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Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings

706 points by Cbasedlifeform 9y ago

bluetwo 9y ago
How many people here would scale back their Facebook use to one day a week, say Facebook Friday?
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  scaled back to zero already. edit to add... this is like some sort of Russian roulette. ignoring the Russian connection pun, that's still a funny joke.
  - bluetwo 9y ago
    Which is great. It seems to me that zuckerburg cares about ad revenue, which means he needs eyeballs and needs to keep them for as long as possible. And, he has proven to care very little about privacy. Therefore, for those who can't shake the habit 100%, cutting back to one day a week is a good way to get the connections you need while slicing into the attention getting ad revenue.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
danschumann 9y ago
Hmmm. I'd get off facebook but then my friends would think I unfriended them.
- computerex 9y ago
  Facebook doesn't seem necessary at all.
- owly 9y ago
  It’s SO unnecessary. Not having it forces you to engage directly with people you truly like. You’ll have more time for them as a bonus.
  - excitom 9y ago
    Not a big Facebook fan here, but I do use it to keep track of and keep in touch with old friends and distant family. That said, I've never clicked an add nor engaged with some silly quiz.
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  the sooner you're off it, the sooner you can build your graph in other places that work JUST AS WELL.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    But then where else could I show off my idealized version of my life?
    - grogenaut 9y ago
      Holiday cards and your yard decoration like people have for eons.
- astronautjones 9y ago
  this would make me question the legitimacy of said friendships
- savanaly 9y ago
  I thought the opportunity to write a nice "I'm quitting facebook" post to let all your friends know was half the reason people were doing it?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
dleslie 9y ago
Still looking for an alternative self-updating Rolodex.
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  there's only one reason it doesn't exist... go build it.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    Building it isn’t the hard part.
    - abhishekjha 9y ago
      Keeping it sane is.
    - dleslie 9y ago
      Indeed, building it is easy but getting people to update it is hard.
      - matte_black 9y ago
        Maybe if you emailed people every month or so asking them to update their info if it’s out of date?
        dleslie 9y ago
        A great many people that I communicate with stopped using email regularly ages ago. For younger folks the means of communication are messenger apps and social platforms.
    - chrisvalleybay 9y ago
      Marketing it is. I actually thought about this idea for a long time, and did a design based off of the phonebook in iOS 11. But marketing this application is nearly impossible, because it doesn't have any extra features. It just has phone numbers [contact details], and that doesn't excite users to spend time getting it set up. So I concluded that this is something that has to be done from the OS vendor side. We need an extension to the CardDAV protocol, and we need vendors to implement it.
firloop 9y ago
I wonder how many more would abandon Facebook after seeing the targeting options in the Ads creator.
- matte_black 9y ago
  Bizarre specific options like “single black female addicted to weed?”
  - cmac2992 9y ago
    Ads manager targeting is a funny beast. Even FB doesn't really know the available targeting buckets. A lot of the time, the algorithms just create the targeting buckets.
- williamscales 9y ago
  I think the fact that these search options used to be available to everyone means that nobody would care. I remember how freaking creepy that was being able to search for people of a specific sexual orientation between certain ages and single in my network. And I still used Facebook.
- cmac2992 9y ago
  Possible, but much of that info is also surfaced in the "why am I seeing this ad" button. Wait until people find out about the Facebook pixel.
- jzl 9y ago
  Tons of screenshots in the amazing series of articles about that topic from ProPublica. Like this: https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w/20170914-facebook-jew-haters-inline01-2274.png https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w... via: https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-enabled-advertisers-to-reach-jew-haters https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-enabled-advertis... https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-advertising-discrimination-housing-race-sex-national-origin https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-advertising-disc... and many more.
maskedinvader 9y ago
Facebook did report the first decline in monthly active users (MAU), is this the turning point [1]? Ive always wondered if facebook would die a quick death or a slow crawl. Wonder who gains from this ? twitter resurgance ? dont think so, snap ? not so sure, time for google to give another go to push google+? 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-north-america-daus-drop-for-first-time.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-north-america-daus-...
- hsljekskfh 9y ago
  twitter just had their first profits. the celebrities use it, marketers use it... seems like the big contender, at least for people over 20
- cyberferret 9y ago
  Twitter resurgence? Is there one? I am basically turned off Twitter far more than I am Facebook at the moment. The signal to noise ratio there has tilted FAR into the red zone of late. The proliferation of bots, and the ability for anyone with a pulse and a stupid meme graphic to plaster them into any conversation has just killed the conversational or learning capacity of that platform for me.
  - foxylad 9y ago
    I'd love to get off both Twitter and Facebook, but that network effect... I went and had a look at Vero, but it doesn't allow posting text, only associated with an image, movie, link or book. I checked how Diaspora was going, but the most popular pods have 2K users, and there are no pods in NZ or even Australia. I guess I should get off my chuff and set up a New Zealand pod, but life is full enough already without taking that on. Maybe we should all go back to blogging.
    - maskedinvader 9y ago
      ah the network effect. Same reason im still on fb. Diaspora is brilliant but I feel its never going to capture the imagination of the general public. Maybe we should all go back to blogging. - if only, sigh I get more and more depressed browsing my fb newsfeed (which I mostly do when I am taking a shit and run out of things to read)
mr_spothawk 9y ago
I think it's worth stating: if you're not deleting your friend connections, you're not leaving. I say that because your friends retain their friend count, and that's a big part of FB-identity. Also, you can always pick it back up when "they" fix the problem (which isn't fixable). I made my act public, left a message with contact info as my last message, and then deleted all my "friends" (which was, honestly, a pretty nice reminder of folks I hadn't spoken with in a while). Finally, I bcc'd them on an email so I could stay in touch. I can always reply-all that email if I need to spam them with news/info/etc... it's not a perfect solution, but it's the best I could come up with on my own, and I'm advising my friends to do the same.
- matte_black 9y ago
  What did you do about weak link connections, did you send them emails as well or just drop them out?
  - mr_spothawk 9y ago
    Yeah, absolutely I sent an email to the weak connections I wanted to retain, though it didn't include all of them. To be fair, i'd been pruning for years. The CA thing wasn't such a surprise (though it's impacts certainly were) because I've been a paranoid shit for most of my recent life. I had been using a false name on my primary FB since I started the account in ~2008... funny anecdote, I once got a popup on my real account with a question about my "fake" profile: "Is this a real person?" Yes, of course... and now I'm going to make a post on my wall asking my friends to please say "yes" if they got the same question.
- abhishekjha 9y ago
  I have an account which I use just to talk or argue with anybody on the facebook, mostly in news comment sections. No photo, no apps, no friends. Just a profile name. I wonder if anything can still get attached to me.
  - mr_spothawk 9y ago
    if you stay logged in, you are serving them your browsing history in indirect ways.
cyberferret 9y ago
