
Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings - Cbasedlifeform
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/technology/users-abandon-facebook.html
======
cyberferret
The question is - will this be just a minor blip to Facebook and then normal
services will resume after the indignation wears off? Or will it the beginning
of the end of the social media dominance of the platform?

For me personally, I use FB primarily to keep in touch with friends, family
and old colleagues who are spread all over the world. It is purely a contact
tool, and not really used to market products of services etc., so my
attachment is purely an emotional one.

However, I must admit that this latest episode has really hammered my trust in
the platform FAR more than any other previous ones (and there have been many).
Yesterday, for the first time ever, I went through my FB settings and removed
a lot of personal information as well as stagnant apps that I had approved
YEARS ago from my permitted apps list.

I am also seriously reconsidering what I do post on there from now on, as well
as drastically reducing the number of times I post. I've also turned off
location tracking for the FB app on my phone, and am considering deleting it
altogether and just sticking to the web platform.

Will I change my mind in a months time? It's unlikely, but who knows? I like
being able to talk to family that are literally on the other side of the
world, and it is too hard for me to get them all to adopt Telegram or any
other communication tool outside of FB Messenger, so I may find myself drawn
back in.

~~~
d--b
I hope I'm wrong but I think this in no way bringing facebook down.

Keeping in touch with friends & family is too important to ditch entirely, and
having everyone switch to a different platform is very hard. That said, my
whole extended family uses whats app nowadays...

~~~
nukeop
This is a false dichotomy, Facebook is in no way required or even useful to
keep in touch with anyone.

~~~
bogomipz
Indeed, people kept in touch with friends and family just fine before
Facebook.

And people who don't use it now also manage to keep in touch with people they
care about just fine.

~~~
virgilp
This says nothing. People shopped online before Amazon; watched movies before
Netflix, and used smartphones before Apple started making them

~~~
jimmy1
This says a lot.

I miss the movies sometimes (just wish they were a bit cheaper) and binge
watching is horrible for your health (not just physically but mentally as well
-- teaches you how to be an addict).

Amazon, while convenient, has destroyed an entire economic subsystem in it's
wake and destroyed a way of life that was more communal and social to one that
is more isolated and reclusive.

Finally, people more and more these days are trying to find ways to detach
from their smartphones (I think your comment wrongly assumes Apple "created"
the smartphone -- they did not)

------
wpasc
First, I think what happened with Facebook/Cambridge Analytica is appalling.
With that said, I think this article is silly and emblematic of poor
technology coverage in the media.

I think it would be awesome if users really did delete their facebook accounts
if they thought these actions crossed some line. But the article cites ~50,000
#deletefacebook mentions. Come on, 50k hashtag shares is evidence of "Users
Abandon..."? it then proceeds to document case studies of people leaving. The
article title would imply that users truly did see this action as a last straw
and are leaving in droves, and it seems that is the narrative that the writer
wanted to write about.

Is that truly happening though? I'd love to see the data, but I don't think
they will delete their accounts. Why would the writer elect to write an
article fitting a narrative for which there is little data? Surely, the more
interesting article would be "Are users deleting their accounts? Why not?"
That I would read and find interesting.

~~~
ashelmire
Who do you think would give us that data? Facebook? Doubtful.

I think it's reasonable to assume that if 50k people tweeted about it, a far
larger number probably took action (active tweeters are just a small subset of
the population) or are at least thinking about reducing usage or deleting.

Deleting facebook has been a topic of conversation in my circle for months
since I did it ~4 months ago or so. It's definitely on people's radar as far
as other media seems to indicate (we've had anti-facebook threads daily for
months on HN), and my friends (mostly tech people and very active facebook
users) have almost all reduced their usage significantly.

~~~
pizza234
> I think it's reasonable to assume that if 50k people tweeted about it, a far
> larger number probably took action

I don't really think it's reasonable to make any extrapolation, as there are
also opposite arguments.

A brief search on the hashtag shows that most of it's typical "social stuff"
\- sarcastic remarks, jokes, pictures etc.

Also, I also wouldn't take what social users says as action. There's always
been the meme of "I'M GOING TO LEAVE FACEBOOK...!!!", yet Facebook kept
growing. Rather, I'd assume it's very typical rage venting.

~~~
ballenf
Some recent hard data is the analysis of the #deleteUber campaign and market
share in NYC of rideshare services. The data showed a dip that was swallowed
(erased) by broad, gradual shifts within a few months. It was a recent front
page HN story, but don't remember the title. I think it will take no more than
a few million in a nationwide ad campaign running on TV to more than erase any
#deleteFB campaign. That is, these campaigns cost the targets $$, but don't
really fundamentally alter their trajectory (regulation could be a different
story entirely).

The other thing in FB's favor here is how incredibly difficult it is for an
average user to actually delete, vs. suspend, their FB account. I helped a
non-techie friend with it recently and it took about 45 minutes. It wouldn't
accept the user's password for deletion even though it worked to login. After
2-3 password changes, it finally worked.

