Facebook isn\u2019t having the best year. From recent revelations that they failed to act (for years) after they discovered their products curated anorexia and negative self image<\/a> in young women and girls, to a flood of reports about how the Facebook algorithm radicalizes their users<\/a> and acts as an accelerator for conspiracy theories<\/a>, we can certainly imagine that the Facebook PR team is being kept on the very tips of their toes. With all that in mind, an article about how Facebook also ruined marketing could be seen as beating a dead horse. Facebook didn\u2019t just turn the word \u201cfriend\u201d into a verb, it also changed it to mean \u201cperson I maybe know a little, maybe.\u201d In the early days of Facebook, friend counts were one of the first manifestations of clout-measuring on the platform. Users were explicitly encouraged to add and invite as many friends as possible, because that helped extend Facebook\u2019s network effect. And, of course, it made you look cool and popular. Who doesn\u2019t want that? Facebook ruined marketing by focusing on bogus followers, and the illusion of clout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s become relatively common knowledge that social media platforms surf a wave of outrage and grievance. This isn\u2019t unique to Facebook\u2014watch YouTube for long enough and you\u2019ll likely end up in some dark places. But few other platforms have embraced outrage and vitriol the way Facebook has. Facebook ruined marketing by building a system that values anger, and trains us to be smaller than we actually are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first clich\u00e9 born of the 21st century is: \u201cIf you\u2019re not paying for it, you are the product.\u201d We\u2019re not breaking any news here when we tell you that users pay when they use Facebook, and that personal data is the currency. Don\u2019t get us wrong\u2014we\u2019re not saying that ads are bad. But a system that treats people (including and especially you) as products is a system that is bad for marketers. It\u2019s also bad for the increasingly alienated audience that is used to seeing (and ignoring) a constant storm of disingenuous ads from marketers chasing likes and follows. Flashback to the end of the 20th century, when artificial intelligence and machine overlords became the collective obsession of our popular mythology. Who could have guessed that the machines would indeed rise, but they\u2019d just be here for the lols and to rile up the olds. That\u2019s because the problem with bots is the natural result of a social media environment that is disingenuous to its core. In the end, what is the real difference between a follow that someone who has given to you in passing (the Facebook \u201cpage like\u201d ad type makes it look on a quick glance like you\u2019re just liking a post\u2014and so often social media scrolling is nothing more than quick glances) and a follow from a bot? Thanks to the algorithm, neither the real human nor the bot will ever go on to see or interact with your content again. And the result of both actions is the same\u2014a single digit, added to a larger number, and the brief little dopamine boost that results. This is compounded by the fact that bot armies can be directed for as little as 5% the cost of equivalent engagement through ads. These bot programmers saw a system where truth didn\u2019t exist, and simply leaned into it. Since the first days of Facebook ads, targeting has been their unique selling point. Have a marketing message that you only want to show to women between the ages of 24 and 32 in Hai Phong, who are planning a wedding, and who are obsessed with Pokemon? You can do that. That\u2019s because the Old Spice marketing team knew that they would be speaking to a broad audience, and couldn’t get away with saying: \u201cHey, we sell deodorant.\u201d But if, on the other hand, you know that your ad will only be shown to users who have searched for your product, then saying: \u201cHey, buy it here maybe,\u201d just might cut it. The problem has gotten worse as Facebook advertising opened up to include anyone with a pulse and a credit card, flooding the zone with garbage and training the audience to ignore almost everything they see.
But we\u2019re ok with that. Especially when the horse in question has shown little to no will to address their problems (bad horse!) but still remains a business necessity for most of the world. As people who care deeply about marketing, and treating online communities with respect, our gripe with Facebook is both aesthetic and moral. Here are 7 ways that Facebook is toxic to effective, creative marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n1. The Emperor has no friends<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
When Facebook rolled out business pages, the message was just the same. More followers was better. More accounts following your page meant that more people cared about your business, and products. Small business owners and social media managers kept an eye on that follower count, writing calls to action and offering giveaways all in the hopes of pushing that number ever higher. But do you know what you can buy with 10,000 followers? Nothing much at all. A satisfied smile, and a cup of coffee (you gotta steal the coffee, though).