The question is - will this be just a minor blip to Facebook and then normal services will resume after the indignation wears off? Or will it the beginning of the end of the social media dominance of the platform? For me personally, I use FB primarily to keep in touch with friends, family and old colleagues who are spread all over the world. It is purely a contact tool, and not really used to market products of services etc., so my attachment is purely an emotional one. However, I must admit that this latest episode has really hammered my trust in the platform FAR more than any other previous ones (and there have been many). Yesterday, for the first time ever, I went through my FB settings and removed a lot of personal information as well as stagnant apps that I had approved YEARS ago from my permitted apps list. I am also seriously reconsidering what I do post on there from now on, as well as drastically reducing the number of times I post. I've also turned off location tracking for the FB app on my phone, and am considering deleting it altogether and just sticking to the web platform. Will I change my mind in a months time? It's unlikely, but who knows? I like being able to talk to family that are literally on the other side of the world, and it is too hard for me to get them all to adopt Telegram or any other communication tool outside of FB Messenger, so I may find myself drawn back in.
- astronautjones 9y ago
  I had deactivated my account a year or two ago, and turned it back on to "permanently delete" my account. The most prominent UX option about deleting your account on their privacy page is is an opt-in for deleting your account after you die (...)
- netsharc 9y ago
  A year or so ago I noticed I would wake up and the first thing I did was load up Facebook in my phone. I deleted the app, and what do I do? i still open it on my phone's browser. So I changed my password to 32 characters generated by Keepass, and make sure I logged out of it on my phone. I'm still logged in on the desktop, but nowadays it's pretty quiet anyway. Thr last few days I've been using a Chrome extension (1) to delete stuff from my wall, reasoning that just like real life interactions, it's okay to forget things (well I did download my archive/went through my activity logs and saved them as HTML files). There's only 1 person I wish to stay in touch that I talk to exclusively on Messenger. I think I will have to persuade them to install another app. Admittedly it will be WhatsApp, which is also Zuckerberg's tool for "dumb fucks". (1) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-manager/ljfidlkcmdmmibngdfikhffffdmphjae https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-m...
lowglow 9y ago
I asked a friend if they would pay $1/mo for a facebook alternative, and they said no -- they would just start using instagram. When I explained facebook owned instagram, they still didn't think $1/mo would be worth it, citing: "It's just another thing I have to pay per month: Netflix, Spotify, etc." People have mental budgets, and maybe their psychological good will in balancing those budgets get drained over time for things like recurring payments that aren't on a bigger scale ($100+) and aren't 100% necessary like internet.
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  this is already a grey comment for me, but I think your message is relevant. People need "friends" and they get them where they can. As a society, we deserve and owe our selves better than this. There are FOSS alternatives which are nearly as good. This is as fine a time as any to turn up the pressure on our friends, and to work for solutions that don't/can't sell us out (intentionally, or accidentally).
  - tunesmith 9y ago
    What are the alternatives again? So far I'm hearing mastodon (more twitterish), riot/matrix (more slackish), diaspora, email, and starting a blog.
    - mxuribe 9y ago
      There are also gnu social, hubzilla, friendica, movim, pleroma, postactiv, etc. And, oh by the way, before you think these different alternatives don't interact...well, they do actually can and do interact with each other...some of the interactions are not 100%. As an example, gnu social, pleroma, postactiv all interact seamlessly 100% with one another...and they all interact a bunch with mastodon, though a little less than 100%. But still there is interactivity, just like emails that can easily cross different systems. And, you can join a server for any of the above for free! The only exception would be if YOU choose to manage your own server - which entails server monthly fees, and your administration time...Otherwise, if you only wish to be a user on someone else's server, that's free. So, you see, you really don't need facebook (or twitter or instagram or snapchat, etc.).
kercker 9y ago
"The hashtag #DeleteFacebook appeared more than 10,000 times on Twitter within a two-hour period on Wednesday, according to the analytics service ExportTweet. On Tuesday, it was mentioned 40,398 times, according to the analytics service Digimind." Is this really such a big deal for Facebook? Suppose 50000 persons delete their Facebook everyday, then it will just lose 1,825,0000 users one year, not counting new users joining Facebook every year. And Facebook has 2 billion users. Edit: The number lost in one year is 1,825,0000, not 1,825,000.
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  maybe this is how facebook finally turns into Gab.
- bloaf 9y ago
  I think you dropped a zero somewhere along the way.
- afterburner 9y ago
  Check your number commas.
- elgenie 9y ago
  50K * 365 = 18.25M But that's still only .00857 of 2.13 billion daily actives.
  - pfarnsworth 9y ago
    You just compared a yearly figure to a daily figure?
    - elgenie 9y ago
      Well, GP did, but this shouldn't be that hard to comprehend. If for an entire year 50K users leave Facebook forever every day, the result would be FB's daily actives shrinking by eight and a half tenths of a percent … if one assumes that each of deactivating used Facebook daily.
- 9y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
What's interesting is that of the 5 people the article profiled, only 1 seems likely to have voted for Trump. Based on location and occupation, I would guess the others were not Trump voters. My impression of this whole scandal, is that where you are on the political spectrum affects how you see it. I think a lot of the anger at Facebook is not because of what they did, but what they people see as the consequence from it, mainly the election of Donald Trump. Facebook cannot afford to alienate both halves of the partisan divide at the same time. There is a substantial portion of the Left that at least partially blames Facebook for Donald Trump's election. Given that, I wonder if in the near future they will try to position themselves as a more conservative friendly company than the other Silicon Valley tech players.
- gowld 9y ago
  NY articles profile the author's friends and family.
- itronitron 9y ago
  Consequences matter. I'm generally okay with animal testing that is focused on finding disease cures and generally not okay with animal testing that supports bio-weapons programs.
- rsuelzer 9y ago
  I suspect the friends API feature was actually created for the Obama 2012 campaign. I know they used it very heavily in their phone banking app online in 2012. They were also collecting this data.
- coatmatter 9y ago
  > What's interesting is that of the 5 people the article profiled, only 1 seems likely to have voted for Trump. And what's the proportion who would still vote for Trump today?
shiado 9y ago
I have a bad feeling that like the Snowden revelations and Occupy Wall Street these findings will actually embolden companies like Facebook and Cambridge Analytica the same way the NSA and Wall Street banks were likely emboldened because it will once again prove that after a short outburst of moral outrage people will go back to being complacent without substantive change being enacted. They will get away with it and double down on the activity because they know that nothing will be done.
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  that song about waking up and neutering the surveillance state keeps playing in my head.
- visarga 9y ago
  > after a short outburst of moral outrage people will go back to being complacent without substantive change being enacted But this time it's not just people, it's political parties and whole countries that are being affected.
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  In and of itself that's a signal that for some reason things like this don't seem to make the general public change their behavior en masse? I'd love to see some kind of reporting/study on why on average the general public does not respond to events you mention like Snowden/Manning/OWS/Bank Bailout and others. I mean at one point in time social movements in the US got things done like Temperance Movement, Womens Voting Rights, Civil Rights Movement etc... Maybe there is a larger narrative here that I'm missing, like each of these things are part of the anti-corporate movement or something.
  - ShorsHammer 9y ago