(As most here know the actual account deletion page is hidden behind a barely
visible link in ... a locked filing cabinet in the basement, guarded by a
venomous snake...)

------
oh-kumudo
CA scandal is just a final push. I kinda stopped using FB like half a year
ago, for that I don't really know what I could get from this platform. Viral
videos, nope. Sensationalized editorial with an angry face attached below,
nope. Friends having party like no tomorrow, fine. But there are so many of
them, and they are kinda repetitive.

Since it is public and real name social network, I have to be extra careful
sharing anything that might be offensive to any member of my 'friends'. This
kind of self-censorship is pretty stressful, I end up just shutting up.

Novelty and fun is gone from this platform for me.

~~~
osrec
That's how it starts. The clever folk quit first (they also start first) as
they can clearly identify with their intrinsic dislike of the platform. The
less clever take a little while longer to realise how much they're hating it
too, often getting suckered by cheap tricks used by the platform to keep them
hooked. They will figure it out soon enough though! I think I'll probably
start shorting some Facebook stock in the next couple of weeks. The platform
is nearly worthless now that popular prejudice has started to turn against it.

~~~
abakker
You might have missed the short opportunity. Better go long on whatever you
think might pick up the slack. I don’t think the void that Facebook leaves
will be left unfilled.

~~~
aws_ls
If the replacement is a federated social network, then there may be 2/3 large
competing players for the interfacing part.

My dream is a cryptocurrency based social network, so that those running p2p
nodes can also get paid. Also the end clients can compete with each other for
the interface part - dumb/some-algo based (Facebook can also be one of the
clients ;-))

~~~
abakker
Proof of Stake, then? Blockchain pays you in coins that are earned randomly by
hosting a node? The node would need to then be part of a big distributed file
system since any even halfway decent social network would be way too large to
host at home. I don't mind the idea, but where does the value of the coin come
from? do you have to buy one to join? do you need to rent a coin to have
access to the account? Social networks are subscriptions (or they should be,
since the costs of hosting are recurrent), so what would the economic model be
in "mining" and hosting one? What would give the token a value?

------
PeterStuer
I personally stopped using Facebook as an experiment in September of last
year. The idea was to go 1 month without the social network. After the month
was over, I never went back.

This wasn't about the data sharing. I was aware of this all along. I also
didn't delete my account. All data 'breached' has been sucked out long ago. It
was just that I realized Facebook made me feel worse. I was constantly engaged
with championing causes I feel passionate about. However, I did realize that
for all my activity I achieved fairly little, and that the daily 'triggers'
and 'write-offs' didn't function as a relieve, but rather as a self-
reinforcing of a feeling of perpetual anger and discomfort.

I do miss some of the social interactions with friends and acquaintances with
whom FB was the only link left. I kept Messenger and occasionally use that
still to communicate more directly.

I don't think I will go back to FB (or similar social networks), even if they
would solve the 'privacy' issues. I currently feel this type of 'long
distance/low threshold' social paradigm is more harmful than beneficial to our
psychological makeup.

------
shiado
I have a bad feeling that like the Snowden revelations and Occupy Wall Street
these findings will actually embolden companies like Facebook and Cambridge
Analytica the same way the NSA and Wall Street banks were likely emboldened
because it will once again prove that after a short outburst of moral outrage
people will go back to being complacent without substantive change being
enacted. They will get away with it and double down on the activity because
they know that nothing will be done.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
In and of itself that's a signal that for some reason things like this don't
seem to make the general public change their behavior en masse?

I'd love to see some kind of reporting/study on why _on average_ the general
public does not respond to events you mention like Snowden/Manning/OWS/Bank
Bailout and others. I mean at one point in time social movements in the US got
things done like Temperance Movement, Womens Voting Rights, Civil Rights
Movement etc...

Maybe there is a larger narrative here that I'm missing, like each of these
things are part of the anti-corporate movement or something.

~~~
chatmasta
Because people are too busy trying to survive until their next paycheck.
Nobody has time to waste thinking about some vague overreach by a government
agency.

~~~
vog
While I agree in general, I don't buy this argument with regard to Facebook.

People aren't "too busy" to waste a lot of time on Facebook. If anything,
tight time constraints would make people not use Facebook in the first place.

