7 ms·

Geez facebook. Bye forever. Account not just deactivated, but deleted.

by pierrefar 16y ago

natrius 16y ago
That is quite possibly the least effective means of protest I can imagine.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  According to the corollary of Metcalfe's law it is actually very effective. I think it would read something like "The value of a communications network decreases with the square of the amount of people that have left it".
  - btilly 16y ago
    Can we please stop calling Metcalfe's "law" a law? It makes the exceedingly questionable assumption that we value all possible connections equally. Many different approaches to quantifying the value of networks converge on the much more reasonable estimate that value tends towards n log(n) rather than n*n. See http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/metcalfes-law-is-wrong/0 http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/metcalfes-law-is... for more.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      Nice writing! Ok, we'll call it 'Tillys anything but a law' in stead ;) I think everybody realizes that Metcalfe's law is not a 'law' in the sense that it is a given or an absolute, any of those - including Moores law and others like it are to be taken with a grain of salt. The practical upshot of all this is that if the value of a network goes up with a non-linear factor when the number of participants increases the reverse also holds true. What we call it doesn't really matter and Metcalfe's law will do as good as any other shorthand description that will convey the point. Thanks for the interesting read by the way, it's nice to see that even if Metcalfe was maybe wrong in the 'absolute' in principle the concept of non-linear value increase seems to hold true.
      - btilly 16y ago
        Non-linear is absolutely true. But the non-linearity is not nearly as strong as a lot of dot com business models assumed. In an interesting twist, Metcalfe's law comes closest to being true in mediums where existing social relations are less important. For instance eBay is a classic example. If I want to sell, I really do value the network at the size of said network because I have no idea who wants to buy from me. Which is one reason why it is so hard to compete with eBay. (Despite how badly they mess up.)
        jacquesm 16y ago
        This is all extremely interesting, especially the fact that you've been able to narrow down the 'range' of possible values by some real world analysis. So, if I understand your piece correctly the value of the power changes over time depending on the size of the network and the available pool, in other words even the log(n) factor is not exact, in the beginning it is probably closer the to the original n^2, whereas later on it moves to more sedate territory, but it always seems to be higher than the '1' added by attaching another node to the network. The 'competing with ebay' has a nice counterpart. In the netherlands there was a small local site called 'marktplaats' that had entrenched itself in the early days of the web, and nothing ebay did to dislodge it worked, so they ended up buying it. The kicker is that 'hyves' (the dutch counterpart to facebook) is losing ground because people have a lot of international connections to friends and family, but trade seems to be limited to geographic boundaries and hence marktplaats succeeded where hyves is in trouble.
        btilly 16y ago
        The Netherlands examples are interesting. In the piece I quoted, it isn't that value scales like nn then like n log(n). The argument is that value scales like n log(n), which for small n looks more like nn than it does for large n. That said the argument given implicitly assumes that most of the people in the network have most of the people they really care about in the network as well. This assumption is less likely to be true for small networks than large ones. It didn't make it into the paper, but an interesting optical illusion was discussed while we were writing it. Most of us judge the ubiquity of a network according to how many people we personally know who use it. Therefore people's value from belonging to a network tends to scale linearly with the size they perceive that network as having. (A typical American neither perceives nor values the growth of that network in China.) Which means that each individual observes what Bob Metcalfe did when he