    The Snowden revelations had a huge response, just not how you'd hope. There was a dropoff in government criticism and traffic to websites related to certain keywords. Was certainly a win for Eve. http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/277843-snowden-revelations-had-chilling-effect-on-web-browsing http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/277843-snowden-revel... https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2769645 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2769645
patrickdavey 9y ago
Anyone on here is probably one of the tech influencers for their family group. I've just started the work of trying to get people to move onto using Signal. I really really like the ethos of the organisation. I don't see how there's any downside (other than the time of getting people to switch). Wouldn't it be great if, as a start, everyone moved to a secure not-going-to-sell-your-data organisation for instant messaging. Then, if Whisper Systems could just bring out some magic Facebook alternative, well, that would be just amazing. We should care about this stuff, we should try to influence our friends and family.
- ktta 9y ago
  There's also Secret Conversations[1] which can be used in the Messenger app, that implements the Signal Protocol. Ideally people should move off Facebook, but I don't think most of people's friends (including mine) care about this event that much. [1]: https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/1084673321594605 https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/1084673321594605
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  > I don't see how there's any downside (other than the time of getting people to switch). Network effects. It's hard to switch if not all of your contacts also switch.
  - patrickdavey 9y ago
    Absolutely, that's why people like you and me (who care) should put in the effort to try and influence those around them. Once enough people do it, and once it's cool to do it, it'll happen.
    - cx1000 9y ago
      We should also make them all switch to Ubuntu and vim too, right?
      - patrickdavey 9y ago
eric_b 9y ago
I've had a dormant FB account for years. I don't like the site and I never add content. I believe that social media has become a net detractor to quality-of-life for many (most?) humans who use it. I think Mark Zuckerberg is either incredibly naive, or a sleaze bag, but in either case should suffer some consequences from this. That said, I probably won't delete my account. It remains the only way many of my friends plan events. It exists, for me, solely so I can be invited to things. I imagine there are many others like me. Like it or not, I suspect this is a blip for FB.
- rndmind 9y ago
  I am sure that MZ is the latter. F*book is a farce. You are the problem. Be the change you want to see. Reach out to people other ways for events. FFS, you are connected 24x7 to the internet, not facebook exclusively, never in the history of humanity have we had this level of instantaneous hyperconnection, that excuse is a lie.
  - visarga 9y ago
    > Reach out to people other ways for events. It's the other way around, he's being reached by other people through FB. What good would it do to make an account where his friends are not?
    - rndmind 9y ago
      Surely the reason he is being invited is not because he has an account on an online platform. We are in a hyperconnected world where an infinite number of ways to communicate exist. You don't need to rely on a single closed-garden platform for communication. F*book sole purpose as a corporation is built around harvesting as much personal data about you as possible and selling it to the highest and most nefarious bidder.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        As someone who never had an FB account, I can assure you I've missed multiple events over the years over this. People simply forget that I don't have an account.
sydli 9y ago
A point that is brought up occasionally, but probably not enough: Deleting Facebook really isn't possible for a nontrivial percentage of the world population, since Facebook is the internet in some places. Their monopoly over internet infrastructure in some developing countries is such that people can't afford non-Facebook internet packages, and seems to disincentivize actual low-cost internet infrastructure from being built out.
- harry8 9y ago
  I'm not in favour of nationalization as a rule. I can see it being a populist thing to do in those countries. Facebook are the agent of foreign states, we must control our own critically important infrastructure! (cheers) Free internet for all! (more cheers) Populism is so hot right now.
  - jimmywanger 9y ago
    > I'm not in favour of nationalization as a rule. > we must control our own critically important infrastructure! (cheers) You're conflating two things. If the US somehow lost all steel foundries without being able to spin things up in a reasonable amount of time, we're screwed in a war. You must indeed make sure that you're self-sufficient in things that are essential for living in case you're cut off due to circumstances. I'm not quite sure what your point is.
- tuna-piano 9y ago
  Absolutely correct. I've met people in Asia (Myanmar and Nepal) who have just accessed the internet for the first time in the past 12-24 months (through their Android smartphones). But they don't know the true internet - they only know the internet through the Facebook app. They use it like we use Google and web browsers. To them, Facebook is the internet. They don't have email accounts. They don't use the browser. They don't search the web. I met someone in a small town who never even used the maps feature. I tried to think of what value the true internet might bring them, but when I suggested that "you can search for news and read other things", the response was that they already did that with the Facebook App. One guy handed me his phone, so I could add myself as a friend on his Facebook. While I started typing my name, I noticed his search history... and to him, Facebook was even a substitute for what people in the USA might use Incognito mode for! I would call Facebook their internet portal, but it's not really a portal to anything - Facebook is just the entire internet to them. Buzzfeed (yes, Buzzfeed) did an excellent writeup of Myanmar, that mirrors what I saw there: https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-tru.. https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-tru.... “Nobody asks, they don’t care about the email,” he said, explaining that most don’t know that creating an email address is free, and easy. “No one is using that. They have Facebook.”
mirimir 9y ago
OK, but is Facebook really that much worse than other mainstream social media? Or at least, now, not four years ago.
rsuelzer 9y ago
I am getting a bit annoyed by how shocked people on here are about this. The friends end point in the graph API was hardly a secret. It is an open API. There was no way for Facebook to enforce that data collected from authorized apps wasn't being saved. It's part of the reason the friends API was put under tighter restrictions a few years ago.
- qwerty456127 9y ago
  > I am getting a bit annoyed by how shocked people on here are about this. Exactly. Didn't people know all the proprietary social networks are spyware+adware? That's the way they earn money. BTW Ghostery says it knows 92 trackers in the social media category.
  - coatmatter 9y ago
    I tried Ghostery twice and didn't understand it - sites seemed to keep breaking so I go with an alternative method (uBlock Origin + DuckDuckGo extension, and Brave on mobile). Based on this experience, Ghostery is not something I would simply throw on "most people's" computer. I would not for a single moment think that most people (as you implied) understand social networks. I think we become a part of the problem if we simply assume all users are just like us and know all about the negatives of tech. Facebook evidently didn't anticipate/address it early enough despite all that talent - did they really want this Cambridge Analytica situation to happen? What are we doing to fix this?
    - qwerty456127 9y ago
      I've only mentioned Ghostery to show there are dozens other social networks known spying on you. Do you happen to know one that doesn't?
      - coatmatter 9y ago
        Ah fair enough; I think DuckDuckGo's extension does a similar thing with regards to trackers and appears to be easier to use (for me). As for a social network that doesn't spy like the current big ones? I'd go with IRC. I know people have proposed alternatives like Mastodon or Diaspora*, but I don't think they're good alternatives either compared to gradually giving them up to learn old offline alternatives: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/jobs/quit-social-media-your-career-may-depend-on-it.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/jobs/quit-social-media... As for Steemit, I think this "feature" is most absurd. I hope it never takes off: https://steemit.com/faq.html#Can_I_delete_or_deactivate_my_account https://steemit.com/faq.html#Can_I_delete_or_deactivate_my_a... > "Can I delete or deactivate my account?" > "Accounts can not be deactivated or deleted. The account along with all of its activity is permanently stored in the blockchain."