------
sydli
A point that is brought up occasionally, but probably not enough: Deleting
Facebook really isn't possible for a nontrivial percentage of the world
population, since Facebook _is_ the internet in some places. Their monopoly
over internet infrastructure in some developing countries is such that people
can't afford non-Facebook internet packages, and seems to disincentivize
actual low-cost internet infrastructure from being built out.

~~~
tuna-piano
Absolutely correct. I've met people in Asia (Myanmar and Nepal) who have just
accessed the internet for the first time in the past 12-24 months (through
their Android smartphones). But they don't know the true internet - they only
know the internet through the Facebook app. They use it like we use Google and
web browsers.

To them, Facebook is the internet. They don't have email accounts. They don't
use the browser. They don't search the web. I met someone in a small town who
never even used the maps feature. I tried to think of what value the true
internet might bring them, but when I suggested that "you can search for news
and read other things", the response was that they already did that with the
Facebook App.

One guy handed me his phone, so I could add myself as a friend on his
Facebook. While I started typing my name, I noticed his search history... and
to him, Facebook was even a substitute for what people in the USA might use
Incognito mode for!

I would call Facebook their internet portal, but it's not really a portal to
anything - Facebook is just the entire internet to them.

Buzzfeed (yes, Buzzfeed) did an excellent writeup of Myanmar, that mirrors
what I saw there: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-
tru...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-tru..).

“Nobody asks, they don’t care about the email,” he said, explaining that most
don’t know that creating an email address is free, and easy. “No one is using
that. They have Facebook.”

~~~
fwgwgwgch
> buzz feed

Since you are as surprised as I was a month back, I've looked further and
concluded that buzz feed actually funds very high quality journalism (yes yes
shocking I know) and presents facts from both sides. They do it using the
money generated from click baits. I'd even make what will sound like a
hyperbole , if you are the sort that wants truth on both sides of political
spectrum and not just an echo chamber , go to buzz feed, and not NY TIMES or
wapo.

~~~
gowld
> both sides.

There are more than 2 sides to a story.

------
sumoboy
If people knew the amount of info collected and sold they would abandon
everything. Even 7 months before your born, someone has a profile on you. What
CA did leveraging data for targeting is just the beginning, ML applied to data
in the future will make what CA did look like amateur hour.

Like others have said with elections, this all started long ago with social,
CA just happened to do it better this time. Even without them, sophisticated
targeting can still be developed regardless, so it's just a matter of money
and audience reach.

~~~
confounded
> _..CA just happened to do it better this time. Even without them,
> sophisticated targeting can still be developed regardless..._

I think the thing to take away from all this is that _people don’t like it_.

Our societies have democratic principles; governments can (and have a duty to)
prevent sophisticated targeting from non-consensual data collection and if
it’s not what people want.

You can make an argument that it is what people _really_ want because they’re
too desperate, ignorant or subjugated to consider anything else, so the serfs
must be farmed.

Let’s find out!

~~~
ChicagoBoy11
Not so sure. Remember when the Newsfeed came out? The NYT similarly thought
people really did not like it. Facebook certainly didn't get rid of it and we
certainly stopped caring.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/fashion/10FACE.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/fashion/10FACE.html)

------
eric_b
I've had a dormant FB account for years. I don't like the site and I never add
content. I believe that social media has become a net detractor to quality-of-
life for many (most?) humans who use it. I think Mark Zuckerberg is either
incredibly naive, or a sleaze bag, but in either case should suffer some
consequences from this.

That said, I probably won't delete my account. It remains the only way many of
my friends plan events. It exists, for me, solely so I can be invited to
things. I imagine there are many others like me. Like it or not, I suspect
this is a blip for FB.

~~~
rndmind
I am sure that MZ is the latter. F*book is a farce. You are the problem. Be
the change you want to see. Reach out to people other ways for events. FFS,
you are connected 24x7 to the internet, not facebook exclusively, never in the
history of humanity have we had this level of instantaneous hyperconnection,
that excuse is a lie.

~~~
visarga
> Reach out to people other ways for events.

It's the other way around, he's being reached by other people through FB. What
good would it do to make an account where his friends are not?

~~~
gkya
I would not call people friends if they can't take the little inconvenience to
text me to invite me somewhere if I don't use Facebook.

~~~
khafra
As a long-time human, who's worked with a lot of humans, I'd advise you not to
underestimate the power of trivial inconveniences.

Rational, perfectly selfish agents in an environment of frictionless
transactions might still invite me to events if I were off their social media
platform. Humans will not.

------
rsuelzer
I am getting a bit annoyed by how shocked people on here are about this. The
friends end point in the graph API was hardly a secret. It is an open API.
There was no way for Facebook to enforce that data collected from authorized
apps wasn't being saved. It's part of the reason the friends API was put under
tighter restrictions a few years ago.

~~~
qwerty456127
> I am getting a bit annoyed by how shocked people on here are about this.

Exactly. Didn't people know all the proprietary social networks are
spyware+adware? That's the way they earn money. BTW Ghostery says it knows 92
trackers in the social media category.

~~~
coatmatter
I tried Ghostery twice and didn't understand it - sites seemed to keep
breaking so I go with an alternative method (uBlock Origin + DuckDuckGo
extension, and Brave on mobile). Based on this experience, Ghostery is not
something I would simply throw on "most people's" computer. I would not for a
single moment think that most people (as you implied) understand social
networks.

I think we become a part of the problem if we simply assume all users are just
like us and know all about the negatives of tech. Facebook evidently didn't
anticipate/address it early enough despite all that talent - did they really
want this Cambridge Analytica situation to happen? What are we doing to fix
this?

