Facebook To Be Sued Over Inaccurate Video Viewing Figures
Mike Sanders / 6 years ago
Facebook To Be Sued Over Inaccurate Video Viewing Figures
Since the start of the year, it has certainly felt like Facebook has constantly been spinning more plates than they can handle. As such, it’s hardly a surprise that as more and more start to wobbly, some are already falling off! Between electoral tampering and data scandals, it’s not been a good year for the social media site and fresh revelations suggest that the company is set to face more legal action.
In a report via the BBC, fresh legal action has been taken against Facebook for what is felt to have been a deliberate misrepresentation of video viewing figures on the website to advertising partners.
Advertising Figures!
Facebook, as many online websites, is almost totally run based off of advertising revenue. The more prestige your location, the more you can charge for it and nothing says prestige like exceptionally strong figures. In the legal action, however, the social media site has been accused of deliberately over-estimating (or inflating) figures. This was done to suggest that video advertisements on the website were far more effective than the reality.
What Has Facebook Said?
Facebook has, in a way, admitted that this was the case. In 2016, the social media site released a statement to their advertising partners. In it, they said that the figures for the previous 2 years were faulty due to an error. The main issue with the error was that Facebook counted a video as viewed regardless of the amount that was played. In a nutshell, a video which played even for less than 3 seconds was counted in the figures.
The crux of the lawsuit is that it is believed that evidence exists to prove Facebook knew of the issue in 2015. They did, however, allegedly do nothing to inform advertisers.
Facebook has said: “This lawsuit is without merit and we’ve filed a motion to dismiss these claims of fraud. Suggestions that we in any way tried to hide this issue from our partners are false.”
Regardless of if this is true or not. It will undoubtedly raise more concerns over Mark Zuckerberg’s continued leadership of the company.
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