forapurpose 9y ago
If you want this to happen, users need an alternative. I'm not sure it matters to them if the alternative truly protects their confidentiality or if they will understand whether it does or not. I know there are alternatives out there, is there one that is user-friendly, confidential, and secure, and that users can switch to right now? It reminds me to remind myself: A project that seemed quixotic a month ago suddenly has potential and value. You need to start developing such things when the market is in the 'quixotic' stage in order to have them ready when the world suddenly understands. Congratulations to those who started months or years ago.
whyenot 9y ago
I already deleted my FB account once, maybe 6-7 years ago (not suspended, deleted). It was a mistake. I lost contact with a lot of people, including my relatives in Europe and old friends from grad school. Once I rejoined FB, it took a long time to re-build my friends list. FB has a lot of flaws and I don't use very much or share very much on it, but for staying in contact with people... I can't think of anything better, unfortunately.
- v_lisivka 9y ago
  And then FB bans you and your friends for 30 days in random order. Users started to post reports about who is banned today, for how long, and where to find their backup account (usually, on Telegram).
throwaway76524 9y ago
This is fake news. That article is a sob story opinion piece with 5 peoples views. I deleted facebook 3 years ago, don't use whatsApp or insta and despise them but at least give some statistics
shaki-dora 9y ago
To be honest: I’m not willing to delete my account just now. I fear people will just forget inviting me to events if I’m not in the list of friends. But I will stop posting, liking, and commenting. Let’s slowly starve the monster.
- nukeop 9y ago
  You are still forcing others to use it through network effects. Either let it go completely, or don't pretend you're fighting it. We need more people to draw a line in the sand and ditch this oppressive system completely. Facebook wants you to be afraid of living without it.
knodi 9y ago
I hope many many ditch Facebook, a message must be sent. I personally made my last facebook comment "Das vidanya facebook" and disabled my account and deleted facebook & messenger apps.
adjkant 9y ago
If you want to cripple Facebook but still get the advantages of using it as a contact book / for events and groups, just block the news feed. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat... Yes, I know they make money other ways. But if no one uses the news feed, their ad revenue will take a noticeable hit. Most of the negatives come with the endless feed/scroll in the first place. I still spend time on Facebook, but only when I want to. No endless scroll, and I don't miss a thing when it comes to groups/events/messaging.
- prklmn 9y ago
  And if you want to access messaging from mobile but have deleted the app, you can go to http://mbasic.facebook.com http://mbasic.facebook.com
- r00fus 9y ago
  But you're forgetting the tracking pixel and cookies used in many many sites... Plus then privacy loss is not just for you but the shadows you cast (shadow profiles for those who never logged in based on relationships and inferences from live users)
post_break 9y ago
Used tools to delete all of my facebook and twitter content. I'm free from it. Feels great.
joering2 9y ago
It was nice to "see" Zuckerberg on CNN today, given he was at his office reading from the script (you can see the eye movement) and interviewer was somewhere else in a greenbox room. Unless CNN went SO amateurish that you only show a back head of interviewer and you never show him with the journalist together!
math0ne 9y ago
Unfortunately if I want to stay in contact with my family I have to use facebook. Pretty effective lockin.
jdlyga 9y ago
I truly believe only a vocal minority are actually deleting their Facebook. I think a majority will simply cut back on their Facebook and social media use.
dingo_bat 9y ago
None of the everyday fb users even know about this. They're just using fb like normal. Only those who were already anit-fb are creating hype.
- kccqzy 9y ago
  That's the purpose of news media like The New York Times. At first the already anti-fb people delete their Facebook accounts and create hype, the media reports it (a newspaper in this case), and more ordinary users get to know the trend and would consider doing the same.
  - visarga 9y ago
    > the media reports it (a newspaper in this case), and more ordinary users get to know the trend and would consider doing the same If FB allows these reports to be shown in their feeds. /s
intrasight 9y ago
I've been passively looking for a good FB alternative for a couple years. And I mean a web site not an app (don't get why anyone would use social media apps). Perhaps I need to more actively look. But I figured some on this thread have done some research. With a good alternative, I think I could get enough of my friends to convert.
sumoboy 9y ago
If people knew the amount of info collected and sold they would abandon everything. Even 7 months before your born, someone has a profile on you. What CA did leveraging data for targeting is just the beginning, ML applied to data in the future will make what CA did look like amateur hour. Like others have said with elections, this all started long ago with social, CA just happened to do it better this time. Even without them, sophisticated targeting can still be developed regardless, so it's just a matter of money and audience reach.
- confounded 9y ago
  > ..CA just happened to do it better this time. Even without them, sophisticated targeting can still be developed regardless... I think the thing to take away from all this is that people don’t like it. Our societies have democratic principles; governments can (and have a duty to) prevent sophisticated targeting from non-consensual data collection and if it’s not what people want. You can make an argument that it is what people really want because they’re too desperate, ignorant or subjugated to consider anything else, so the serfs must be farmed. Let’s find out!
  - ChicagoBoy11 9y ago
    Not so sure. Remember when the Newsfeed came out? The NYT similarly thought people really did not like it. Facebook certainly didn't get rid of it and we certainly stopped caring. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/fashion/10FACE.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/fashion/10FACE.html
- joering2 9y ago
  Which part of 64,000 users accepted App connection but their friends been exploited to the tune of 50,000,000 you don't understand??
- 0xcafecafe 9y ago
  While you make a valid point, my pet peeve of late has been people using "your" in place of "you're" since it makes me reread the sentence.
oh-kumudo 9y ago
CA scandal is just a final push. I kinda stopped using FB like half a year ago, for that I don't really know what I could get from this platform. Viral videos, nope. Sensationalized editorial with an angry face attached below, nope. Friends having party like no tomorrow, fine. But there are so many of them, and they are kinda repetitive. Since it is public and real name social network, I have to be extra careful sharing anything that might be offensive to any member of my 'friends'. This kind of self-censorship is pretty stressful, I end up just shutting up. Novelty and fun is gone from this platform for me.
- osrec 9y ago
  That's how it starts. The clever folk quit first (they also start first) as they can clearly identify with their intrinsic dislike of the platform. The less clever take a little while longer to realise how much they're hating it too, often getting suckered by cheap tricks used by the platform to keep them hooked. They will figure it out soon enough though! I think I'll probably start shorting some Facebook stock in the next couple of weeks. The platform is nearly worthless now that popular prejudice has started to turn against it.
  - abakker 9y ago
    You might have missed the short opportunity. Better go long on whatever you think might pick up the slack. I don’t think the void that Facebook leaves will be left unfilled.
    - aws_ls 9y ago
      If the replacement is a federated social network, then there may be 2/3 large competing players for the interfacing part. My dream is a cryptocurrency based social network, so that those running p2p nodes can also get paid. Also the end clients can compete with each other for the interface part - dumb/some-algo based (Facebook can also be one of the clients ;-))
      - abakker 9y ago
locusm 9y ago
App access to private data should have an expiry date. Looking at app access and seeing apps you tried for a day 5 years ago shouldn't be the default.
TimJRobinson 9y ago
