
Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App - otoburb
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facebook-secret-research-warned-of-tipping-point-threat-to-core-app?pu=hackernewsotjyc7&utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=unlock&utm_content=facebook-secret-research
======
Zak
I can say what has reduced my Facebook use, if anybody in a relevant position
at the company is reading. It's the content Facebook shows me.

A decade or so ago, most of the content I saw on Facebook was _original_
content from people I know. Most posts were either text written by someone I
knew, or a photo taken by someone I knew. Perhaps not everybody shares this
position, but what I most want from Facebook is to keep up with people I
actually know. Here are the first 20 posts I see now:

7 shared images from strangers/pages. 1 screenshot from a TV show uploaded by
a friend. 1 page updated its website. 1 shared video from strangers/pages. 2
"suggested" videos from a page. 1 photograph taken by a friend. 1 "memory"
containing text written by the person who shared it. 3 links to a news story.
3 posts by a page.

That's 2/20 posts of original content from people I know. I've noticed that if
I _post_ original content, my friends are less likely to interact with it than
a few years ago, probably because they, too are presented with such a huge
amount of other content.

I know I can opt in to something like the old experience with the "friends
feed" feature. Well, I can on the desktop site (if I bookmark it, click it
each time, or use a browser extension); it appears to be missing from the
mobile site and the Facebook Lite app. Anything I post is still disadvantaged
though, because most people are using the default algorithmic feed.

On Instagram, _every one_ of the first 20 posts I see is original content by a
person or page I follow. 16 of those are individual people. I see shared
third-party content on Instagram fairly rarely, probably because its UI
doesn't encourage that.

What would get me to use Facebook more actively is a change to the algorithm
that advantages original content over shared third-party content.

~~~
deanclatworthy
Enjoy insta while it lasts. They are having more and more sponsored posts
creep into the feed. I don’t expect this trend to reverse. It’s how they make
money.

~~~
8ytecoder
I have mentioned this before here - instagram ads are a bit too creepy. I have
had multiple personal ads that were eerily accurate and I hadn’t even
discussed these things over any written form. I’m not paranoid to think they
are listening to the microphone but the coincidence is super uncanny. It
crossed the line for me twice in the past few months alone.

~~~
about_help
You should be, the Facebook app explicitly does listen to the mic unless you
opt out. It has also come out that Google and Amazon are storing people's
personal voice requests, and aside from that the mics are always on waiting to
hear the trigger words. This means by default that the apps are listening and
analyzing everything, though how much of the non word-triggered speech gets
recorded is unknown.

Facebook's initial foray into the app/mic biz was troubled and their statement
was "we only listen for popular music / TV in the background in order to help
you." It also came out that they mine personal messages between users.

"I’m not paranoid to think they are listening to the microphone but the
coincidence is super uncanny."

We need to get past the block where we label people as paranoid for thinking
these big corps might invade user's privacy.

~~~
RandallBrown
The Facebook app, on iPhone at least, requires you to opt in to giving it
microphone access.

I've seen the myth that Facebook is targeting ads based on what it hears
debunked several times. Do you have a source that shows that it is in fact
listening?

I think it's more likely that the same reason someone is talking about
something (they're in a demographic interested in that thing) is the reason
that Facebook gives you ads for that thing. Add in the Baader-Meinhof effect
and it seems like Facebook is listening to your conversations.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
I am so frustrated by this "debunking", because it defies logic and
experience.

Let's say Facebook NEVER listens to you... I'm 100% on board with them and
their honesty. It still doesn't matter.

If you let ANY third party app listen to you, and identify you, for example
the latest Candy Crush game, then your information along with preferences are
being uploaded to databases for re-targeting.

When I do a big campaign in Facebook, or any sophisticated marketer does, I
don't ask Facebook for users who like Cats and are looking for brands of
organic cat food. I PROVIDE them a pre-vetted list of people looking for cat
food that I generated and the emails associated with those Facebook accounts.

Facebook has NO WAY to know how I came up with my list, and no possible way to
find out. It could have been from listening to conversations while someone
played Candy Crush, or it could have been from a form submitted on my website.

One of these days I'm just going to actually document myself doing this and
publish it to a website so more people understand what is happening and how
easy it is to use data from people's conversations.