~~~
qwerty456127
I've only mentioned Ghostery to show there are dozens other social networks
known spying on you. Do you happen to know one that doesn't?

~~~
coatmatter
Ah fair enough; I think DuckDuckGo's extension does a similar thing with
regards to trackers and appears to be easier to use (for me). As for a social
network that doesn't spy like the current big ones? I'd go with IRC.

I know people have proposed alternatives like Mastodon or Diaspora*, but I
don't think they're good alternatives either compared to gradually giving them
up to learn old offline alternatives:
[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/jobs/quit-social-
media...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/jobs/quit-social-media-your-
career-may-depend-on-it.html)

As for Steemit, I think this "feature" is most absurd. I hope it never takes
off:

[https://steemit.com/faq.html#Can_I_delete_or_deactivate_my_a...](https://steemit.com/faq.html#Can_I_delete_or_deactivate_my_account)

> "Can I delete or deactivate my account?"

> "Accounts can not be deactivated or deleted. The account along with all of
> its activity is permanently stored in the blockchain."

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
What's interesting is that of the 5 people the article profiled, only 1 seems
likely to have voted for Trump. Based on location and occupation, I would
guess the others were not Trump voters.

My impression of this whole scandal, is that where you are on the political
spectrum affects how you see it. I think a lot of the anger at Facebook is not
because of what they did, but what they people see as the consequence from it,
mainly the election of Donald Trump.

Facebook cannot afford to alienate both halves of the partisan divide at the
same time. There is a substantial portion of the Left that at least partially
blames Facebook for Donald Trump's election. Given that, I wonder if in the
near future they will try to position themselves as a more conservative
friendly company than the other Silicon Valley tech players.

~~~
rsuelzer
I suspect the friends API feature was actually created for the Obama 2012
campaign. I know they used it very heavily in their phone banking app online
in 2012. They were also collecting this data.

------
kercker
"The hashtag #DeleteFacebook appeared more than 10,000 times on Twitter within
a two-hour period on Wednesday, according to the analytics service
ExportTweet. On Tuesday, it was mentioned 40,398 times, according to the
analytics service Digimind."

Is this really such a big deal for Facebook?

Suppose 50000 persons delete their Facebook everyday, then it will just lose
1,825,0000 users one year, not counting new users joining Facebook every year.
And Facebook has 2 billion users.

Edit: The number lost in one year is 1,825,0000, not 1,825,000.

~~~
chillwaves
> And Facebook has 2 billion users.

I simply do not believe 1/3 of the planet is on Facebook.

I am not. Half of the planet does not have access to clean drinking water, I
do not believe they are on Facebook either.

~~~
ams6110
A good number of those two billion user accounts are not real people. They are
either additional alternate identities a person had created, or out-and-out
fiction.

~~~
chillwaves
So why even tout the figure? It's obviously inflated. I would be surprised is
if it is 500M actual users.

What % of American voters users Facebook? I would be surprised to see over
80%. Nothing has adoption rates that high.

------
diego_moita
This will fade away. Facebook will thrive. (Disclaimer: I closed my FB account
4 years ago).

The majority of people behave by classical Pavlovian conditioning: they'll get
addicted for what gives them immediate pleasure even if it brings them pain in
the long run. That's why we have so much obesity, tobacco, cocaine and
opioids. This is why FB will keep thriving.

~~~
coatmatter
Supposing you're right, what is Facebook so good at that MySpace couldn't
manage to do? What really is their "moat" that no one else can touch?

Interesting that you mention obesity, tobacco, cocaine and opiods because not
all of those problems are inevitable for all societies. Personally, I think
the two most misused technologies from last century is the car (invented late
19th century, but mostly innovated on in the 20th), and television. We've been
here before, and the problems can be fixed so long as the answer isn't "more
technology".

As for cigarettes, Australia has led the world in curbing smoking rates
through a number of "socialist" measures. I don't know enough about the other
two but I don't think it's as bad as in America.

~~~
IshKebab
Now it is network effects. But when it first started it became popular
because:

a) MySpace wasn't actually that popular (was your mum on it for example?) so
there weren't many network effects.

b) It looked clean, unlike the eye-stabbing experience of MySpace

c) It was more secure than MySpace because only people from your university
could see your profile.

Things are different now so you're never going to have success with that
strategy (although the university-based access thing could potentially work
again).

I think what will kill Facebook now is the sheer volume of low quality content
on it - not just adverts but "Dave tagged you in this meme", and "Jen shared
this gif of a cute dog" and "Remember what you were doing one year ago
today!".

It's just, not very pleasant. You can tame it by using an ad blocker and
unsubscribing from most of your friends... but even then there are some post
types you can only "See less of" (yeah right), and it's .. just... crap.

This privacy thing is bullshit. It was an obvious problem in 2012 and nobody
quit over it then. They removed the API in 2015. Why would people quit now?