Facebook emphasized follower volume instead of real connections because they knew that the dopamine hit we all get from watching the number tick up is real. But it\u2019s built upon a lie\u201499 times out of 100, those followers you\u2019ve gathered will never see another post from your business again.<\/strong> Worse yet, Facebook incentivizes users to spend real money building a list of vanity followers that the algorithm will never let them communicate with again. The Facebook \u201cLike campaign\u201d ad type, when used by itself, is the chief offender here. We can\u2019t tell you how many business owners we\u2019ve worked with who have invested thousands of dollars building followers through ads, only to see their reach stuck at a fraction of a percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n2. Provocation and the race to the bottom<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
These days, it can be tempting to think that content that makes us feel angry, threatened or disgusted spreads quickly because online communities are simply terrible. But these are not the natural shapes that these communities take\u2014they have been actively pushed in that direction by Facebook\u2019s engineers. Did you know that on Facebook, a post with just two \u201cangry\u201d emoji responses is considered more successful than another post with 9 likes? That is by design, because Facebook engineers built an algorithm that gives angry responses five times the weight<\/a> of positive ones.
This results in a whole host of bad marketing techniques. Social media managers who are conditioned to aim for engagement and the reach it brings race each other to the bottom, trying to create something\u2014anything\u2014that will provoke engagement. This results in posts that mistake meanness for humor, and knee-jerk-reactions for connection. Take a recent campaign from a local Italian franchise here in Hanoi that gave women discounts based on how much younger their male companion was. Good for a momentary, dark chuckle, maybe. But not the kind of message that respects women, or men, or\u2026 just people.
A few of the more savvy local Vietnamese businesses have simply leaned-in to the brokenness of this system, flooding their posts with enraged responses from an army of bots. If you\u2019ve ever seen a photo of a sandwich that somehow managed to piss off 113 people, that\u2019s why. Kudos to those marketers for cracking the code, we guess. But we\u2019d rather just delete it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n3. People as Products<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The problem for marketers is that this applies doubly to you. Think back to when you first started your business page and entered their funnel. We\u2019d be willing to guess that within a span of hours, you started getting your first marketing messages from Facebook encouraging you to give them your money. Every \u201cBoost Post\u201d button is a call to action for you to add your few drops to the river of advertising revenue flowing into Facebook. Will the ads, and boosts, be good for your business? Who cares! When an ad fails (as they often do), Facebook can always blame your creatives, your targeting, your ad optimization. But never fear, for an additional spend you can always run more ads. Practice makes profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facebook ruined marketing by treating users as products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n4. Rise of the bots<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
This isn\u2019t the first mention of bots in our list. Recent estimates suggest that there could be as many as 90 million<\/a> automated, fake accounts on Facebook. The problem is particularly rife in Vietnam, where any user with command of the google search bar can find a bot-army for hire. We think bots are terrible because they are ultimately counterproductive (not to mention dishonest). But we don\u2019t fault the bot programmers as much as you\u2019d think. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facebook ruined marketing by failing to control bots, and by creating a world where they were almost indistinguishable from the real thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n5. Microtargeting, and the death of creativity<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
At first this was met with much rejoicing. What a boon for marketers that they could show their messages to just the small segment of the audience that is interested in what they are selling. But an unexpected consequence of hyper-specific targeting has been a proliferation of boring, lazy, entirely uncreative marketing. To understand why, think about television ads. While you might not be in the market to buy Old Spice, everyone regardless of their demographics can appreciate the creativity and Isaiah Mustafa\u2019s magnetic performance in these classic Old Spice ads<\/a> that ran on network television a decade ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facebook ruined marketing by swapping creativity for digital eavesdropping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n6. The Creep factor<\/h3>\n\n\n\n