TLDR: Any time you buy a list of potential customers from a market research
company, that data could have been gathered with conversation tracking. It's
not Facebook's fault, it's just the reality.

~~~
shostack
You're not wrong. "Data laundering" is a thing. There's a lot of industry
concern around the quality/accuracy of 3rd party data segments from various
brokers, DMPs and DSPs, but often times they are complete black boxes in terms
of their source data.

------
salsadip
I am happy that we have Snapchat and iMessage as competitors to the Facebook
Apps. I very much dislike their business practices of sucking up all the data
they can get their hands on e.g. during the acquisition of WhatsApp where they
had to promise to European [1] regulators to not combine the user data with
facebook‘s and then did it anyway.

Also sad that they were so successful in copying Snapchat’s story feature - it
made Snapchat so unique. Now nobody is using Snapchat for it anymore and
everybody is on IG instead.

All in all I know many people who really dislike FB and would leave it if they
could, but the network effect keeps everybody locked in to WhatsApp at least
in Europe/Germany.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/7/18215143/facebook-
whatsapp...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/7/18215143/facebook-whatsapp-
instagram-third-party-user-data-combined-banned-germany-fco-competition)

~~~
nolok
> Also sad that they were so successful in copying Snapchat’s story feature -
> it made Snapchat so unique. Now nobody is using Snapchat for it anymore and
> everybody is on IG instead.

I don't see what's sad about that, if the only thing that made SC unique is a
feature that was so easily copied into EVERY FB app (messenger, instagram,
even FB itself) then SC was anything but unique.

Ultimately execution is what matters, and snapchat had a terrible app (at
least on android) forever.

~~~
meowface
The same feature is now also on YouTube, for some reason. I guess short video
clips are just what the youth are into these days (Vine, TikTok, stories).

I wonder if they're regretting not taking the 30 billion Google was offering.
Ephemeral image/video/message sharing has become a pretty oversaturated market
since their popularization of it, and there isn't really that much more
innovation that can be done in that area, I think. And it doesn't seem like
they're trying other kinds of things beyond ephemeral communication. They may
be in a Foursquare-like situation, except Foursquare actually did manage to
pivot from a gimmick to more of a sustainable business (as far as I can tell).

~~~
nolok
> I wonder if they're regretting not taking the 30 billion Google was
> offering.

I know this was Google's "we need to turn into a social thing, G+ all the way"
era and everything but good god, 30 billion, that figure was insane. Even if
you go with "but major social app are worth a lot" just comparing it with how
much was paid for whatsapp and instagram makes it even crazier.

~~~
meowface
I think the only thing even more insane than that is the creator of an app
that lets you set a timeout when you send images and videos thinking $30
billion was a lowball insult and that they're clearly worth far more.

~~~
salsadip
Quote? From what I read it wasn’t about the money for the founders but they
thought they had something unique going for them which they wanted to have
control over instead of selling. At least that’s what they said when Facebook
made multiple offers

~~~
meowface
I was definitely heavily hyperbolizing and assuming. I have no idea what their
actual thought process or response was. I just think you probably have to be
pretty arrogant to deny 30 billion from Google for your gimmick fad app, even
if you really don't care about making money. It seems arrogant to think that
that business could really grow beyond such a valuation. Why not take the 30
billion and spend it on a new company you want to make, or something? Is the
Snap brand truly that powerful to them? Even if you're totally happy living
modestly, you can do a lot with that money.

It might be hindsight bias on my part, though. The hype at the time was very
high, and maybe it was actually rational for them to think they had serious
longevity. But still, I'm not really seeking money, and I don't see how I
could've turned down that offer.

For Zuckerberg, it made more sense to reject early offers, because he could
see the mega-monopoly in the distance. I don't see how Snap could think they
could make a monopoly out of their app. For one, the app's not really even a
social network.

It was a good idea and good execution, but like so many startup founders, I
think the success of the app may have gone to their heads. Users aren't buying
into the Snap brand / ecosystem / network, they just like to send ephemeral
photos and videos to their friends with minimal friction. This is not a new
paradigm in itself; it's a feature. Like many startups, Snap is a cool new
feature dressing itself up as a serious corporation, and features only remain
new for so long.

One could say the same of Instagram, but the difference is they managed to get
the social network stuff right, so they could sustain exponential growth.
Maybe Snap could've done the same if they were more willing to branch off from
their original feature earlier on in their company's existence. I'm not
totally sure why Snap failed to evolve from a sexting app to a social network,
but it was clearly their plan, and it flopped.

------
nolok
While I have a facebook account I'm not a big user, it's mostly for a few
contacts that are only on messenger. I don't look at my "stream" a lot, and
when I do it's mostly useless content like meme, self-centered post and
whatnot that I personnaly have zero interest in, with maybe 1% of actually
interesting thing in between like birth annoncement from acquaintances etc ...

I don't plan to delete my account because I want to keep the ability to be in
touch with those few friends, and I haven't reached the point where I want to
delete the messenger app, but the main FB/messenger duo just doesn't fill any
major need for me.

But two things that struck me recently:

1\. When opening my stream just to gloss over, there is A TON of ads. Like,
the first 4/5 posts are real, then it's one post one ad one post one ad. And
the targeting is abysmal. The only ones that are kind of on target are the
amazon retargeting, except in typical amazon retargeting fashion it advertises
to me stuff that I have already bought (on amazon no less). At least google
has the decency to show me stuff I may be interested in, if vaguely.

2\. I'm not sure when this was added to android, or if this is a specific
samsung thing, but I had a weird warning that I had never seen before: my
phone warned me that messenger, while not being open, was trying to access the
"microphone" permission. Kudos to android for blocking it and warning me, so I
could disable that permission for good. I can't think of a single reason for
that app to do it that isn't super evil.

I'm also 99,9% certain it's not even legal where I live (France), I can't
record my customers without asking or warning them __on each instance of a
conversation __and with a clear non hidden message, so I doubt they can do
that no matter what 's in their TOS.