~~~
coatmatter
I agree with a lot of what you said, however:

a) Kids are finding they don't want to join what their parents are on. Heck, I
don't want to stay on what parents (whom I knew from before they were parents)
are on.

b) Elon Musk just said: "Looks lame anyway" \- don't get "clean" and not-lame
mixed up - most of Facebook _does_ look lame in 2018 once people see past the
window dressing; I actually think nearly every single company/personal page
out there is a potential liability, often with not that much to gain (depends
on the social media manager employed of course).

c) And university people are realising that Eternal September has arrived.

I have one simple answer to your last line (reflecting from my personal
experience of being on Facebook for longer than I should have): For me, it was
the straw that broke the camel's back.

------
maskedinvader
Facebook did report the first decline in monthly active users (MAU), is this
the turning point [1]? Ive always wondered if facebook would die a quick death
or a slow crawl. Wonder who gains from this ? twitter resurgance ? dont think
so, snap ? not so sure, time for google to give another go to push google+?

1\. [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-north-america-
daus-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-north-america-daus-drop-
for-first-time.html)

~~~
gordon_freeman
Maybe resurgence of old school face to face in person talk or if not that
extreme then a phone call or an email?

~~~
agumonkey
Lets have a #wirelesslessday

------
mark_l_watson
I don’t care much about what platforms other people use. My preference is
paying for services. While I use DuckDuckGo, I am an enthusiastic Google
customer for GCP, Google Play books/movies/tv shows, premium music with no ads
YouTube.

I would like to use Twitter more, but I don’t like the ads. I would gladly pay
$50/year for ad free Twitter. I like Gnu Social, but not enough like-minded
people to follow.

I spend 20 minutes a month in FaceBook, but jump through hoops not to be
tracked.

~~~
xexers
Are you sure those companies aren't still selling your data? Especially in
your example of youtube premium... I'd imagine youtube is selling the data
about which videos you liked, watched, etc. The premium part may just be that
you don't see any ads

~~~
pythonaut_16
I don't think Google "sells" any data at all. They use data they have to sell
advertising space, and in the case of Youtube I'm sure they use it to inform
different platform decisions, but it doesn't ever leave Google.

Their huge amount of data is their strongest competitive advantage.

------
TimJRobinson
I've started using Scuttlebutt recently (A decentralized social network, setup
guide at [https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/](https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/)) and it's
surprisingly good.

It's mostly geeks on there, and it'll still be a few years before my Mum can
use it, but that's the way I like it. Facebook is mostly just a photo feed of
what I'm up to for my family now.

~~~
codingdave
That is exactly my fear - that people will use this as an opportunity to try
to jump in and literally become the next Facebook. Not that I am opposed to a
replacement... I even put together a design myself to avoid the problems we've
learned in the last 10 years. But I'm not building it -- because unless it is
a service that is paid, open-source, and easy enough for Grandma to use, the
realities of operating such a beast are going to drive it off-course.

~~~
lifty
Scuttlebutt is open source and peer to peer, but not paid, because there is no
one to pay. I recently joined, although I knew about it for a long time, and I
was pleasantly surprised on how well it works. The communities have a very
nice feel as well, like IRC had in the 90s.

------
agentofoblivion
If you’re worried about privacy, there’s an alternative strategy to removing
data/tracking, and that’s obscuring your data by burying it in the noise of
fake data. I’ve installed plugins that automatically issue searches, crawl
pages, and click on ads. Clicking on irrelevant ads destroys the value of ads
themselves. This pleases me.

~~~
mancerayder
Any specific browser plugin recommendations?

I use Firefox with uBlock and a few others, but Google has me by my mobile
device.

~~~
fenwick67
I have AdNauseum installed. I can't tell you whether it actually throws them
off or not, but I agree with the post above - "this pleases me".

The best thing I've found for social media ads is to manually click on ads
that are way off-base and reply to the posts. Now I have lots of ads for
pedialyte and vinyl releases of video game soundtracks - which I have no use
for.

------
lu11
I deleted my Facebook in 2012 because I don't like it. However, scraping user
profiles is a privacy problem? What about archive.org that will scrape your
personal website so you are never able to get rid of your previous version?

~~~
gnode
You can prevent crawling (and retroactively remove your site content from the
Internet Archive) using robots.txt, with the ia_archiver user agent:

[https://www.fightcyberstalking.org/how-to-block-your-
website...](https://www.fightcyberstalking.org/how-to-block-your-website-from-
the-wayback-machine/)

~~~
lu11
You can. That doesn't change the fact that they did not ask your permission to
scrape your personal data from your personal website. They are many other
sites that will do the same. Facebook profile seems to be safer option than
personal website if you look at it from the angle of data privacy. You can't
walk down the street wearing invisibility cloak in real life. Likewise, you
can't have a rich digital life without leaving some of your data here and
there. Maybe scraping personal data should be illegal.

