
Ask HN: What will be the tipping point for Facebook? - camillomiller
I think it’s clear now that Facebook is a horrible company that operates with machiavellian efficiency, lacks any human empathy, and has applied deplorable methods to deflect fundamental problems of the platform instead of actually fixing them.
Still, they keep on going just fine with a slightly dented image, while ads dollars keep pouring in.
So, what needs to change for Facebook to pass a point of unsustainability?
It looks just like another “kill someone on 5th avenue” scenario to me.
======
nelsonic
Facebook will continue to harvest and sell people's data for as long as people
are willing to give it to them. The conditions for Facebook's ultimate demise
are:

1\. Non-technical people are educated about their data being sold to
advertisers who are in turn selling them stuff that is destructive/unhealthy.
e.g: getting them into debt to buy things they don't need to impress people
they don't like!

2\. Willingness of these people to _pay_ for storing their data in order to
_control_ their personal details and who can see them.

3\. Availability and awareness of a low-friction-to-adoption _alternative_
platform where people control their own data which has _similar_ features to
Fb's "core" products and biggest "child" products (Insta, WhatsApp). The
"alternative" needs to be: distributed/decentralised, encrypted and mobile-
first.

I am _bullish_ on all 3 of these things and feel that it's only a matter of
time before the alternative is available.

As others have said, Fb has a _massive_ cash reserve and they won't go down
without a fight. My only _hope_ is that the EU will take Fb to the _cleaners_
under GDPR and that will keep the Fb execs busy for long enough for the
alternative social network to win!

~~~
jbob2000
This is hilarious, no non-technical person gives a shit where their data
lives. We can’t even get people to understand the cloud. The QA department at
my work doesn’t even understand where my app ends and our vendor’s app begins,
and that’s their job! My mother thinks any text box with a search button
beside it is Google.

Nobody outside of the tech ecosystem gives a crap about tracking (they already
see ads all around them anyways). Nobody would even been aware of an
alternative to Facebook, the same way people are barely aware Bing exists.
Hell, people can barely get off their asses to vote and you think they’re
going to care what the EU parliament does?

The only way Facebook will go down is by a major outage. Grandma logs on one
day and can’t chat to her grandson so she calls him up instead. Boyfriend
opens messenger to chat to his girlfriend about their date tonight, but can’t
because it’s down, so he texts her instead. Friends can’t upload pictures of
their trip so they use email or google photos.

It would take a sustained outage of a few days to break the habits Facebook
has created in us. I don’t see any way for a competitor get past their moat,
they have too many features and too many people on board.

~~~
nelsonic
@jbob2000 agreed, the _current_ reality is that 95-99% of people don't _know_
or don't _care_ where their personal data is stored, who has access to it and
how it's being used to _manipulate_ them.

Just because something is the "status quo" doesn't mean that it won't be
_possible_ to change. History is full of examples of where once popular
ideas/systems/regimes have _crumbled_ in the face of something new.

Again, I remain _optimistic_ that the (unhealthy) "habits Facebook has created
in us" can/will be broken. (and not replaced by something worse!)

Just as Rome was not built in a day, it also did not "fall" in day either.
i.e. I don't think a _single_ outage will have much effect on Facebook's
dominance.

The _first_ step in helping people "detox" from Facebook is creating an
_objectively_ healthier way to spend those "bored" or "lonely" minutes
Zuckerberg is _obsessed_ with owning.

------
Yetanfou
Facebook the product is dying a slow death, Facebook the company has loads of
money and with that is able to buy its way out of whatever hole it has been
digging for itself. For now they can rely on their ownership of Instagram and
(to a lesser extent) Whatsapp to keep them at the forefront of the data mining
industry. It remains to be seen how the Instagram and Whatsapp crowd will
react to Facebook's increasing pressure to 'monetise' them. Whatsapp has
plenty of competitors which puts limits on how far Facebook can go in their
attempts to squeeze its users, Instagram is probably more stable in this
respect but also more susceptible to being overtaken by 'the new cool' which
might be just around the corner. Were they to lose traction in these two
markets at the same time they might be in trouble but for now this seems
unlikely. Facebook-the-product will probably hang around way past its best
before date just like AOL did, a grey haunt of mediocrity visited only by
those who lost track with current trends and as such comparable to the dusty
echoing corridors of dying malls where half the windows are boarded up.

~~~
throwaway98121
I’ve been reading these kinds of comments for several years now. Don’t get me
wrong- I despise Facebook and these other exhibitionist platforms in general.
I think there’s some truth and less teenagers using Facebook, but this notion
that it’s a dying platform is wishful thinking at worst or speculation at
best.