I've started using Scuttlebutt recently (A decentralized social network, setup guide at https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/) and it's surprisingly good. It's mostly geeks on there, and it'll still be a few years before my Mum can use it, but that's the way I like it. Facebook is mostly just a photo feed of what I'm up to for my family now.
- codingdave 9y ago
  That is exactly my fear - that people will use this as an opportunity to try to jump in and literally become the next Facebook. Not that I am opposed to a replacement... I even put together a design myself to avoid the problems we've learned in the last 10 years. But I'm not building it -- because unless it is a service that is paid, open-source, and easy enough for Grandma to use, the realities of operating such a beast are going to drive it off-course.
  - lifty 9y ago
    Scuttlebutt is open source and peer to peer, but not paid, because there is no one to pay. I recently joined, although I knew about it for a long time, and I was pleasantly surprised on how well it works. The communities have a very nice feel as well, like IRC had in the 90s.
sv12l 9y ago
I think this is just another Uber-fiasco in the making, there were lot #deleteuber campaigns, but they came out unscathed, I believe.
erikb 9y ago
There were still people on Facebook? Hard to believe. I think people fleeing from Whatsapp or Instagram would be real news.
john_wang_doe 9y ago
Quitted facebook a long time ago when I started to feel extreme dopamine hits when I get a new message. Social media, gaming, and internet is too addicting for me
brylie 9y ago
This is a good opportunity to join and/or recommend decentralized networks, like Mastadon: https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ https://instances.social/ https://instances.social/
- eevilspock 9y ago
  "Private posts are not encrypted. Make sure you trust your instance admin not to just read your private posts on the back-end. Do not say anything you would not want potentially intercepted." fatal flaw.
  - JetSpiegel 9y ago
    Well, it's not worse than Facebook, since you can choose what instance you use. Choose an instance ran by someone you trust.
thinkMOAR 9y ago
If only all the sites stopped embedding the social media buttons, i don't mind people on Facebook, twitter, instagram, etc etc, i do mind their tracking buttons everywhere.
baki 9y ago
Users still abandoning Facebook for a while, but not really for "Cambridge Analytica Findings", but because of social media censorship for conservative, libertarian and for (classical) liberal views...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
fredley 9y ago
I haven't deleted mine, but I will the moment GDPR kicks in, and I have a legal right to expect that my data will be completely removed from their systems, which is not the case now.
mark_l_watson 9y ago
I don’t care much about what platforms other people use. My preference is paying for services. While I use DuckDuckGo, I am an enthusiastic Google customer for GCP, Google Play books/movies/tv shows, premium music with no ads YouTube. I would like to use Twitter more, but I don’t like the ads. I would gladly pay $50/year for ad free Twitter. I like Gnu Social, but not enough like-minded people to follow. I spend 20 minutes a month in FaceBook, but jump through hoops not to be tracked.
- bshimmin 9y ago
  I use Tweetbot on my Mac for Twitter and don't get ads. I imagine the same probably applies to other third-party Twitter apps too.
- xexers 9y ago
  Are you sure those companies aren't still selling your data? Especially in your example of youtube premium... I'd imagine youtube is selling the data about which videos you liked, watched, etc. The premium part may just be that you don't see any ads
  - pythonaut_16 9y ago
    I don't think Google "sells" any data at all. They use data they have to sell advertising space, and in the case of Youtube I'm sure they use it to inform different platform decisions, but it doesn't ever leave Google. Their huge amount of data is their strongest competitive advantage.
- coatmatter 9y ago
  I wouldn't recommend taking up a Twitter habit - it's more addictive than Facebook (because of the wider/deeper talent pool). However, what ads are you referring to on Twitter? Promoted tweets (DuckDuckGo's comes to mind)? Because apart from that, I don't recall seeing any when using uBlock Origin. I also can't really recall many intrusive ads when using the official Android app - perhaps I'm already so far in that I don't see them anymore. To be honest, I wouldn't be upset if all social media and news websites were to become paywalled tomorrow. Perhaps I would then get back into books again (even free ones from the local library).
readhn 9y ago
I think it would be fun if consumers of digital information did perform en masse exodus from Facebook after an event like this. It may serve as an example for other service providers that there is a risk of losing their customers base if they screw up too. As of today google, twitter, fb, apple really have carte blanche from consumers since they know most consumers are not going to lift a finger and the whole thing will be forgotten in a week due to short attention span of most consumers.
zerostar07 9y ago
Would be funny to track how many of them will post to facebook about it. And then how many will relapse a month later. And then how many of them will come back to post about how their 1 week without facebook went.
donmb 9y ago
Small hype. In 1 month its business as usual.
- acorkery 9y ago
  The report of my death was an exaggeration.
AnatMl2 9y ago
Does anyone know if there's a way to delete the account completely? I mean, I tried deactivating it months ago, but knowing that the profile is still out there bothers me a lot.
- tjwds 9y ago
  Allegedly there's a form to specifically request that they remove your data: https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=faq_content https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=faq_co...
  - AnatMl2 9y ago
    Thank you, I might try it out!
EvanAgnar 9y ago
I don't think we'll see a hard decline in usage as much as we might see people become more thoughtful in /how/ they use the platform. I made this mental adjustment last year when I went through and deleted /every single comment and post I had ever made./ Since then I've made maybe a dozen posts on Facebook? Less? And I'll even go and delete some of those from time to time. Don't feed the beast.
el_cid 9y ago
puts tinfoil hat on There's an avalanche of articles from the news corp lately regarding Facebook. Is this a battle of the titans? puts tinfoil hat down
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
agentofoblivion 9y ago
If you’re worried about privacy, there’s an alternative strategy to removing data/tracking, and that’s obscuring your data by burying it in the noise of fake data. I’ve installed plugins that automatically issue searches, crawl pages, and click on ads. Clicking on irrelevant ads destroys the value of ads themselves. This pleases me.
- mancerayder 9y ago
  Any specific browser plugin recommendations? I use Firefox with uBlock and a few others, but Google has me by my mobile device.
  - fenwick67 9y ago
    I have AdNauseum installed. I can't tell you whether it actually throws them off or not, but I agree with the post above - "this pleases me". The best thing I've found for social media ads is to manually click on ads that are way off-base and reply to the posts. Now I have lots of ads for pedialyte and vinyl releases of video game soundtracks - which I have no use for.
Khaine 9y ago
Good. It is about time people wake up to facebook and Zuckerberg's lack of belief in privacy[1][2]. I remember when this chart[3] first made the rounds. If this didn't convince people that facebook is evil. I don't know what will [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-privacy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-statements-on-privacy-2003-2018.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg... [3] http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/
PeterStuer 9y ago
I personally stopped using Facebook as an experiment in September of last year. The idea was to go 1 month without the social network. After the month was over, I never went back. This wasn't about the data sharing. I was aware of this all along. I also didn't delete my account. All data 'breached' has been sucked out long ago. It was just that I realized Facebook made me feel worse. I was constantly engaged with championing causes I feel passionate about. However, I did realize that for all my activity I achieved fairly little, and that the daily 'triggers' and 'write-offs' didn't function as a relieve, but rather as a self-reinforcing of a feeling of perpetual anger and discomfort. I do miss some of the social interactions with friends and acquaintances with whom FB was the only link left. I kept Messenger and occasionally use that still to communicate more directly. I don't think I will go back to FB (or similar social networks), even if they would solve the 'privacy' issues. I currently feel this type of 'long distance/low threshold' social paradigm is more harmful than beneficial to our psychological makeup.
