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It's false loyalty. People put up with Facebook, Apple, Google, etc with their fake "we care about you" marketing (could apps stop literally telling me this? it

It's false loyalty. People put up with Facebook, Apple, Google, etc with their fake "we care about you" marketing (could apps stop literally telling me this? it's weird), overpriced, and walled garden megalomania because they are addicted and their other options are mediocre walled gardens (look around). People aren't stupid, they can sense when they are being used and those companies have treated their customers like cattle for the last decade or more. It's going to come crashing down one day, you can't treat customers with blatant disrespect time and time again and be shocked when they finally leave.

austenallred 9y ago
It’s not loyalty at all, it’s just people using the best product available to them. If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. Until that happens, people will continue to use Facebook, because despite what Hacker News thinks, Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. "If you don't want someone doing cocaine, make a better cocaine!" > Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143/Association-of-Facebook-Use-With-Compromised-Well https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143/Assoc... "Face-to-face social interactions enhance well-being. With the ubiquity of social media, important questions have arisen about the impact of online social interactions. In the present study, we assessed the associations of both online and offline social networks with several subjective measures of well-being. We used 3 waves (2013, 2014, and 2015) of data from 5,208 subjects in the nationally representative Gallup Panel Social Network Study survey, including social network measures, in combination with objective measures of Facebook use. We investigated the associations of Facebook activity and real-world social network activity with self-reported physical health, self-reported mental health, self-reported life satisfaction, and body mass index. Our results showed that overall, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with well-being. For example, a 1-standard-deviation increase in “likes clicked” (clicking “like” on someone else's content), “links clicked” (clicking a link to another site or article), or “status updates” (updating one's own Facebook status) was associated with a decrease of 5%–8% of a standard deviation in self-reported mental health. These associations were robust to multivariate cross-sectional analyses, as well as to 2-wave prospective analyses. The negative associations of Facebook use were comparable to or greater in magnitude than the positive impact of offline interactions, which suggests a possible tradeoff between offline and online relationships." Facebook is toxic.
  - KekDemaga 9y ago
    >For example, a 1-standard-deviation increase in “likes clicked” (clicking “like” on someone else's content), “links clicked” (clicking a link to another site or article), or “status updates” (updating one's own Facebook status) was associated with a decrease of 5%–8% of a standard deviation in self-reported mental health. >Facebook is toxic. Or alternatively mentally ill people like Facebook.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - canjobear 9y ago
      If Facebook is filled with mentally ill people then it would be surprising if it weren't toxic. It's a vicious cycle, so correlation becomes causation!
    - _jal 9y ago
      That implies a rather high mental illness rate. High enough that I start wondering about what the baseline is.
  - austenallred 9y ago
    I hate to be the person saying “correlation != causation,” so instead let’s just agree that “the people who liked more things on Facebook self-reported to be less happy” is not a very rigorous way to analyze how Facebook affects human happiness levels.
    - p-funk 9y ago
      Doesn't it follow, regardless of causality, that if Facebook were just as good as face-to-face social interaction, then there would be no difference in happiness levels between people who use Facebook and those who don't? If Facebook had a positive impact on people's lives, then there would be a similar positive correlation in using Facebook compared to seeing someone in person. Maybe there isn't enough proof to say "Facebook is toxic", but it certainly seems true that Facebook is not as good as real human interaction.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- csydas 9y ago