~~~
panarky
Network effects drove FB growth.

My friends were posting interesting stuff on FB, so I needed to join FB. Then
my friends started posting stuff twice an hour from their phone, so I needed
to check FB twice an hour from my phone.

Reverse network effects undo that growth.

First slowly, then seemingly all at once.

My most influential and interesting friends rarely post on FB anymore. Most of
my ordinary friends are still there, but they only post once a week or once a
month.

So I've deleted the FB app from my phone and now I check it a couple times a
week from my laptop instead of a couple times an hour from my phone.

It's like Gresham's Law for social networks. Bad actors drive out good actors.

A falling signal-to-noise ratio is a vicious cycle that drives out signal and
attracts more noise.

FB overreached in driving engagement, and it's backfired spectacularly. The FB
brand is damaged and young people are embarrassed to use it.

Reverse network effects will remorselessly undo what network effects
originally built.

~~~
throwaway98121
Fair points, but these are all anecdotes. They don’t speak to macro trends. I
certainly wouldn’t use these to state that FB is dying. The FB platforms
demographics may be shifting, and the company itself has several offerings in
its product line. The doom and gloom is purely speculative though. On paper,
FB is a very solid company despite the recent stock sell offs.

------
Maro
"I think it’s clear now that ..." \--- I worked there for a while. FB has a
lot of empathy, and it's the most (internally) honest company, and the most
efficient at fixing them [of all companies I've ever worked at]. You're a
victim of highly biased reporting/information.

Having said that, FB lives and dies by 2 metrics: MAU and Timespent/DAU. An
outcome of those is Ad revenue. If you want to understand how Facebook is
doing, watch those metrics. MAU is still growing globally, but it has peaked
in the US. Lately a big driver of growth is Instagram. Workplace is an awesome
product, if it takes off, a lot of people will be using "Facebook" in the
workplace, too. If VR ends up being a generally useful thing (eg. we have our
meetings in VR), Facebook will dominate due to their lead with Oculus.

~~~
arsalanb
As somebody doing his own startup, that is absolutely mindblowing. At the size
Facebook is currently, I envy their ability to keep things so focused on well-
defined KPIs and still make the whole thing feel like a startup.

~~~
Maro
When you join, they tell you "FB is the world's biggest startup". It actually
felt like that.

------
mrweasel
My theory is that Facebooks users will quietly stop visiting the site, as user
generated content is replaced by ads, post from various companies and
political nonsense. It depends on your circle of friends of cause, but I think
a large number of Facebooks users have seen a trend towards decreased
engagement with friend on the site. In the end friends are the reason for
going to Facebook, when friends don't post anything, you just start visiting
the site less and less, until one day you've logged in for the last time.

Facebook will however be able to survive for a VERY long time, due to groups
and Messenger. They have effectively kill the forum business for a large
number of communities. Those communities will have to be rebuilt.

In the end people don't remember or even care about Facebooks missteps. If
they did most politicians won't be elected for more than one term. A small
number of us care and we don't have Facebook accounts anymore, the rest are
outraged for a week or two and then it's business a usual.

~~~
heavenlyblue
>> Facebook will however be able to survive for a VERY long time, due to
groups and Messenger. They have effectively kill the forum business for a
large number of communities. Those communities will have to be rebuilt.

Agree. I have moved most of my newspaper listings towards feedly. Friends I
care about are on Whatsapp. Groups, on the other hand - for example: there's a
group that regularly shares shit art sold in charity shops in the UK; it's
content is brilliant and incredibly funny - way beyond anything you could find
on the likes of Reddit.

