Ha. This is why the best lawyers in the world work for these people. Over drinks, when I brought up some of the blatant dark patterns in the ad market, someone who worked at one of the biggest companies in the world responded to me bluntly: "yeah, sure, but have we ever lost a case in court over click fraud? No, we have not."
Correct. The best liers like the best bullies are really good at assessing risk. They're honest in close when they sense they're butt is not on the line.
I would classify their "oops we reset your privacy settings accidentally again" as a lie. Granted this was a common occurrence in the 2000's, and not so much the last 15 years.
The privacy settings also did not obviously do what their wording suggested - accidental over-sharing was their goal, and the wording was carefully crafted to deceive and confuse. Is that lying? It's a technical argument, and not really relevant - they are shady AF and always have been.
Just to be a bit more clear, this was a while ago. The answer in gp was to the question: "hey, I am not an ads guy, but my friend asked me to look at his account, and he had no geo restriction set. Why did 60% of his clicks for 'barn wedding venue east tennesse' come from Malaysia? Why would so many people from there see that, and click on in it?"
The bragging wasn't about their lawyers' ability in court, it was about their lawyers' ability to draft Terms and Conditions such that they could not be caught in a lie.
