

Remember When We Were All Supposed To Quit Facebook? - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/14/quit-facebook-someday/

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robotron
Yeah, I quit Facebook. Am I supposed to continue ranting about it afterwords?

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btilly
Those who are going to not use Facebook have not been using it for a long
time.

Nobody else cares.

~~~
146
I think the thing is that Facebook is learning from this. If there was
actually a viable competitor at the time, the whole hype surrounding the
incident might be enough to push and bootstrap enough users onto its
competitor. We saw this to a limited extent with Diaspora, but given that
there wasn't anything to actually sign up for, its hype has mostly fizzled by
now.

Right now, Facebook is practically the only game in town, they don't have to
worry about these mass migrations. But if Google manages comes up with an even
comparably good clone of Facebook, it may become an issue.

~~~
qq66
Even if Google cloned Facebook line-for-line I'm not sure how would it gain
any traction. I have such an incredible amount of metadata locked inside
Facebook that it's going to take a LOT to get me to change to anything new.
And why -- just so Sergey can own my data instead of Zuck?

~~~
drinian
And that's the point, really -- don't let your metadata get locked into one
service! We should have been supporting exchange standards for this stuff
years ago.

That's the downfall of the Web age of the Internet; we (the public) reverted
to a client-server attitude rather than a network of equal peers.

My Facebook account is still active, but there's nothing there but an email
address and a picture now. I think that's a fair compromise for the time
being.

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jimfl
My dad, who has no Internet, and watches mainstream TV, said to me the other
day, "Boy it sounds like Apple really screwed up with the iPhone 4, eh?" I
said, oh, yeah, screwed up Real Good. Name two competitors to the iPhone 4. At
that instant, my dad attained enlightenment.

~~~
jared314
He could have been trying to make conversation, and you shot him down.

~~~
dRother
I think that's reading a lot into this paraphrasing.

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jsharpe
This is hardly news. As I recall, anytime Facebook does _anything_ , people
threaten to leave en masse. And guess what? It never happens.

I can never get over the irony of this type of meta-journalism. It's not like
TechCrunch hasn't been actively participating in covering the Facebook privacy
"debacle".

~~~
jkincaid
It's not really irony, we just have different opinions. I've been covering the
issues for a long time and disagree with MG here (I'll probably post a
response to him in a few days).

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powrtoch
What facebook enemies need is a headline.

"Little girl brutally murdered after FB's privacy controls reveal her to a
crazy stalker"

People just don't respond to rational argument, data, and talk the way they do
to fear. Obviously for the little girl's sake I hope this never happens, but
honestly I don't see Facebook going down any other way anytime soon.

~~~
mortuus
MySpace started getting a lot of negative coverage in mainstream media in
terms of personal safety (bad people out there). (e.g.
<http://www.ktvu.com/news/7783930/detail.html>)

Facebook's earlier negatives were more in line with employers screening you
out of jobs or tracking your use (<http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/social-
media-misuse/>)

Now with privacy being the big story, this may evolve to more of what you
suggest, though there are already horror stories:
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256552/Facebook-
sta...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256552/Facebook-stalker-Paul-
Bristol-killed-Camille-Mathurasingh-seeing-new-man.html)

It's not clear what drives the stories/cultural view, though 146's comment
about having a viable alternative seems to be important in actually causing
people to quit a service.

Who are the 'facebook enemies'?

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adamesque
This article isn't about _quitting Facebook_. The key quote from the OP:

> _Facebook is only evil as long as saying Facebook is evil is driving
> traffic, is my takeaway from this._

It's about what happens to news in a lucrative, competitive environment. The
reason we haven't had to use the term "yellow journalism" since the turn of
the last century is because the market for news was so stagnant.

Now there's a new, robust market, and we're seeing a lot of the same tactics
all over again.

~~~
inerte
It isn't at all about quitting Facebook.

I guess not RTFA and commenting on the title alone isn't isolated to Slashdot.
er... I actually knew that but this thread shows it splendourly (is that a
word?).

Anyway, the actual meat of the article, although a known issue for those who
have any interest in the media business, would give HNers an opportunity for
some shots at Techcrunch (pottle/kettle).

The internet isn't much different than television on this regard. There's a
popular, hot topic one week that vanishes on the other. The blond girl that
has gone missing happens every couple years. The media reports the case
extensively, then another shiny topic comes, and it's dropped. Of course,
boys/girls gone missing/kidnapped happens way more frequently than every two
years, but sometimes through some crazy conjunction of factors, one is
disproportionally reported.

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novum
I didn't quit, but I stopped reading the Facebook feed. That was a major step
for me, as I was somewhat north of Facebook's average of 55 minutes per user
per day on the site. This has really helped cut that down to < 10.

~~~
m0th87
I stopped reading the feed too. People were never going to leave facebook in
droves. But the controversies eventually become exhausting to the point where
it's difficult to justify regular visitations, which is a hit to facebook.

Social networking have been deprecated in the past. It happened to myspace,
and friendfeed before it.

I remember the proponents of myspace arguing it couldn't lose momentum when it
was at its peak, but it surely did. Perhaps predicting these things is a bit
of a black swan event.

~~~
stanleydrew
> and friendfeed before it.

I think you meant Friendster.

~~~
m0th87
Whoops, good catch.

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ziadbc
I think they made some minute changes possibly? For some reason I remember
going to cnn.com and seeing info about my friends right on the front page. Now
you have to login. Also, I think the takeaway is that FB should just figure
out a better way of communicating privacy related features to the userbase,
not just the developers. They need to sell these features to the userbase.
Twitter has no privacy, and no one cares because thats how they promote the
service. FB could launch 'FB everywhere' and still let it be opt out. Its when
you sneak the features in the backdoor at some developer conference that joe
blow gets pissed.

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plemer
I'm using it far less and will switch to a viable alternative as soon as one
becomes available.

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lkozma
I've commented this in another thread: I had this idea a while ago for real
events on campuses, themed "Quit Facebook Party". People would get together
and delete their accounts, the process being projected on the wall for others
to see. With the social validation people would find it easier to make the
step and realize how few consequences it has, apart from freeing up a lot of
time.

~~~
powrtoch
Sure, they'd do it. But when 85% of your friend network wasn't at this party,
and they start complaining about you not being on, and you stop getting
invited to things (because people assume their FB friends list really is their
entire friend base), would you really have the willpower to stay off?

Not you personally, really I should phrase that, "what percentage would stay
off"? The social pressure has lifted, suddenly it doesn't seem worth the
trouble. It and certainly doesn't seem worth the meta-trouble of a continued
checkup process to make sure nobody defects.

I think the point of this article is that people don't care as much as they
think they should. They just try to convince themselves they do. Not pretty
(kind of scary), but a fact we'll have to come to terms with.