------
hardwaresofton
They supposedly have 2.2B MAU[0]. This is a _huge_ number and it represents
momentum, even if teens/younger people are abandoning it left and right these
days. The thing is, as much as younger people have caught on to why not to use
Facebook, there are literal generations of greater fools out there who are
lining up to get on it and figure it out. Let's say they figure it out twice
as fast as the younger people did, that still gives a _lot_ of time to FB to
recover/pivot/do whatever.

Also as a side note, bigger worse companies than Facebook have existed and
done more obviously terrible things and still exist. Good PR, skilled
marketers/advertisers, and money can go a _long_ way.

I think the tipping point for something like Facebook is if it gets broken up
by a government force, I don't think it's possible for Facebook to reach it's
tipping point solely by users leaving -- that's like saying junk food
companies are likely to reach their tipping point once everyone realizes how
bad junk food is for them.

[EDIT] - I completely forgot -- they also bought Instagram, which is just
about the only place everyone is jumping off Facebook _to_. Snapchat fumbled
their core value proposition, Tumblr is niche, Twitter is for flamewars and
not as personal, Reddit is still relatively niche/nerdy. I don't know where
people go when they quit FB if not Instagram.

This brings another point into view -- FB probably wouldn't even die from a
max exodus of it's users, as long as it buys whatever competition is next up
to take it's place.

[0]: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-
monthly...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-
active-facebook-users-worldwide/)

~~~
mrweasel
How are those 2.2B monthly active users counted though? Does a Messenger login
count, does a Facebook login button on a third party site? If you counted
users as someone who spend at least 30 minutes on Facebook.com (or their app)
during a week, or said that an active user is someone who posted at least
twice in four week, I doubt they'd have even close to that number of active
users.

~~~
hardwaresofton
I feel like if you apply the same stringent measurement you'd apply there to
any other social apps, you'd still find that facebook is still leading the
pack...

The definition of an "active user" can get pretty contentious, but let's just
say it's someone opening the application at least once in a month (which is a
pretty ridiculous metric but works as a baseline) -- FB is in uncharted
territory.

------
corobo
They'll die when they become boring. I know we'd all like them to stop
harvesting data from everyone, stop tracking where people are over the
internet with their like buttons, etc but honestly Facebook's fall will be
becoming boring.

I skew more towards the techie and older (relatively, in my 30s) side of the
Facebook world so I'll probably be in the second, third, fourth wave of people
to leave forever but I'm starting to notice the younger people in my family
have moved on to other apps and services already. If you try to get in touch
they'll refer to whatsapp (I know.) for messaging and other apps that fill in
the social side of things.

Personally I've started to notice my feed ending if I go past the second
"page" \- it just says there's no more posts to display.. Out of the 11 years
or whatever I've been on Facebook there's.. nothing.. more to display,
Facebook? Boring!

Ever since that's started I've noticed I only really use their messenger
service to keep in touch with people who have no replacement IM app yet, and
even that's starting to shift more towards Discord in my nerdy gaming circles

Unfortunately I have to veer away from the other comments that suggest the
mainstream will learn how much data is being harvested. The mainstream doesn't
care. We've already had Cambridge Analytica and still I see people cramming
data into apps like "OMG" that are blatantly hoovering up personal
information. Facebook will die when enough people find it boring enough that a
snowball effect starts

------
glastra
Facebook is, as I see it, in a constant struggle to "own" the social graph of
humanity. Be it trying to make your friends coerce you into using it, be it
buying other social networks (e.g. Instagram, WhatsApp).

As long as they are successful in doing this and there is no other way to be
"properly social" on the internet without them or their child companies, they
win.

------
raywu
How does Oculus play in?

If we view FB core platform as strictly a distribution platform for FB to push
new product out, it is a stronghold/moat.

Single auth and FB login's ubiquity may continue to allow FB to safeguard
their position as a distribution platform. Not to mention the current success
of WhatsApp and Instagram, as many others pointed out on the thread.