wheresvic1 9y ago
Users leaving the platform is definitely a dent in Facebook's image. However, I'm pretty sure that at the end of the day if companies start withdrawing their funding for Facebook ads, the platform's shine will drop sharply. So far apart from Mozilla, there really hasn't been any comment from the corporate side. I suppose it's a bit of the chicken and the egg problem - Fb has a lot of data so companies want targeted advertising and companies paying for it leads Fb to collect data.
alokitr 9y ago
I give all these fb junkies (yes that's what they are, they just don't know it, just like smokers used to) about 5 days. Then the withdrawal symptoms will kick in and they 'll give in. Facebook knows what it is doing.
sigi45 9y ago
Its time to regulate this. Make facebook and all other social media platforms to open up connectivity to other platforms. It can't be, that one company has so much power.
tanu057 9y ago
Today I switched off the location tracking for Facebook on my Phone. I never enter the correct birthday on Facebook. Unfortunately we cann't trust any of the tech companies.There are a lot of people working and keeping track of security for now seems impossible. Anyone in the company can put in code with a security hole. May be AI in future can help in making systems secure. For now, none of the apps is secure. There are companies that can unlock any iphone. Would you leave apple for that?
- pmlnr 9y ago
  Disable/uninstall FB from your phone completely and use https://mbasic.facebook.com https://mbasic.facebook.com in the browser instead.
phonebucket 9y ago
This whole comments is full of people talking about FB in general, and not this specific article. As far as the article goes, it's hardly suprising. There are a few specific people who have left, and others who are thinking of leaving. Picking out individual cases like this is hardly any evidence of a mass exodus. Also, it's interesting to note that lots of people who are leaving say things like 'I more or less stopped using it, but Cambridge Analytica was the last straw'. It's almost like those users were going to leave FB anyway. So is there really any exodus to speak of, or not?
lu11 9y ago
I deleted my Facebook in 2012 because I don't like it. However, scraping user profiles is a privacy problem? What about archive.org that will scrape your personal website so you are never able to get rid of your previous version?
- gnode 9y ago
  You can prevent crawling (and retroactively remove your site content from the Internet Archive) using robots.txt, with the ia_archiver user agent: https://www.fightcyberstalking.org/how-to-block-your-website-from-the-wayback-machine/ https://www.fightcyberstalking.org/how-to-block-your-website...
  - lu11 9y ago
    You can. That doesn't change the fact that they did not ask your permission to scrape your personal data from your personal website. They are many other sites that will do the same. Facebook profile seems to be safer option than personal website if you look at it from the angle of data privacy. You can't walk down the street wearing invisibility cloak in real life. Likewise, you can't have a rich digital life without leaving some of your data here and there. Maybe scraping personal data should be illegal.
te_chris 9y ago
Key point to remember: A user in the developed world is MUCH more valuable to FB, so even if only westerners quit, each westerner is worth up to 35x what someone from the developed world is worth, in terms of ad income. They may have '2 billion' users, but they're super vulnerable to an exodus of even 5% of them in terms of income, if they're from the right regions. (This is based on my hazy recollection of stats which had a US FB user worth $35USD to FB in income, where someone from the developed world drew in <$1USD)
diego_moita 9y ago
This will fade away. Facebook will thrive. (Disclaimer: I closed my FB account 4 years ago). The majority of people behave by classical Pavlovian conditioning: they'll get addicted for what gives them immediate pleasure even if it brings them pain in the long run. That's why we have so much obesity, tobacco, cocaine and opioids. This is why FB will keep thriving.
- coatmatter 9y ago
  Supposing you're right, what is Facebook so good at that MySpace couldn't manage to do? What really is their "moat" that no one else can touch? Interesting that you mention obesity, tobacco, cocaine and opiods because not all of those problems are inevitable for all societies. Personally, I think the two most misused technologies from last century is the car (invented late 19th century, but mostly innovated on in the 20th), and television. We've been here before, and the problems can be fixed so long as the answer isn't "more technology". As for cigarettes, Australia has led the world in curbing smoking rates through a number of "socialist" measures. I don't know enough about the other two but I don't think it's as bad as in America.
  - IshKebab 9y ago
    Now it is network effects. But when it first started it became popular because: a) MySpace wasn't actually that popular (was your mum on it for example?) so there weren't many network effects. b) It looked clean, unlike the eye-stabbing experience of MySpace c) It was more secure than MySpace because only people from your university could see your profile. Things are different now so you're never going to have success with that strategy (although the university-based access thing could potentially work again). I think what will kill Facebook now is the sheer volume of low quality content on it - not just adverts but "Dave tagged you in this meme", and "Jen shared this gif of a cute dog" and "Remember what you were doing one year ago today!". It's just, not very pleasant. You can tame it by using an ad blocker and unsubscribing from most of your friends... but even then there are some post types you can only "See less of" (yeah right), and it's .. just... crap. This privacy thing is bullshit. It was an obvious problem in 2012 and nobody quit over it then. They removed the API in 2015. Why would people quit now?
MindTooth 9y ago
Good.
wpasc 9y ago
First, I think what happened with Facebook/Cambridge Analytica is appalling. With that said, I think this article is silly and emblematic of poor technology coverage in the media. I think it would be awesome if users really did delete their facebook accounts if they thought these actions crossed some line. But the article cites ~50,000 #deletefacebook mentions. Come on, 50k hashtag shares is evidence of "Users Abandon..."? it then proceeds to document case studies of people leaving. The article title would imply that users truly did see this action as a last straw and are leaving in droves, and it seems that is the narrative that the writer wanted to write about. Is that truly happening though? I'd love to see the data, but I don't think they will delete their accounts. Why would the writer elect to write an article fitting a narrative for which there is little data? Surely, the more interesting article would be "Are users deleting their accounts? Why not?" That I would read and find interesting.
- ashelmire 9y ago
  Who do you think would give us that data? Facebook? Doubtful. I think it's reasonable to assume that if 50k people tweeted about it, a far larger number probably took action (active tweeters are just a small subset of the population) or are at least thinking about reducing usage or deleting. Deleting facebook has been a topic of conversation in my circle for months since I did it ~4 months ago or so. It's definitely on people's radar as far as other media seems to indicate (we've had anti-facebook threads daily for months on HN), and my friends (mostly tech people and very active facebook users) have almost all reduced their usage significantly.
  - edraferi 9y ago
    Facebook is a public company, so this should all show up in their quarterly earnings reports. At minimum the Cambridge Analytica scandal will have to be addressed. If users are leaving the platform, that would need to be reported too.
  - rmc 9y ago
    We'll be able to tell how many people did it by how Facebook reacts. If they do basically nothing and carry on as normal, then we know that FB knows that hardly anyone has deleted their accounts. If it looks like FB is shitting bricks, then we know they're hella scared, which means enough people deleted it to scare them.
hvass 9y ago
This article will have merit if it was posted after their next earnings call and there was a percentage decline in users. This is all anecdotal and speculation. Habits are the hardest thing to break. And 50,000 people, even if US-only, are a rounding error for their MAU/DAUs. C'mon, NYT.
cvaidya1986 9y ago
The headline is quite ambiguous to say the least.
danjoc 9y ago
Manufactured outrage. Nobody is leaving Facebook. They're too vain. Even Brian Acton was saying #DeleteFacebook from his Facebook. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633630