  I strongly disagree especially in the case of social networks. First movers in such spaces have incredible advantages and one of them is a lock-in effect. Countless follow-up social sites have come and gone that either had feature parity or better offerings than Facebook, but failed to get a foothold because of the fact that everyone already had Facebook. Why switch when everyone can already talk and plan? SV really isn't as much of a meritocracy as people like to pretend, as so many times just being first to the party and locking people in is enough to keep them there. I'm sure tons of businesses on exchange would love to ditch and move to Google Apps for Business, but the change is just too much of a hassle, even if the features are exactly as desired. Same for Google businesses looking at the MS office world with starry eyes. The merit often has less to do with a product's success and continued success as much as how efficient they are at locking people in. Going back to Facebook, it's not like there's a way to migrate or exfiltrate your data in any meaningful way to another system. This is an exaggerated comparison, but the mafia adds value much in the same way, in that often you don't have a choice in the matter. This isn't to say people are forced to use Facebook, but much like a mafia town, it's hard to do business otherwise.
  - ameister14 9y ago
    >I strongly disagree especially in the case of social networks. First movers in such spaces have incredible advantages and one of them is a lock-in effect. Countless follow-up social sites have come and gone that either had feature parity or better offerings than Facebook, but failed to get a foothold because of the fact that everyone already had Facebook. Why switch when everyone can already talk and plan? Sure, and that applied to Friendster and Myspace and others as well, until Facebook came along.
    - scott_s 9y ago
      I don't like the term "first mover", because in practice, I think it's rare for the actual first to win. Friendster was the first friend-oriented online social network. They were the first mover, but the site performed terribly. MySpace and Facebook beat Friendster because they were better at doing what people wanted. There are other examples. The iPhone was not the first smart phone, but it was better than all of the others when it came out. It dominated for a while, and even though it's no longer the dominant smart phone (I believe there are more Android phones), all smart phones are derivatives of that first iPhone. Google beat Yahoo and AltaVista. Historically, I think it's usually second-movers that win, because they tend to benefit from the first-movers defining the problem, and one of the second-movers solves it better.
- sidlls 9y ago
  Merely creating something better than Facebook is barely even the ante. Much more than that is required to convince somebody to use Facebook (Google, etc.). Marketing, some appreciable fraction of their userbase also using the would-be competitor, etc. is the absolute minimum requirement to play their game.
tayo42 9y ago
> you can't treat customers with blatant disrespect time and time again and be shocked when they finally leave. Has this actually ever happened? Maybe it's just to early but I can't think of any.
sametmax 9y ago
No, people can't sense anything. They keep forgiving the biggest cheaters in life and politics and reward thzir misbehavior with power and money. Better that people will do what's best for them assume they put a thought into it. They don't. They just react. And very basically.
ryanmarsh 9y ago
shocked when they finally leave Where are they going to go?
dsacco 9y ago
Why do you believe that people en masse "put up" with these tech companies? In my experience you're right that they're not stupid or unreasonable, but I think you're otherwise mistaken about the opinions of the vast majority. In my experience, they don't think they're being used - it's never occurred to them, because they don't particularly worry about centralized megacorporations having their personal data. And even if they are made aware of that, I think most still don't really care, even if they agree. I judge how much people care about their personal data being in the hands of large companies based on how much they talk about it (but begrudgingly put up with it) or how much they stop using the products. Most people don't think about, talk about or consider their data being in e.g. Facebook's hands, and most people don't delete their Facebook accounts or diminish their usage, even when something shinier comes along. A lot of people on HN do those things and it's clear they care about their personal privacy, but I see no evidence that even a large minority of people actually care.
untog 9y ago
> People put up with Facebook No, people love Facebook. But they love "Facebook", the utility that lets them connect with friends and family from afar, post photos and videos of loved ones and organise events. They do not love Facebook, the monolith company headed up by Mark Zuckerberg. That's the important distinction here. People like the products they are given, but couldn't care less about how they are given them. By and large, that's fine, but it's highlighted when people assume that Uber customers care about how they were pioneers in innovation or whatever else SV applauds them for. Nope. They just want cheap car rides, please.

