[commandar]

>The problem I see is that Facebook is banking naiveté and unsophisticated users to bolster their short term revenue.

This, exactly. It's perfectly okay that marketing is hard and return on investment is also difficult. The problem is Facebook actively pursues unsophisticated advertisers while running a platform that's actively harmful to them.

I see it analogous to SEO. Good SEO being hard is fine. There are noob mistakes you can make that will hurt your SERP placing. That's okay, too.

But if AdWords worked such that paying for AdWords actively hurt your SERP positioning, I think people would have the same kind of problem with it that they do with this.

[thattallguy]

Well said. I think your adwords example is spot on.