bluetwo 9y ago

How many people here would scale back their Facebook use to one day a week, say Facebook Friday?

mr_spothawk 9y ago
scaled back to zero already. edit to add... this is like some sort of Russian roulette. ignoring the Russian connection pun, that's still a funny joke.
- bluetwo 9y ago
  Which is great. It seems to me that zuckerburg cares about ad revenue, which means he needs eyeballs and needs to keep them for as long as possible. And, he has proven to care very little about privacy. Therefore, for those who can't shake the habit 100%, cutting back to one day a week is a good way to get the connections you need while slicing into the attention getting ad revenue.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

danschumann 9y ago

Hmmm. I'd get off facebook but then my friends would think I unfriended them.

computerex 9y ago
Facebook doesn't seem necessary at all.
owly 9y ago
It’s SO unnecessary. Not having it forces you to engage directly with people you truly like. You’ll have more time for them as a bonus.
- excitom 9y ago
  Not a big Facebook fan here, but I do use it to keep track of and keep in touch with old friends and distant family. That said, I've never clicked an add nor engaged with some silly quiz.
mr_spothawk 9y ago
the sooner you're off it, the sooner you can build your graph in other places that work JUST AS WELL.
- matte_black 9y ago
  But then where else could I show off my idealized version of my life?
  - grogenaut 9y ago
    Holiday cards and your yard decoration like people have for eons.
astronautjones 9y ago
this would make me question the legitimacy of said friendships
savanaly 9y ago
I thought the opportunity to write a nice "I'm quitting facebook" post to let all your friends know was half the reason people were doing it?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

dleslie 9y ago

Still looking for an alternative self-updating Rolodex.

mr_spothawk 9y ago
there's only one reason it doesn't exist... go build it.
- matte_black 9y ago
  Building it isn’t the hard part.
  - abhishekjha 9y ago
    Keeping it sane is.
  - dleslie 9y ago
    Indeed, building it is easy but getting people to update it is hard.
    - matte_black 9y ago
      Maybe if you emailed people every month or so asking them to update their info if it’s out of date?
      - dleslie 9y ago
        A great many people that I communicate with stopped using email regularly ages ago. For younger folks the means of communication are messenger apps and social platforms.
  - chrisvalleybay 9y ago
    Marketing it is. I actually thought about this idea for a long time, and did a design based off of the phonebook in iOS 11. But marketing this application is nearly impossible, because it doesn't have any extra features. It just has phone numbers [contact details], and that doesn't excite users to spend time getting it set up. So I concluded that this is something that has to be done from the OS vendor side. We need an extension to the CardDAV protocol, and we need vendors to implement it.

firloop 9y ago

I wonder how many more would abandon Facebook after seeing the targeting options in the Ads creator.

matte_black 9y ago
Bizarre specific options like “single black female addicted to weed?”
- cmac2992 9y ago
  Ads manager targeting is a funny beast. Even FB doesn't really know the available targeting buckets. A lot of the time, the algorithms just create the targeting buckets.
williamscales 9y ago
I think the fact that these search options used to be available to everyone means that nobody would care. I remember how freaking creepy that was being able to search for people of a specific sexual orientation between certain ages and single in my network. And I still used Facebook.
cmac2992 9y ago
Possible, but much of that info is also surfaced in the "why am I seeing this ad" button. Wait until people find out about the Facebook pixel.
jzl 9y ago
Tons of screenshots in the amazing series of articles about that topic from ProPublica. Like this: https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w/20170914-facebook-jew-haters-inline01-2274.png https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo2000w... via: https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-enabled-advertisers-to-reach-jew-haters https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-enabled-advertis... https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-advertising-discrimination-housing-race-sex-national-origin https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-advertising-disc... and many more.

maskedinvader 9y ago

Facebook did report the first decline in monthly active users (MAU), is this the turning point [1]? Ive always wondered if facebook would die a quick death or a slow crawl. Wonder who gains from this ? twitter resurgance ? dont think so, snap ? not so sure, time for google to give another go to push google+? 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-north-america-daus-drop-for-first-time.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-north-america-daus-...

hsljekskfh 9y ago
twitter just had their first profits. the celebrities use it, marketers use it... seems like the big contender, at least for people over 20
cyberferret 9y ago
Twitter resurgence? Is there one? I am basically turned off Twitter far more than I am Facebook at the moment. The signal to noise ratio there has tilted FAR into the red zone of late. The proliferation of bots, and the ability for anyone with a pulse and a stupid meme graphic to plaster them into any conversation has just killed the conversational or learning capacity of that platform for me.
- foxylad 9y ago
  I'd love to get off both Twitter and Facebook, but that network effect... I went and had a look at Vero, but it doesn't allow posting text, only associated with an image, movie, link or book. I checked how Diaspora was going, but the most popular pods have 2K users, and there are no pods in NZ or even Australia. I guess I should get off my chuff and set up a New Zealand pod, but life is full enough already without taking that on. Maybe we should all go back to blogging.
  - maskedinvader 9y ago
    ah the network effect. Same reason im still on fb. Diaspora is brilliant but I feel its never going to capture the imagination of the general public. Maybe we should all go back to blogging. - if only, sigh I get more and more depressed browsing my fb newsfeed (which I mostly do when I am taking a shit and run out of things to read)

mr_spothawk 9y ago

I think it's worth stating: if you're not deleting your friend connections, you're not leaving. I say that because your friends retain their friend count, and that's a big part of FB-identity. Also, you can always pick it back up when "they" fix the problem (which isn't fixable). I made my act public, left a message with contact info as my last message, and then deleted all my "friends" (which was, honestly, a pretty nice reminder of folks I hadn't spoken with in a while). Finally, I bcc'd them on an email so I could stay in touch. I can always reply-all that email if I need to spam them with news/info/etc... it's not a perfect solution, but it's the best I could come up with on my own, and I'm advising my friends to do the same.

matte_black 9y ago
What did you do about weak link connections, did you send them emails as well or just drop them out?
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  Yeah, absolutely I sent an email to the weak connections I wanted to retain, though it didn't include all of them. To be fair, i'd been pruning for years. The CA thing wasn't such a surprise (though it's impacts certainly were) because I've been a paranoid shit for most of my recent life. I had been using a false name on my primary FB since I started the account in ~2008... funny anecdote, I once got a popup on my real account with a question about my "fake" profile: "Is this a real person?" Yes, of course... and now I'm going to make a post on my wall asking my friends to please say "yes" if they got the same question.
abhishekjha 9y ago
I have an account which I use just to talk or argue with anybody on the facebook, mostly in news comment sections. No photo, no apps, no friends. Just a profile name. I wonder if anything can still get attached to me.
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  if you stay logged in, you are serving them your browsing history in indirect ways.

cyberferret 9y ago

The question is - will this be just a minor blip to Facebook and then normal services will resume after the indignation wears off? Or will it the beginning of the end of the social media dominance of the platform? For me personally, I use FB primarily to keep in touch with friends, family and old colleagues who are spread all over the world. It is purely a contact tool, and not really used to market products of services etc., so my attachment is purely an emotional one. However, I must admit that this latest episode has really hammered my trust in the platform FAR more than any other previous ones (and there have been many). Yesterday, for the first time ever, I went through my FB settings and removed a lot of personal information as well as stagnant apps that I had approved YEARS ago from my permitted apps list. I am also seriously reconsidering what I do post on there from now on, as well as drastically reducing the number of times I post. I've also turned off location tracking for the FB app on my phone, and am considering deleting it altogether and just sticking to the web platform. Will I change my mind in a months time? It's unlikely, but who knows? I like being able to talk to family that are literally on the other side of the world, and it is too hard for me to get them all to adopt Telegram or any other communication tool outside of FB Messenger, so I may find myself drawn back in.

