to fall, and so "small business" will be able to buy more ads for the same price.
If there are constraints in supply (ie, not many places to show ads) then I'd be wrong and the price would go up. Maybe someone on HN who knows more than me can project this.
But in any case it certainly isn't entirely obvious to me that "small business" will necessarily suffer. It's not like ads can no longer be targeted; they just can't be _microtargeted_, meaning the very big spenders (like political parties) are going to spend less. But I struggle to see how this will significantly impact traditional, product based advertising.
It doesn’t really work that way. Most publishers have limited inventories of ad space and people spend only a limited time on their properties. They’re not incentivized to reduce prices for what is already a scarce commodity: people’s attention. Bigger brands have HUGE media budgets. So smaller brands can compete only by making more targeted ads.
Small businesses will likely suffer in the short run, no doubt.
Facebook has backed us into this situation where we need to decide between privacy and profits for Facebook. Local businesses rely on Facebook for advertising.
It’s clear that making tracking opt in instead of opt out will make most users chose to not enable tracking leading to lesser personalized ads, which would affect the ability of smaller businesses to reach a targeted audience that they care about without needing to spend more than necessary. That’s the point being made by Facebook and I do see the logic there. I expected a better rebuttal to Facebooks argument.