austenallred 9y ago

It’s not loyalty at all, it’s just people using the best product available to them. If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. Until that happens, people will continue to use Facebook, because despite what Hacker News thinks, Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
> If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. "If you don't want someone doing cocaine, make a better cocaine!" > Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143/Association-of-Facebook-Use-With-Compromised-Well https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143/Assoc... "Face-to-face social interactions enhance well-being. With the ubiquity of social media, important questions have arisen about the impact of online social interactions. In the present study, we assessed the associations of both online and offline social networks with several subjective measures of well-being. We used 3 waves (2013, 2014, and 2015) of data from 5,208 subjects in the nationally representative Gallup Panel Social Network Study survey, including social network measures, in combination with objective measures of Facebook use. We investigated the associations of Facebook activity and real-world social network activity with self-reported physical health, self-reported mental health, self-reported life satisfaction, and body mass index. Our results showed that overall, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with well-being. For example, a 1-standard-deviation increase in “likes clicked” (clicking “like” on someone else's content), “links clicked” (clicking a link to another site or article), or “status updates” (updating one's own Facebook status) was associated with a decrease of 5%–8% of a standard deviation in self-reported mental health. These associations were robust to multivariate cross-sectional analyses, as well as to 2-wave prospective analyses. The negative associations of Facebook use were comparable to or greater in magnitude than the positive impact of offline interactions, which suggests a possible tradeoff between offline and online relationships." Facebook is toxic.
- KekDemaga 9y ago
  >For example, a 1-standard-deviation increase in “likes clicked” (clicking “like” on someone else's content), “links clicked” (clicking a link to another site or article), or “status updates” (updating one's own Facebook status) was associated with a decrease of 5%–8% of a standard deviation in self-reported mental health. >Facebook is toxic. Or alternatively mentally ill people like Facebook.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - canjobear 9y ago
    If Facebook is filled with mentally ill people then it would be surprising if it weren't toxic. It's a vicious cycle, so correlation becomes causation!
  - _jal 9y ago
    That implies a rather high mental illness rate. High enough that I start wondering about what the baseline is.
- austenallred 9y ago
  I hate to be the person saying “correlation != causation,” so instead let’s just agree that “the people who liked more things on Facebook self-reported to be less happy” is not a very rigorous way to analyze how Facebook affects human happiness levels.
  - p-funk 9y ago
    Doesn't it follow, regardless of causality, that if Facebook were just as good as face-to-face social interaction, then there would be no difference in happiness levels between people who use Facebook and those who don't? If Facebook had a positive impact on people's lives, then there would be a similar positive correlation in using Facebook compared to seeing someone in person. Maybe there isn't enough proof to say "Facebook is toxic", but it certainly seems true that Facebook is not as good as real human interaction.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
csydas 9y ago
I strongly disagree especially in the case of social networks. First movers in such spaces have incredible advantages and one of them is a lock-in effect. Countless follow-up social sites have come and gone that either had feature parity or better offerings than Facebook, but failed to get a foothold because of the fact that everyone already had Facebook. Why switch when everyone can already talk and plan? SV really isn't as much of a meritocracy as people like to pretend, as so many times just being first to the party and locking people in is enough to keep them there. I'm sure tons of businesses on exchange would love to ditch and move to Google Apps for Business, but the change is just too much of a hassle, even if the features are exactly as desired. Same for Google businesses looking at the MS office world with starry eyes. The merit often has less to do with a product's success and continued success as much as how efficient they are at locking people in. Going back to Facebook, it's not like there's a way to migrate or exfiltrate your data in any meaningful way to another system. This is an exaggerated comparison, but the mafia adds value much in the same way, in that often you don't have a choice in the matter. This isn't to say people are forced to use Facebook, but much like a mafia town, it's hard to do business otherwise.
- ameister14 9y ago
  >I strongly disagree especially in the case of social networks. First movers in such spaces have incredible advantages and one of them is a lock-in effect. Countless follow-up social sites have come and gone that either had feature parity or better offerings than Facebook, but failed to get a foothold because of the fact that everyone already had Facebook. Why switch when everyone can already talk and plan? Sure, and that applied to Friendster and Myspace and others as well, until Facebook came along.
  - scott_s 9y ago
    I don't like the term "first mover", because in practice, I think it's rare for the actual first to win. Friendster was the first friend-oriented online social network. They were the first mover, but the site performed terribly. MySpace and Facebook beat Friendster because they were better at doing what people wanted. There are other examples. The iPhone was not the first smart phone, but it was better than all of the others when it came out. It dominated for a while, and even though it's no longer the dominant smart phone (I believe there are more Android phones), all smart phones are derivatives of that first iPhone. Google beat Yahoo and AltaVista. Historically, I think it's usually second-movers that win, because they tend to benefit from the first-movers defining the problem, and one of the second-movers solves it better.
sidlls 9y ago
Merely creating something better than Facebook is barely even the ante. Much more than that is required to convince somebody to use Facebook (Google, etc.). Marketing, some appreciable fraction of their userbase also using the would-be competitor, etc. is the absolute minimum requirement to play their game.

tayo42 9y ago

> you can't treat customers with blatant disrespect time and time again and be shocked when they finally leave. Has this actually ever happened? Maybe it's just to early but I can't think of any.

sametmax 9y ago

No, people can't sense anything. They keep forgiving the biggest cheaters in life and politics and reward thzir misbehavior with power and money. Better that people will do what's best for them assume they put a thought into it. They don't. They just react. And very basically.

ryanmarsh 9y ago

shocked when they finally leave Where are they going to go?

dsacco 9y ago

Why do you believe that people en masse "put up" with these tech companies? In my experience you're right that they're not stupid or unreasonable, but I think you're otherwise mistaken about the opinions of the vast majority. In my experience, they don't think they're being used - it's never occurred to them, because they don't particularly worry about centralized megacorporations having their personal data. And even if they are made aware of that, I think most still don't really care, even if they agree. I judge how much people care about their personal data being in the hands of large companies based on how much they talk about it (but begrudgingly put up with it) or how much they stop using the products. Most people don't think about, talk about or consider their data being in e.g. Facebook's hands, and most people don't delete their Facebook accounts or diminish their usage, even when something shinier comes along. A lot of people on HN do those things and it's clear they care about their personal privacy, but I see no evidence that even a large minority of people actually care.

untog 9y ago

> People put up with Facebook No, people love Facebook. But they love "Facebook", the utility that lets them connect with friends and family from afar, post photos and videos of loved ones and organise events. They do not love Facebook, the monolith company headed up by Mark Zuckerberg. That's the important distinction here. People like the products they are given, but couldn't care less about how they are given them. By and large, that's fine, but it's highlighted when people assume that Uber customers care about how they were pioneers in innovation or whatever else SV applauds them for. Nope. They just want cheap car rides, please.