
Is there an actual Facebook crisis, or media narrative about Facebook crisis? - jseliger
https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebook-crisis-or-media-narrative-about-facebook-crisis/
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shaki-dora
This article just redefines “crisis” to its liking. If only falling profits
make for a “real” crisis, then, no, Facebook is not in such a crisis.

Indeed, the author actually agrees that there are legitimate concerns about
FB, some of which are new. I don’t quite get why a crises of ethics should be
less “real”, or not reported on by journalists. Is it the primacy of the
almighty powers of the market?

Even in the latter case, investors and consumers would seem to rely on such
information by the media to make market decisions. To require them to act
before reporting on their reasons to act seems counterintuitive.

....but at that point the article has long diverged into rehashing 2016
conspiracy theories.

tldr: this is a shallow not-defense of Facebook, with a headline specifically
engineered to appeal to HN’s current groupthink hating “the media”.

~~~
chillacy
How do you even define a crisis of ethics without defining the underlying
ethics, and how can you ensure that everyone is on the same page when morality
is... well I don’t want to argue relative vs absolute morality but people
disagree all the time.

~~~
shaki-dora
Well, sure, “morality” is just a human construct. So is money. That doesn’t
stop us from prosecuting bank robbers.

In the specific case of Facebook, the recently released e-mails quite clearly
showed they knew they were crossing boundaries of commonly accepted behaviors.
They weren’t arguing about the ethics of using loose permissions on Android to
read your SMS. They acknowledged the commonly accepted norms of behavior, and
knowingly broke them.

~~~
chillacy
True, all are human constructs. Prosecuting bank robbers is done under written
laws though, we don't prosecute bank robbers with an appeal to morality. From
the emails it seems like fb broke some laws and they can be punished for that,
but imo they should be punished for breaking written laws, not based on a
nebulous morality which varies from person to person.

To what extent written laws reflect morality is another topic of course.

~~~
stult
Not all laws are written, nor do they need to be to be enforced. Robbery was
made illegal under common law (in the US, UK, and other common law countries)
before it was ever codified or written down, for example. So yes, we actually
did jail bank robbers for breaking unwritten laws (although they've since been
written down).

~~~
chillacy
Interesting. While I know people could be jailed for most of history for
basically no reason, I assumed civilization was collectively moving away from
that. It seems to things more predictable if the law is on the books. Do you
find my assessment is incorrect when I say that this is the state of US law
today in my original reply?

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danso
Jesus Christ, this blog post posits one of the most blatant and comical
strawmen I’ve seen in awhile. The author seems to think the only kind of
crisis (“crisis”, as the word is used in the headline of the recent NYT
investigation) Facebook could face is one that involves a drop in users.
Because the NYT purportedly provides little evidence of such, the author
asserts _“the whole thing seems imaginary: is there an actual crisis, outside
the media narrative?”_

The article the author references in his intro is talking about the PR crisis
and internal conflict that blew up when Alex Stamos spoke out against FB’s
lackluster response to a “Russian infestation”. When Sheryl Sandberg is said
by multiple witnesses to have screamed “You threw us under a bus!” at Stamos,
it is reasonable to think that FB had massive internal strife, unless the
author believes the NYT fabricated the evidence of this conflict, which he
provides no evidence of.

The lackluster user growth is said by the NYT to coincide with this strife, it
is not claimed by the NYT to be _the_ crisis. Does the author believe that the
only crisis a tech company could possibly face is declining usage?

~~~
synctext
> the only crisis a tech company could possibly face is declining usage?

Indeed. How about European Union regulations making it illegal to targeted
advertisement people online; without an easy opt-out.

(from personal conversations with EU bureaucrats I know they _really_ dislike
the fake news phenomenon and derived profit)

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FailMore
From observing FB over the years, I am of the view that they are effective
problem solvers, and know how to regulate the behaviour of the users on their
platform to put sustainability first. E.g. when the notifications were going
wild on FB for those annoying games that friends played (Zenga days) FB
regulated, when a weaker startup might have said "these metrics are going up
and showed off engagement statistics!".

My hope is that FB takes this same approach to it's internal culture if there
is an issue, perhaps I will be mistaken.

As a side note, I run a virtual telephone receptionist business. It is a very
human focused business, with real life receptionists, and real life people
calling them up. This creates troubles!! When real people get together issues
occur (rudeness, spelling mistakes, taking down a telephone number instead of
an email, etc..). FB is used by people, and people bring mess. So FB will
always have disruptive stories because it is used by people. I am of the view
that FB will get better at dealing with problematic people related problems,
but currently it is the consequence of having a platform that people use to
express themselves - it is inherently messy because that is what people
interacting generates.

~~~
CaptainZapp
_My hope is that FB takes this same approach to it 's internal culture if
there is an issue, perhaps I will be mistaken._

Yes, I think you're mistaken.

The reason why I think that is that we're not talking of a single whoopsie or
two, but of a massive laundry list of moral and regulatory failures. This
includes being a conduit for genocide for years, despite the fact of knowing
it happening since 2013 and the fact that instead of cleaning up their act,
hiring a black ops pr outfit to spread some vile, antisemitic shit on their
oponents.

And there's so much more. For reference: Just check the list of "apologies" by
Mr. Zuckerberg since 2008.

Management of this company is so rotten, foul and morally bankrupt that I just
don't see anything changing anytime soon. Except, hopefully, their users
voting with their feet.

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mikenew
> every time someone uses Facebook, that person is implicitly showing that
> they like Facebook more than not and find it valuable more than not.

I know quite a few people who will say they are addicted to facebook, and many
more who will at least admit that they use it more than they want to. I was
the former until about a year ago when I finally pulled the plug. So I do not
think that's a fair statement at all.