~~~
quelltext
The microphone permission is used for you to be able to record a voice message
to send to someone.

I don't know why it would suddenly ask but I have pressed that voice message /
microphone button by accident in the past. Or maybe it's just something the
app requests globally on newer versions.

~~~
nolok
I was not asking why the microphone permission is needed, but why it would be
used with the app in the background, not being used.

> I have pressed that voice message / microphone button by accident in the
> past

App in the background. It's not due to a keypress or to do any user-initiated
action. Googling it, seems it's not a one off and that the app does indeed
access the microphone from the background from time to time to do god knows
what

------
rconti
I think the focus on Stories is a huge mistake. Disclaimer: I'm too old to
"get it". I've only used stories a few times, they feel like a huge time sink
vs a normal FB/IG post, and that investment seems less worthwhile for
something that doesn't stick around like a vacation photo album that I or
someone else might refer back to later. I've only used stories when (say)
traveling solo, and I want to post more mundane shit because I don't have a
ton going on. Keeps folks at home more apprised of what I'm up to, but not the
kind of content that's 'important/curated' enough to keep forever.

So on to why I think it's a mistake. Yes, both the core business and the
stories rely on the network effects of social networks to gain/maintain
popularity. But encouraging users to share ephemeral content makes the
switching costs much lower. If some new "yourspace" competitor came along, I'd
be hesitant to switch because I _LIKE_ the library of content myself and my
friends and family have built up over the years. If literally all that
prevents me from switching is where my friends are, I can use both until
everyone switches, and then just drop the one entirely.

Don't get me wrong, Facebook is still almost worthless to users without
friends using it, but the switching costs are still higher when there's old
content.

~~~
alkonaut
Ephemeral content means you must check all the time. If you are like me and
you want to check your friends original content or some event calendar once
every 48h or less, you are probably not in the user group they see as
“profitable”

------
burlesona
This is why, as Ben Thompson points out in his Stratechery emails, we should
focus more of our anti-trust efforts on blocking mega-acquisitions than on
regulating the giants. If Facebook were currently competing with Instagram and
WhatsApp, it would be in a lot more trouble.

~~~
alkibiades
just curious, this assumes that companies being in more trouble would be a
good thing. why is that the case?

~~~
Snd_
Because they would be inclined to offer a better service as their competitors?
They'd have to make more effort to please users. My guess is this would mean
show less ads.

------
koonsolo
I was talking to my 15yo niece, and I already suspected that Facebook is
losing young people. So I asked on which platforms she spends her time. "No
Facebook, mainly WhatsApp groups, and also private Instagram".

Facebook is dead, long live Facebook.

I must say that their aquisition strategy is impressive.

~~~
stingraycharles
Isn’t it fairly well known at this point that FB isn’t used by young people?

~~~
koonsolo
Yes, but the impressive thing for me was that she and her group of friends
swithed to other Facebook owned platforms. Not SnapChat or some other
competitor.

------
john_minsk
Interesting to see that Facebook, being big tech+data driven company, needs a
year to gather such statistics.