From Elad Gil's interview with Marc Andreessen [1]:

> "In fact, the general model for successful tech companies, contrary to myth
> and legend, is that they become distribution-centric rather than product-
> centric."

> "They become a distribution channel, so they can get to the world. And then
> they put many new products through that distribution channel."

[1] [http://growth.eladgil.com/book/introduction/where-to-go-
afte...](http://growth.eladgil.com/book/introduction/where-to-go-after-
product-market-fit-an-interview-with-marc-andreessen/)

 _Edit_ : elaborated on why I asked about up and coming products like Oculus

------
rchaud
There likely won't be a tipping point, exactly. When a company pulls in
billions every quarter, you can shutter the service tomorrow, and still have
enough capital and enough user data to enter a completely different business,
like surveillance, facial recognition and security. Don't be surprised if Zuck
starts to openly court the Chinese government to build surveillance tech. The
current state of affairs in the US is such that leaders are openly saying "my
values are for sale as long as you have money".

FB is a data behemoth, with both profile and shadow-profile info of billions
of people. They will continue to make money by exploiting that data. People
will eventually stop using FB, but many will move their activity to Instagram.
Plenty of people don't use FB or IG, but do use Whatsapp, another FB company.

without GDPR-style regulation, FB's influence will continue to loom large
unfortunately.

------
aaronbrethorst
I think they’re past the point of sustainability for their core product.
They’ll be around for a long time to come, but I think a reckoning is on the
horizon.

I think this’ll have both user engagement and regulatory aspects to it, and
it’ll decimate FB’s market cap, leaving them open to meaningful change inside
the company.

------
aogaili
I think by definition there will be either one global social network or open
standard that allows people to find each other regardless of which social
network they're on.

Facebook took it's sweet time to deeply integrate in the web like a cancer
spread in the body and this is largely due to the failure of creating/adopting
a standardized social networking protocol. Thus, in my opinion FB should have
be replaced by an open identity, content protocols otherwise it's here to stay
on the web filling this need.

Also FB the company is here to stay since they bought all the major social
networks while everyone is watching.

------
sdan
Looking at their growth, it seems they have enveloped the Social Graph and
have the most users, incentivizing more users to join and be social with their
friends. As long as Facebook's algorithm spews out some posts from friends and
a lot of recommended/ads, users I believe will still stay on the platform.

Overtime, people (including myself) have the FOMO and are in a way forced to
be addicted to FB.

So as long as FB triggers the small dopamine rush people have when they see
they have 10 notifications everytime they're on the site, a majority of people
will stay on, regardless of the news.

~~~
metildaa
I hold the opposite view, Facebook itself has lost social momemtum to
Instagram, Twitter and others, and this is eroding their grip on the high
value parts of the social graph.

~~~
fooker
You know Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp, right?

~~~
metildaa
I know, but the point is social networking sites are ephemeral, owning the
social graph of older social groups does not ensure dominance of younger
social groups.

~~~
fooker
It does if they they have the same backend. For example, Facebook and
Instagram each use your network from the other to for friend suggestions.

------
fargo
What will be the tipping point for GE?

Facebook (the product) != Facebook (the company) and the company is
diversified enough at this point to remain one of the top ad networks for a
long long time.

~~~
yashBonde
Agreed 100%. All these giants only die when someone with a revolutionary idea
comes along. IBM was about do die when other with a new way of making PC came
along.

------
cddotdotslash
While they could get pushed out by some "cooler" app on the market, I think
their downfall may ultimately be pissing off _just_ enough people with the
right power in government to significantly impact their ability to continue
bringing in massive piles of cash. Maybe it's a data breach that results in
some kind of legislation or a privacy law that limits their ability to use the
information they have to make money.

~~~
Yetanfou
Well, yes, maybe. Or maybe not, Facebook _does_ have access to an enormous
amount of information on a very large group of people after all. That includes
a lot of people in government who might be less than thrilled for some of that
information to be made public by someone - not by Facebook of course, never
that. With their hoard of money and information Facebook can wield both a
carrot as well as a stick, both of which have been shown to be effective means
to direct politicians' aim.