~~~
Veen
That stood out to me too. It’s obviously untrue. There are many reasons people
do things they would rather not: necessity, obligation, habit, addiction,
switching costs, network effects, and more.

Furthermore, just because people like something, it doesn’t follow that it’s
good for them or for society at large. Or that they couldn’t get the thing
they like without it being hitched to a lot of things they don’t like.

Facebook’s “crisis” has nothing to do with whether people like the service or
not. It’s that more people are realizing that it’s not worth the cost.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
Usage is a lagging indicator, yet the author seems to treat it as a leading
indicator. Current interactions may not change overnight, but new interactions
are more likely to occur elsewhere, and those effects wont be obvious for some
time

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throw2016
If you only care about making money and see ethical behavior and basic human
rights like privacy only as things one talks about, then this is the perfect
time for the camel in the sand approach.

The crisis here is not just facebook but the growing realization by the wider
world of the scope of betrayal by the tech community. The echo chamber
covering up this betrayal is now pierced with increasingly louder external
voices that challenge the self serving narratives to justify morally bankrupt
behavior.

This will have ramifications that those who are already disengaged from the
world have no problem with, but many others will not take this loss of
reputation as well. The real crisis seems to be we have large groups of people
who are not invested and engaged in their world and see no problem in behaving
like mercenaries while affecting normalcy. This kind of behavior is toxic and
can only promote an environment of complete distrust, decay and degeneration.

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awgneo
Or a narrative about a narrative about a Facebook crisis?

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tobr
Yes, there is an actual _ethical_ crisis at Facebook. How it affects their
bottom line or number of users is irrelevant.

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notacoward
Kara Swisher says "remember AOL". I say "remember Life magazine". Whether
there is or is not a crisis at Facebook, there has _definitely_ been an
ongoing crisis/decline at magazines and newspapers. Revealed preferences,
indeed.

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AndrewSChapman
I deleted my Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts just this weekend. It's
not that I don't like the service Facebook provides (I liked Insta in
particular), but I don't want to be a part of the data harvesting, privacy
destroying, democracy usurping empire any more. I don't believe Facebook has
your best interests at heart. I don't think Facebook is good for society.

Also I read recently that they have a crisis internally amongst their staff
with employees considering jumping ship. Additionally, new graduates no longer
consider Facebook as the premium place to work. This may start to hurt them in
the coming years.

~~~
danso
I posted in another comment about how I believe the author is wrong. But what
you mention having “read recently” would arguably count as aspects of a “media
narrative”, as there isn’t data (beyond interesting anecdotes and conjecture)
that employee discontent is at “crisis” levels. Only FB’s internal metrics
could conclusively prove that.

~~~
AndrewSChapman
This seems legit: [https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employee-morale-
dro...](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employee-morale-drops-after-
scandals-survey-report-2018-11?r=US&IR=T)

I think if the WSJ posted factually incorrect information, Facebook would have
reacted and asked for a redaction and probably an apology.

------
javajosh
I'm actually not familiar with the "Facebook Crisis" the author alludes to,
the one where Facebook is suffering massive losses of users. He only provides
one link to a story of this kind. FB is certainly in the news a lot these
days, but mostly in relation to its various scandals involving a) the 2016
election and b) its role stoking animus between various disparate ethnic
groups. On top of this there is growing mainstream awareness of the effects
and reach of surveillance capitalism, and that vague uneasiness is driving
people to click on anything FB related because FB is generally singled out as
_the_ primary malefactor.

But yeah, I still use Facebook even though I know how bad it is. And even
worse, I use a TON of Google products. The simple fact is that we consumers
are all in an arms race with each other and these tools that invade our
privacy are also critical in managing the complexity of our lives. That's why
I think communities like the Amish really deserve more credit for what they've
done, which is give up all these weapons of convenience at once, and so live a
good life together.

~~~
chillacy
A week ago articles claimed the delete Facebook movement was making
substantial impact on Facebooks user numbers and that users left because of
this ethical crisis, like the Uber scandals. If the numbers haven’t gone down
much then either users care more about using fb than this ethical issue for
whatever reason. Fill in your own narrative here.

~~~
shaki-dora
Got a link for one of these articles?

~~~
chillacy
Search google for "Facebook users quit" or "facebook users leave" and you'll
find plenty

[https://www.inc.com/dakota-shane/research-shows-users-are-
le...](https://www.inc.com/dakota-shane/research-shows-users-are-leaving-
facebook-in-droves-heres-what-it-means-for-you.html)

[https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/10/04/is-facebook-
finall...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/10/04/is-facebook-finally-
worrying-about-users-quitting.aspx)

Reading these articles might lead you to believe users are leaving in droves!
But it's likely sensational reporting.

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snowwrestler
Well Facebook leaders certainly seem to think they are in a crisis.

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curiousDog
What's a boffin?

~~~
stonogo
A wonk.

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baxtr
Interesting: this title ignores Betterridge’s law of headlines

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

~~~
dnh44
That's only because the question is "x || !x" which is always true.

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tanilama
Media is trying really hard to blame Facebook on everything and anything.

~~~
sn41
Yes, the software giant du jour.

I bet Amazon is next. Somehow Twitter does not seem to be all that talked
about in a negative light.