I would imagine it to be almost real time there...

~~~
yomly
There's probably a TONNE of cleaning/reconciling/deduping that needs to go on
if they are trying to connect cross-platform users (like WhatsApp and
Facebook) - especially over historical data. Sure, maybe going forward
refreshing these reports might be quick but don't underestimate the inertia of
having to go through that pain of integrating the data for the first time.

Any analysis worth its salt will also need to go through rounds of sense-
checking + checks for statistical robustness: this all takes time

------
jdofaz
Facebook is kind of like my email Spam folder now. I check it once or twice a
month to see if anything useful was caught there but I otherwise ignore it.

It took me way too long to notice, but facebook stopped being an enjoyable
thing a long time ago.

------
goldcd
I miss why this considered _bad_ news.

Facebook spent billions pickup up Whats-app and Instagram (and probably a fair
chunk developing and maintaining messenger).

This wasn't solely to pick up untold millions of new users who'd never used
"original blue facebook" \- if it had been, you'd need a facebook account to
use Whats-app. Point was to ensure you didn't stray from the blue-app, onto
something Facebook didn't own/control.

In my humble view, the keeping of messenger and whats-app separate by Facebook
is smart - as they have two offerings that appeal to different people (and to
many people that happily use both).

You know from all the rumours of "ads on Whatsapp" that internally in facebook
they're trying to work out how to leverage all our eyeballs on all those
different apps - but the reason they haven't merged them all, is they've
worked out they keep more people if they keep the apps separate.

To take my favourite anecdotal example, I used to use latitude on google maps
to work out where my friends were (I'm in the pub, when are you turning up?).
Then google killed that functionality to try to make us all move to
google+.... We didn't, it died.

Now, if a few of us are trying to co-ordinate say a drink after work, we'll
use whatsapp. Google lost that feature I use to Facebook.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Facebook’s superpower was that everyone was on it. If half their users are on
Insta and the other half on WhatsApp and the other half left for other random
networks, then they’re just a holding company for brands with less network
effects.

------
ian0
I think FB caught onto this a long, long time ago. Back when they saw the
adoption & activity rates of the then competing WA & Instagram. The only
difference being at the time of this analysis FB owns most of the apps people
are migrating to.

Its not that threatening - as they already proved they know how to counter
through acquisition or competition and have a good track record of being able
to monetise new properties.

------
dontbenebby
Is this really surprising?

The strength of a network is n^2:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law)

It makes sense that the more people leaving a network then the utility of said
network will decline.

What seems odd is why they care if people move to Insta or WhatsApp, since FB
owna both.

~~~
chaosbolt
This, I removed FB a few years ago and never even tried Instagram, but my gf
has both, and we speak everyday on Whatsapp, and I have a picture on Whatsapp,
so they still know pretty much everything about me if they scrap the
conversations for keywords or something more advanced.

Tried removing Whatsapp for something like Telegram but couldn't since I need
to convince my parents and sisters and gf and friends to move there too.

~~~
prolepunk
Have you tried to tell them that they are constantly being watched? How
receptive were they about recent articles on data breaches in facebook? What
would happen if you only reply to them over SMS or Telegram?

I'm also struggling with this issue and I've been contemplating about either
moving all of my interactions on a mailing list or a mastodon instance. I
don't know how to move the network of my friends into that space.

------
notTyler
I used to think they would follow the xanga / myspace train and be blown out
of the water by something but that's not the case anymore. They have proven
they can just buy any competitors or quickly copy their features, and "all my
friends are on fb/insta/whatsapp" will keep the vast majority of the users
entwined in one way or another. Regardless of usage metrics, if you only use
their apps for social, that's a win in itself.

------
OoOOo
This should be at the very least a reminder to try and use wrappers and
disable/uninstall as much as you can from your phone facebook.

------
erikpukinskis
I sometimes try to use the Facebook (“blue”) app to do messages and then I
remember Facebook nerfed it’s own app so it can’t send messages and then I
give up.

------
aj7
This is in progress. The most avid FB users are 55+, and FB is unknown 25-

~~~
dymk
Source?

------
mic47
Is it just me, or do "secret" have negative connotation? Because for me it
does, and I am really sad from journalist when they use "secret" or "secretly"
in headlines, when it just mean internal, or just not disclosed. What is
interesting that the article does not contain word secret, and they always use
the word internal.

~~~
0x006A
Is "secret" not one of the classifications for internal documents? "top
secret", "secret", "confidential", "restricted". While this classification is
usually used to classify access to documents of the state, it could also apply
to internal documents in large organizations.

~~~
bertil
It can be but I’d be surprised if that document had anything like it. Very few
things are confidential internally at Facebook. Compensation, seniority level
and review are the most common “Confidential” category but they are typically
marked as “personal and confidential”. A few things are permission-access-
controlled (think things involving the Police where rules of evidence apply)
but I don’t remember if they had a name; “Talk to legal” was the short-hand.

Source: I used to work at Facebook & I know Tom C. personally. I’ve written
similar documents four years ago. There were publicly visible internally. Few
people really cared outside of senior Product people.

~~~
paulie_a
How can seniority level be secret?

~~~
jefftk
"seniority level" an in "what level have you been promoted to".

At Google you don't have to disclose your level, but most people do and most
of my coworkers know I'm L5. At Facebook my understanding is they've tried to
build a culture where people don't know each other's levels, to focus more on
"what can you do" instead of "what does management think you can do".

~~~
wolco
Then why have different levels at all and just pay more or less? Why hide
someone's position/level.. why even have levels? Is this a shield for
management.. you shouldn't know Jim is more valuable.. easier to pull the wool
over employee eyes?

~~~
slowmovintarget
You have levels to guide HR in making compensation decisions relative to the
rest of the market. For example, Google might set their target at 105% of the
top range of the market in order to retain the best employees. 105% of a fresh
graduate's salary is very different from the same rate for a top-of-field
industry recognized veteran. Even in those cases, that's a guide so exceptions
are made as merited.

And no, I don't work at Google :)