came up with his rule of thumb. We found that interesting, but left it out of the paper. Another discussion we had was on different networks that scale differently. The two extremes we came up with are the telegraph networks and eBay. In the case of the telegraph network there is an asymmetry between senders and receivers. It is easy to make every resident of a major US city a potential receiver, at which point the network value scales linearly with the number of senders. And at the opposite end, auctions scale in a less approximately linear fashion. However we decided against including that because we didn't have detailed enough data to support our preliminary conclusions. Also you should note that the IEE Spectrum article is an abridged form of http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metcalfe.pdf http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metcalfe.pdf. The full version offers several different lines of reasoning that all converge on n log(n) scaling rules.
- pierrefar 16y ago
  I'm dragging others with me. It's the least I could do.
  - gbhn 16y ago
    I posted on FB about my ambivalence about all the changes. I got quite a bit of attention to that post. I've decided that what I'm going to do is not deactivate, but scrub my profile and only post through reflector services (Buzz/Twitter).
- kevinh 16y ago
  How? I can imagine less effective scenarios. 1) Not changing your life at all. 2) Not touching your Facebook page again. 3) Dressing up in a chicken suit and dancing around a major intersection. etc. If you delete your Facebook page, it's one less user that Facebook can claim to have; if enough people do it, it could put a dent (however minor) in their bottom line.
  - natrius 16y ago
    As with any sort of vote, it's not your vote (or account deletion) that matters, it's the number of votes you convince people to make. It just seems odd to me when people trumpet insignificant actions when they clearly won't make a difference. If you want Facebook to change their policies, you're going to have to do more than delete your account.
    - yesimahuman 16y ago
      And it always seems odd to me when people berate these "insignificant" actions even though they are a step in the direction many would like to go. Change doesn't happen over night.
      - ericd 16y ago
        The reason they berate them is that people frequently say "If everyone does a little, we'll get a lot done.", and then do a little and stop, congratulating themselves about what they've done. In order to affect real change, a lot of people need to do a lot. Focusing on and performing little actions distracts from doing the the big things that actually make a noticeable difference.
    - hko 16y ago
      He did do more. He deleted his account, and told everyone on HN he had.
      - natrius 16y ago
        That's a good point, but most people on HN are well aware of the arguments for deleting one's Facebook profile. Persuasion also didn't seem to be the intent of his comment, but I could be wrong.
- codingthewheel 16y ago
  I beg to differ. It's exactly the thing to do. Our only option is to vote with our proverbial wallets, and in Facebook's case that means leaving the site entirely, and not just deactivating, but DELETING, Facebook accounts, and encouraging others to do the same. How To Delete Your Facebook Account: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703 http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703 Believe it or not, there is a social web beyond Facebook.
- paulbaumgart 16y ago
  Not if you back it up with a donation to the EFF. I just gave them a few coins. Seems like the best value:effort ratio for affecting the outcome of this case.
- hga 16y ago
  It's also the easiest, and after I refuse to play their game, what do I care? Well, actually, as Lauren Weinstein pointed out, the political reaction to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's attitude towards privacy and the usual likely overreaction might hurt all Web 2.0 players, good and bad: "He appears to be unapologetically reveling in taking advantage of many Facebook users' naivete about privacy risks, and shows no signs of backing down." http://www.nnsquad.org/archives/nnsquad/msg03450.html http://www.nnsquad.org/archives/nnsquad/msg03450.html So I do have a greater stake in this, but there's not a whole lot that I see that I can do. That won't be true for others of course.

