Facebook knew that ad targets were inflated, but ignored the issue

Documents released in court on Wednesday allege that Facebook executives removed an employee who had the proposal to change an advertising measure because they thought the change would affect revenue.

The documents come as part of an ongoing lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2018 by a small business owner. It’s related to Facebook’s “potential reach” statistics, which allow advertisers to see an estimated audience of how many people can do their campaign. possibly achieved during the preparation of bids and budgets. The unsealed filing was first reported by the Financial Times.

According to the lawsuit, Facebook’s senior executives had known for years that the function of ‘potential reach’ was inflated and misleading, but that they could not succeed and that they were actively trying to disguise the issues. It said Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg acknowledged in a 2017 email that she had known about ‘Potential Reach’ issues for years.

According to the suit, ‘Potential Reach’ is misleading because it describes itself as a measurement of ‘people’ when it is at best a measurement of accounts. It states that Facebook deliberately did not remove duplicate or fake accounts from the benchmark. The lawsuit also alleges that a Facebook analysis in early 2018 found that deleting duplicate accounts would cause a 10% drop in the numbers.

A product manager working on “Potential Reach” allegedly suggested changing the benchmark so that it would no longer contain the words “people” or “Reach” and would make it clearer that it was based on accounts. However, the lawsuit states that the leadership team of Facebook’s statistics rejected them ‘because the’ revenue impact ‘for Facebook would be’ significant ‘. ”

“As the potential manager of Potential Reach put it, ‘this was the revenue we should never have made, as it is based on incorrect information,’ reads the lawsuit.” Another employee said.Source