------
Khaine
Good. It is about time people wake up to facebook and Zuckerberg's lack of
belief in privacy[1][2].

I remember when this chart[3] first made the rounds. If this didn't convince
people that facebook is evil. I don't know what will

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-
privacy)

[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-ceo-mark-
zuckerberg...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-
statements-on-privacy-2003-2018.html)

[3] [http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/](http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-
privacy/)

------
joering2
It was nice to "see" Zuckerberg on CNN today, given he was at his office
reading from the script (you can see the eye movement) and interviewer was
somewhere else in a greenbox room.

Unless CNN went SO amateurish that you only show a back head of interviewer
and you never show him with the journalist together!

------
mr_spothawk
I think it's worth stating: if you're not deleting your friend connections,
you're not leaving.

I say that because your friends retain their friend count, and that's a big
part of FB-identity. Also, you can always pick it back up when "they" fix the
problem (which isn't fixable).

I made my act public, left a message with contact info as my last message, and
then deleted _all_ my "friends" (which was, honestly, a pretty nice reminder
of folks I hadn't spoken with in a while). Finally, I bcc'd them on an email
so I could stay in touch. I can always reply-all that email if I need to spam
them with news/info/etc...

it's not a perfect solution, but it's the best I could come up with on my own,
and I'm advising my friends to do the same.

~~~
abhishekjha
I have an account which I use just to talk or argue with anybody on the
facebook, mostly in news comment sections. No photo, no apps, no friends. Just
a profile name. I wonder if anything can still get attached to me.

~~~
mr_spothawk
if you stay logged in, you are serving them your browsing history in indirect
ways.

------
adjkant
If you want to cripple Facebook but still get the advantages of using it as a
contact book / for events and groups, just block the news feed.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-
eradicat...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-
for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg)

Yes, I know they make money other ways. But if no one uses the news feed,
their ad revenue will take a noticeable hit. Most of the negatives come with
the endless feed/scroll in the first place. I still spend time on Facebook,
but only when I want to. No endless scroll, and I don't miss a thing when it
comes to groups/events/messaging.

~~~
r00fus
But you're forgetting the tracking pixel and cookies used in many many
sites...

Plus then privacy loss is not just for you but the shadows you cast (shadow
profiles for those who never logged in based on relationships and inferences
from live users)

------
patrickdavey
Anyone on here is probably one of the tech influencers for their family group.
I've just started the work of trying to get people to move onto using Signal.
I really really like the ethos of the organisation. I don't see how there's
any downside (other than the time of getting people to switch).

Wouldn't it be great if, as a start, everyone moved to a secure not-going-to-
sell-your-data organisation for instant messaging.

Then, if Whisper Systems could just bring out some magic Facebook alternative,
well, that would be just amazing.

We should care about this stuff, we should try to influence our friends and
family.

~~~
alkonaut
> I've just started the work of trying to get people to move onto using
> Signal.

The first question my friends would ask is "I tried signal but I couldn't see
a way of posting photos and getting likes...or planning an event. It doesn't
look like facebook at all, just a chat app!

Facebook the platform is so extremely large and so useful to so many. Most
people (including me!) would struggle to set up a photo album from my vacation
that my friends and family can see and comment on, but other people can not.

Any serios attempt at displacing facebook needs to solve ALL of the things
facebook solves. And unfortunately while solving them separately (one chat
app, one photo app, one calendar app...) is much better for integrity - it's
almost useless from a usability standpoint to have to manage multiple social
graphs.

~~~
patrickdavey
I wrote my initial comment too quickly. I specifically think that moving
people to use signal instead of WhatsApp is a relatively straightforward drop
in. I totally agree that signal is not a replacement for Facebook.

------
baki
Users still abandoning Facebook for a while, but not really for "Cambridge
Analytica Findings", but because of social media censorship for conservative,
libertarian and for (classical) liberal views...

------
dleslie
Still looking for an alternative self-updating Rolodex.

~~~
owly
There’s still LinkedIn or Twitter if you must.

~~~
blhack
Twitter is quite frankly worse. And I don't know if I am personally acquainted
with even a single person who actively uses LinkedIn. I wonder if the latter
is an SV thing?

~~~
perl4ever
I don't think LinkedIn use is limited to SV, but the qualifier "actively"
makes it unclear what you are trying to say. What is "active" in this context?

~~~
blhack
A median time between updates of less than 2 months over a 5 year period.

------
te_chris
Key point to remember: A user in the developed world is MUCH more valuable to
FB, so even if only westerners quit, each westerner is worth up to 35x what
someone from the developed world is worth, in terms of ad income.

They may have '2 billion' users, but they're super vulnerable to an exodus of
even 5% of them in terms of income, if they're from the right regions.

(This is based on my hazy recollection of stats which had a US FB user worth
$35USD to FB in income, where someone from the developed world drew in <$1USD)

------
firloop
I wonder how many more would abandon Facebook after seeing the targeting
options in the Ads creator.