Geez facebook. Bye forever. Account not just deactivated, but deleted.

natrius 16y ago

That is quite possibly the least effective means of protest I can imagine.

jacquesm 16y ago
According to the corollary of Metcalfe's law it is actually very effective. I think it would read something like "The value of a communications network decreases with the square of the amount of people that have left it".
- btilly 16y ago
  Can we please stop calling Metcalfe's "law" a law? It makes the exceedingly questionable assumption that we value all possible connections equally. Many different approaches to quantifying the value of networks converge on the much more reasonable estimate that value tends towards n log(n) rather than n*n. See http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/metcalfes-law-is-wrong/0 http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/metcalfes-law-is... for more.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Nice writing! Ok, we'll call it 'Tillys anything but a law' in stead ;) I think everybody realizes that Metcalfe's law is not a 'law' in the sense that it is a given or an absolute, any of those - including Moores law and others like it are to be taken with a grain of salt. The practical upshot of all this is that if the value of a network goes up with a non-linear factor when the number of participants increases the reverse also holds true. What we call it doesn't really matter and Metcalfe's law will do as good as any other shorthand description that will convey the point. Thanks for the interesting read by the way, it's nice to see that even if Metcalfe was maybe wrong in the 'absolute' in principle the concept of non-linear value increase seems to hold true.
    - btilly 16y ago
      Non-linear is absolutely true. But the non-linearity is not nearly as strong as a lot of dot com business models assumed. In an interesting twist, Metcalfe's law comes closest to being true in mediums where existing social relations are less important. For instance eBay is a classic example. If I want to sell, I really do value the network at the size of said network because I have no idea who wants to buy from me. Which is one reason why it is so hard to compete with eBay. (Despite how badly they mess up.)
      - jacquesm 16y ago
        This is all extremely interesting, especially the fact that you've been able to narrow down the 'range' of possible values by some real world analysis. So, if I understand your piece correctly the value of the power changes over time depending on the size of the network and the available pool, in other words even the log(n) factor is not exact, in the beginning it is probably closer the to the original n^2, whereas later on it moves to more sedate territory, but it always seems to be higher than the '1' added by attaching another node to the network. The 'competing with ebay' has a nice counterpart. In the netherlands there was a small local site called 'marktplaats' that had entrenched itself in the early days of the web, and nothing ebay did to dislodge it worked, so they ended up buying it. The kicker is that 'hyves' (the dutch counterpart to facebook) is losing ground because people have a lot of international connections to friends and family, but trade seems to be limited to geographic boundaries and hence marktplaats succeeded where hyves is in trouble.
        btilly 16y ago
        The Netherlands examples are interesting. In the piece I quoted, it isn't that value scales like nn then like n log(n). The argument is that value scales like n log(n), which for small n looks more like nn than it does for large n. That said the argument given implicitly assumes that most of the people in the network have most of the people they really care about in the network as well. This assumption is less likely to be true for small networks than large ones. It didn't make it into the paper, but an interesting optical illusion was discussed while we were writing it. Most of us judge the ubiquity of a network according to how many people we personally know who use it. Therefore people's value from belonging to a network tends to scale linearly with the size they perceive that network as having. (A typical American neither perceives nor values the growth of that network in China.) Which means that each individual observes what Bob Metcalfe did when he came up with his rule of thumb. We found that interesting, but left it out of the paper. Another discussion we had was on different networks that scale differently. The two extremes we came up with are the telegraph networks and eBay. In the case of the telegraph network there is an asymmetry between senders and receivers. It is easy to make every resident of a major US city a potential receiver, at which point the network value scales linearly with the number of senders. And at the opposite end, auctions scale in a less approximately linear fashion. However we decided against including that because we didn't have detailed enough data to support our preliminary conclusions. Also you should note that the IEE Spectrum article is an abridged form of http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metcalfe.pdf http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metcalfe.pdf. The full version offers several different lines of reasoning that all converge on n log(n) scaling rules.
pierrefar 16y ago
I'm dragging others with me. It's the least I could do.
- gbhn 16y ago
  I posted on FB about my ambivalence about all the changes. I got quite a bit of attention to that post. I've decided that what I'm going to do is not deactivate, but scrub my profile and only post through reflector services (Buzz/Twitter).
kevinh 16y ago
How? I can imagine less effective scenarios. 1) Not changing your life at all. 2) Not touching your Facebook page again. 3) Dressing up in a chicken suit and dancing around a major intersection. etc. If you delete your Facebook page, it's one less user that Facebook can claim to have; if enough people do it, it could put a dent (however minor) in their bottom line.
- natrius 16y ago
  As with any sort of vote, it's not your vote (or account deletion) that matters, it's the number of votes you convince people to make. It just seems odd to me when people trumpet insignificant actions when they clearly won't make a difference. If you want Facebook to change their policies, you're going to have to do more than delete your account.
  - yesimahuman 16y ago
    And it always seems odd to me when people berate these "insignificant" actions even though they are a step in the direction many would like to go. Change doesn't happen over night.
    - ericd 16y ago
      The reason they berate them is that people frequently say "If everyone does a little, we'll get a lot done.", and then do a little and stop, congratulating themselves about what they've done. In order to affect real change, a lot of people need to do a lot. Focusing on and performing little actions distracts from doing the the big things that actually make a noticeable difference.
  - hko 16y ago
    He did do more. He deleted his account, and told everyone on HN he had.
    - natrius 16y ago
      That's a good point, but most people on HN are well aware of the arguments for deleting one's Facebook profile. Persuasion also didn't seem to be the intent of his comment, but I could be wrong.
codingthewheel 16y ago
I beg to differ. It's exactly the thing to do. Our only option is to vote with our proverbial wallets, and in Facebook's case that means leaving the site entirely, and not just deactivating, but DELETING, Facebook accounts, and encouraging others to do the same. How To Delete Your Facebook Account: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703 http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703 Believe it or not, there is a social web beyond Facebook.
paulbaumgart 16y ago
Not if you back it up with a donation to the EFF. I just gave them a few coins. Seems like the best value:effort ratio for affecting the outcome of this case.
hga 16y ago
It's also the easiest, and after I refuse to play their game, what do I care? Well, actually, as Lauren Weinstein pointed out, the political reaction to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's attitude towards privacy and the usual likely overreaction might hurt all Web 2.0 players, good and bad: "He appears to be unapologetically reveling in taking advantage of many Facebook users' naivete about privacy risks, and shows no signs of backing down." http://www.nnsquad.org/archives/nnsquad/msg03450.html http://www.nnsquad.org/archives/nnsquad/msg03450.html So I do have a greater stake in this, but there's not a whole lot that I see that I can do. That won't be true for others of course.