A Little Shameless Crowing Over Facebook’s Nosedive

Last week Facebook lost a quarter of its value. I admit it: I gave it to full-on Schadenfreude. And I don’t have any shame in my enjoyment of their shame.

Of course, it’s kind of like saying that the plague struck a herd of unicorns. Facebook’s valuation was never a real, existent thing (one of many reasons that punitive taxes on “wealth” don’t achieve the redistributive end they aim at). It’s all imaginary, on some level.

The reality behind the tumble in fictional valuation is that once Apple forced users to recognize how Facebook tracked, stole, and monetized their data without any recompense, about three-quarters opted out. Since Facebook’s whole model was built on an appearance of being free stacked upon a reality of theft, it’s no surprise that it would crumble once people cottoned on to the theft.

This isn’t the only thing, of course. Facebook started out as a college-only social media platform, and now it’s mostly older folks who use it. Plus, everybody hates being advertised to. And everybody hates finding out they’ve been bilked. All strikes against it.

But I have yet another source of Schadenfreude: I’ve just heard in the indie publishing world the growing realization that Facebook advertising no longer works. The ROI stinks. Didn’t I foresee this not too long ago? I predicted that the algorithmic model of advertising was going to betray indies, and massively. Well, that’s already happened.

The whole happy debacle has led prompted me to articulate a basic distinction between advertising and marketing (I’ll admit these terms are somewhat arbitrary—it’s the meaning behind them that matters).

• Advertising* is when a business intrudes into your life to get your attention, against your desire, without your consent, in the hopes of getting your interest in paying for their product. It’s how people come to want things they never even knew about before. It’s easy to dismiss this, but we only hate advertising that fails to interest us. If we’re interested, we don’t feel violated.

• Marketing* is when a business tries to make itself easily findable by people already inclined to be favorable toward their product or service. Announcing its existence actually does the potential consumer a favor. It’s more like when you search for something online and find an outfit doing exactly what you want—free-range beef, cognitive behavioral therapy, subscription delivery for toilet paper and dishwasher detergent.

It’s easy to prefer the latter to the former, because the delivery system is smoother and there’s no annoying interference. But you have to admit the former is necessary too—otherwise all innovation would fail. The problem is delivering advertising in a way that doesn’t irritate, doesn’t colonize people’s minds, doesn’t incite waste and irresponsibility in household management. Needless to say, a business can’t afford to be overly worried about those things. It expects the individuals exposed to advertising to make the judgment call themselves.

What’s so unsettling and ultimately exploitative about Facebook advertising is that it has way more information about potential users than it has a right to have—and without ever paying those users for value it’s gained from stripping their data. It might feel more accurate, along the lines of marketing, but it’s actually more exploitative than old-school advertising that forced itself on your mind unwillingly. Here I’m calling up a mental image of all the billboards on the interstate through Philadelphia. It’s amazing there aren’t more accidents, given how plentiful and distracting the billboards are.

For the kind of very niche and small-scale business I run, I can afford to restrict myself to marketing. In fact, for the kind of work I do, advertising as such would be off-putting and probably damage my business more than it would help. I have to concede the place of advertising. But I don’t want it to take over cyberspace any more than I want it to take over public space. (I’m an American but I live in Tokyo, and believe me, I’m sick to death of advertising taking over public space. I can’t believe Tokyoites put up with it.)

Facebook’s advertising model, and thus revenues, should die because of its fundamental deceit over data extraction and invasive practices of presenting ads. But advertising is not evil in itself. Let’s move toward a healthier model of advertising and marketing alike.