~~~
matte_black
Bizarre specific options like “single black female addicted to weed?”

~~~
cmac2992
Ads manager targeting is a funny beast. Even FB doesn't really know the
available targeting buckets. A lot of the time, the algorithms just create the
targeting buckets.

------
bluetwo
How many people here would scale back their Facebook use to one day a week,
say Facebook Friday?

~~~
mr_spothawk
scaled back to zero already.

edit to add... this is like some sort of Russian roulette. ignoring the
Russian connection pun, that's still a funny joke.

~~~
bluetwo
Which is great.

It seems to me that zuckerburg cares about ad revenue, which means he needs
eyeballs and needs to keep them for as long as possible. And, he has proven to
care very little about privacy. Therefore, for those who can't shake the habit
100%, cutting back to one day a week is a good way to get the connections you
need while slicing into the attention getting ad revenue.

------
forapurpose
If you want this to happen, users need an alternative. I'm not sure it matters
to them if the alternative truly protects their confidentiality or if they
will understand whether it does or not. I know there are alternatives out
there, is there one that is user-friendly, confidential, and secure, and that
users can switch to right now?

It reminds me to remind myself: A project that seemed quixotic a month ago
suddenly has potential and value. You need to start developing such things
when the market is in the 'quixotic' stage in order to have them ready when
the world suddenly understands. Congratulations to those who started months or
years ago.

------
knodi
I hope many many ditch Facebook, a message must be sent. I personally made my
last facebook comment "Das vidanya facebook" and disabled my account and
deleted facebook & messenger apps.

------
lowglow
I asked a friend if they would pay $1/mo for a facebook alternative, and they
said no -- they would just start using instagram. When I explained facebook
owned instagram, they still didn't think $1/mo would be worth it, citing:

"It's just another thing I have to pay per month: Netflix, Spotify, etc."

People have mental budgets, and maybe their psychological good will in
balancing those budgets get drained over time for things like recurring
payments that aren't on a bigger scale ($100+) and aren't 100% necessary like
internet.

~~~
mr_spothawk
this is already a grey comment for me, but I think your message is relevant.

People need "friends" and they get them where they can. As a society, we
deserve and owe our selves better than this. There are FOSS alternatives which
are nearly as good. This is as fine a time as any to turn up the pressure on
our friends, and to work for solutions that don't/can't sell us out
(intentionally, or accidentally).

~~~
tunesmith
What are the alternatives again? So far I'm hearing mastodon (more
twitterish), riot/matrix (more slackish), diaspora, email, and starting a
blog.

~~~
mxuribe
There are also gnu social, hubzilla, friendica, movim, pleroma, postactiv,
etc. And, oh by the way, before you think these different alternatives don't
interact...well, they do actually can and do interact with each other...some
of the interactions are not 100%. As an example, gnu social, pleroma,
postactiv all interact seamlessly 100% with one another...and they all
interact a bunch with mastodon, though a little less than 100%. But still
there is interactivity, just like emails that can easily cross different
systems. And, you can join a server for any of the above for free! The only
exception would be if YOU choose to manage your own server - which entails
server monthly fees, and your administration time...Otherwise, if you only
wish to be a user on someone else's server, that's free. So, you see, you
really don't need facebook (or twitter or instagram or snapchat, etc.).

------
fredley
I haven't deleted mine, but I will the moment GDPR kicks in, and I have a
legal right to expect that my data will be completely removed from their
systems, which is not the case now.

------
tanu057
Today I switched off the location tracking for Facebook on my Phone. I never
enter the correct birthday on Facebook. Unfortunately we cann't trust any of
the tech companies.There are a lot of people working and keeping track of
security for now seems impossible. Anyone in the company can put in code with
a security hole. May be AI in future can help in making systems secure. For
now, none of the apps is secure. There are companies that can unlock any
iphone. Would you leave apple for that?

~~~
pmlnr
Disable/uninstall FB from your phone completely and use
[https://mbasic.facebook.com](https://mbasic.facebook.com) in the browser
instead.

------
wheresvic1
Users leaving the platform is definitely a dent in Facebook's image.

However, I'm pretty sure that at the end of the day if companies start
withdrawing their funding for Facebook ads, the platform's shine will drop
sharply.

So far apart from Mozilla, there really hasn't been any comment from the
corporate side. I suppose it's a bit of the chicken and the egg problem - Fb
has a lot of data so companies want targeted advertising and companies paying
for it leads Fb to collect data.

------
readhn
I think it would be fun if consumers of digital information did perform en
masse exodus from Facebook after an event like this.

It may serve as an example for other service providers that there is a risk of
losing their customers base if they screw up too.

As of today google, twitter, fb, apple really have carte blanche from
consumers since they know most consumers are not going to lift a finger and
the whole thing will be forgotten in a week due to short attention span of
most consumers.

------
whyenot
I already deleted my FB account once, maybe 6-7 years ago (not suspended,
deleted). It was a mistake. I lost contact with a lot of people, including my
relatives in Europe and old friends from grad school. Once I rejoined FB, it
took a long time to re-build my friends list. FB has a lot of flaws and I
don't use very much or share very much on it, but for staying in contact with
people... I can't think of anything better, unfortunately.

