Facebook reported fake numbers to advertisers

I keep warning small time (ie most) FB page owners who advertise on FB to be very very careful as they are being subjected to a beefed up version of the psychological manipulation that regular users face as they, not the regular users, are the main customers.

Facebooks corporate incentive is to get you to FEEL like your getting good value out of advertising on Facebook and to get you addicted to doing it.

Not to actually deliver results.

So don't trust any metric they show you, because even if its not a total fabrication it's still presented in a way to deceive you to think its better than it is.

Always monitor your ROI and always calculate it using your truly end goal (sales, or in the case of civil society some sort engagement off Facebook that's tightly bound to you mission). Likes, shares, comments and reach should NEVER be the goal. Even if FBs interface is trying to convince you otherwise.

>Facebooks corporate incentive is to get you to FEEL like your getting good value out of advertising on Facebook and to get you addicted to doing it.

Even more reason for us to be doubtful about FB's claims that small businesses would be decimated without FB's invasive tracking.

If FB was actually completely forbidden from tracking, I'd estimate 85% of small shopify stores would die with it. The winners would be giant marketplaces like Amazon, who would be the only reliable sources left of customer acquisition.

What percentage of small shopify stores' whole business is dropshipping cheap Chinese garbage at huge mark ups?

That’s the whole business of most stores. Trying to pin that on the web hosting platform seems odd. Being on Shopify is basically zero signal as to whether the product is any good.

I don't consider the majority of drop-shippers to be economically productive businesses: they are charging a premium because their customers don't know that they can buy the exact same SKUs from AliExpress. Customers of these business often pay 2-5x mark up on items based on marketing and lack of information, because these business are effectively just pure marketing plays.

There are certainly good small businesses, both on Shopify and elsewhere, and some would be hurt to some small degree by this change. I'm simply arguing that the majority of business which would go broke without the use of the FB ad system tracking panopticon are not the sort of small business which are societally useful or that we should mourn their loss.

"Small businesses going bankrupt" typically is thought of a negative thing, but there are flavors of small businesses where it is really a net societal good.