~~~
v_lisivka
And then FB bans you and your friends for 30 days in random order. Users
started to post reports about who is banned today, for how long, and where to
find their backup account (usually, on Telegram).

------
sigi45
Its time to regulate this. Make facebook and all other social media platforms
to open up connectivity to other platforms.

It can't be, that one company has so much power.

------
hvass
This article will have merit if it was posted after their next earnings call
and there was a percentage decline in users. This is all anecdotal and
speculation. Habits are the hardest thing to break. And 50,000 people, even if
US-only, are a rounding error for their MAU/DAUs. C'mon, NYT.

------
danjoc
Manufactured outrage. Nobody is leaving Facebook. They're too vain. Even Brian
Acton was saying #DeleteFacebook from his Facebook.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633630)

------
alokitr
I give all these fb junkies (yes that's what they are, they just don't know
it, just like smokers used to) about 5 days. Then the withdrawal symptoms will
kick in and they 'll give in. Facebook knows what it is doing.

------
zerostar07
Would be funny to track how many of them will post to facebook about it. And
then how many will relapse a month later. And then how many of them will come
back to post about how their 1 week without facebook went.

------
shaki-dora
To be honest: I’m not willing to delete my account just now. I fear people
will just forget inviting me to events if I’m not in the list of friends.

But I will stop posting, liking, and commenting. Let’s slowly starve the
monster.

~~~
nukeop
You are still forcing others to use it through network effects. Either let it
go completely, or don't pretend you're fighting it. We need more people to
draw a line in the sand and ditch this oppressive system completely. Facebook
wants you to be afraid of living without it.

------
AnatMl2
Does anyone know if there's a way to delete the account completely? I mean, I
tried deactivating it months ago, but knowing that the profile is still out
there bothers me a lot.

~~~
tjwds
Allegedly there's a form to specifically request that they remove your data:
[https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=faq_co...](https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=faq_content)

~~~
AnatMl2
Thank you, I might try it out!

------
thinkMOAR
If only all the sites stopped embedding the social media buttons, i don't mind
people on Facebook, twitter, instagram, etc etc, i do mind their tracking
buttons everywhere.

------
jdlyga
I truly believe only a vocal minority are actually deleting their Facebook. I
think a majority will simply cut back on their Facebook and social media use.

------
locusm
App access to private data should have an expiry date. Looking at app access
and seeing apps you tried for a day 5 years ago shouldn't be the default.

------
sv12l
I think this is just another Uber-fiasco in the making, there were lot
#deleteuber campaigns, but they came out unscathed, I believe.

------
donmb
Small hype. In 1 month its business as usual.

~~~
acorkery
The report of my death was an exaggeration.

------
mirimir
OK, but is Facebook _really_ that much worse than other mainstream social
media? Or at least, now, not four years ago.

------
math0ne
Unfortunately if I want to stay in contact with my family I have to use
facebook. Pretty effective lockin.

------
post_break
Used tools to delete all of my facebook and twitter content. I'm free from it.
Feels great.

------
intrasight
I've been passively looking for a good FB alternative for a couple years. And
I mean a web site not an app (don't get why anyone would use social media
apps). Perhaps I need to more actively look. But I figured some on this thread
have done some research. With a good alternative, I think I could get enough
of my friends to convert.

------
cvaidya1986
The headline is quite ambiguous to say the least.

------
el_cid
_puts tinfoil hat on_ There's an avalanche of articles from the news corp
lately regarding Facebook. Is this a battle of the titans? _puts tinfoil hat
down_

------
dingo_bat
None of the everyday fb users even know about this. They're just using fb like
normal. Only those who were already anit-fb are creating hype.

~~~
kccqzy
That's the purpose of news media like The New York Times. At first the already
anti-fb people delete their Facebook accounts and create hype, the media
reports it (a newspaper in this case), and more ordinary users get to know the
trend and would consider doing the same.

~~~
visarga
> the media reports it (a newspaper in this case), and more ordinary users get
> to know the trend and would consider doing the same

If FB allows these reports to be shown in their feeds. /s

------
danschumann
Hmmm. I'd get off facebook but then my friends would think I unfriended them.

~~~
owly
It’s SO unnecessary. Not having it forces you to engage directly with people
you truly like. You’ll have more time for them as a bonus.

~~~
excitom
Not a big Facebook fan here, but I do use it to keep track of and keep in
touch with old friends and distant family.

That said, I've never clicked an add nor engaged with some silly quiz.

------
MindTooth
Good.

------
erikb
There were still people on Facebook? Hard to believe.

I think people fleeing from Whatsapp or Instagram would be real news.