astronautjones 9y ago
I had deactivated my account a year or two ago, and turned it back on to "permanently delete" my account. The most prominent UX option about deleting your account on their privacy page is is an opt-in for deleting your account after you die (...)
netsharc 9y ago
A year or so ago I noticed I would wake up and the first thing I did was load up Facebook in my phone. I deleted the app, and what do I do? i still open it on my phone's browser. So I changed my password to 32 characters generated by Keepass, and make sure I logged out of it on my phone. I'm still logged in on the desktop, but nowadays it's pretty quiet anyway. Thr last few days I've been using a Chrome extension (1) to delete stuff from my wall, reasoning that just like real life interactions, it's okay to forget things (well I did download my archive/went through my activity logs and saved them as HTML files). There's only 1 person I wish to stay in touch that I talk to exclusively on Messenger. I think I will have to persuade them to install another app. Admittedly it will be WhatsApp, which is also Zuckerberg's tool for "dumb fucks". (1) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-manager/ljfidlkcmdmmibngdfikhffffdmphjae https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-m...

lowglow 9y ago

I asked a friend if they would pay $1/mo for a facebook alternative, and they said no -- they would just start using instagram. When I explained facebook owned instagram, they still didn't think $1/mo would be worth it, citing: "It's just another thing I have to pay per month: Netflix, Spotify, etc." People have mental budgets, and maybe their psychological good will in balancing those budgets get drained over time for things like recurring payments that aren't on a bigger scale ($100+) and aren't 100% necessary like internet.

mr_spothawk 9y ago
this is already a grey comment for me, but I think your message is relevant. People need "friends" and they get them where they can. As a society, we deserve and owe our selves better than this. There are FOSS alternatives which are nearly as good. This is as fine a time as any to turn up the pressure on our friends, and to work for solutions that don't/can't sell us out (intentionally, or accidentally).
- tunesmith 9y ago
  What are the alternatives again? So far I'm hearing mastodon (more twitterish), riot/matrix (more slackish), diaspora, email, and starting a blog.
  - mxuribe 9y ago
    There are also gnu social, hubzilla, friendica, movim, pleroma, postactiv, etc. And, oh by the way, before you think these different alternatives don't interact...well, they do actually can and do interact with each other...some of the interactions are not 100%. As an example, gnu social, pleroma, postactiv all interact seamlessly 100% with one another...and they all interact a bunch with mastodon, though a little less than 100%. But still there is interactivity, just like emails that can easily cross different systems. And, you can join a server for any of the above for free! The only exception would be if YOU choose to manage your own server - which entails server monthly fees, and your administration time...Otherwise, if you only wish to be a user on someone else's server, that's free. So, you see, you really don't need facebook (or twitter or instagram or snapchat, etc.).

kercker 9y ago

"The hashtag #DeleteFacebook appeared more than 10,000 times on Twitter within a two-hour period on Wednesday, according to the analytics service ExportTweet. On Tuesday, it was mentioned 40,398 times, according to the analytics service Digimind." Is this really such a big deal for Facebook? Suppose 50000 persons delete their Facebook everyday, then it will just lose 1,825,0000 users one year, not counting new users joining Facebook every year. And Facebook has 2 billion users. Edit: The number lost in one year is 1,825,0000, not 1,825,000.

mr_spothawk 9y ago
maybe this is how facebook finally turns into Gab.
bloaf 9y ago
I think you dropped a zero somewhere along the way.
afterburner 9y ago
Check your number commas.
elgenie 9y ago
50K * 365 = 18.25M But that's still only .00857 of 2.13 billion daily actives.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  You just compared a yearly figure to a daily figure?
  - elgenie 9y ago
    Well, GP did, but this shouldn't be that hard to comprehend. If for an entire year 50K users leave Facebook forever every day, the result would be FB's daily actives shrinking by eight and a half tenths of a percent … if one assumes that each of deactivating used Facebook daily.
9y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago

What's interesting is that of the 5 people the article profiled, only 1 seems likely to have voted for Trump. Based on location and occupation, I would guess the others were not Trump voters. My impression of this whole scandal, is that where you are on the political spectrum affects how you see it. I think a lot of the anger at Facebook is not because of what they did, but what they people see as the consequence from it, mainly the election of Donald Trump. Facebook cannot afford to alienate both halves of the partisan divide at the same time. There is a substantial portion of the Left that at least partially blames Facebook for Donald Trump's election. Given that, I wonder if in the near future they will try to position themselves as a more conservative friendly company than the other Silicon Valley tech players.

gowld 9y ago
NY articles profile the author's friends and family.
itronitron 9y ago
Consequences matter. I'm generally okay with animal testing that is focused on finding disease cures and generally not okay with animal testing that supports bio-weapons programs.
rsuelzer 9y ago
I suspect the friends API feature was actually created for the Obama 2012 campaign. I know they used it very heavily in their phone banking app online in 2012. They were also collecting this data.
coatmatter 9y ago
> What's interesting is that of the 5 people the article profiled, only 1 seems likely to have voted for Trump. And what's the proportion who would still vote for Trump today?

shiado 9y ago

I have a bad feeling that like the Snowden revelations and Occupy Wall Street these findings will actually embolden companies like Facebook and Cambridge Analytica the same way the NSA and Wall Street banks were likely emboldened because it will once again prove that after a short outburst of moral outrage people will go back to being complacent without substantive change being enacted. They will get away with it and double down on the activity because they know that nothing will be done.

mr_spothawk 9y ago
that song about waking up and neutering the surveillance state keeps playing in my head.
visarga 9y ago
> after a short outburst of moral outrage people will go back to being complacent without substantive change being enacted But this time it's not just people, it's political parties and whole countries that are being affected.
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
In and of itself that's a signal that for some reason things like this don't seem to make the general public change their behavior en masse? I'd love to see some kind of reporting/study on why on average the general public does not respond to events you mention like Snowden/Manning/OWS/Bank Bailout and others. I mean at one point in time social movements in the US got things done like Temperance Movement, Womens Voting Rights, Civil Rights Movement etc... Maybe there is a larger narrative here that I'm missing, like each of these things are part of the anti-corporate movement or something.
- ShorsHammer 9y ago
  The Snowden revelations had a huge response, just not how you'd hope. There was a dropoff in government criticism and traffic to websites related to certain keywords. Was certainly a win for Eve. http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/277843-snowden-revelations-had-chilling-effect-on-web-browsing http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/277843-snowden-revel... https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2769645 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2769645

patrickdavey 9y ago

Anyone on here is probably one of the tech influencers for their family group. I've just started the work of trying to get people to move onto using Signal. I really really like the ethos of the organisation. I don't see how there's any downside (other than the time of getting people to switch). Wouldn't it be great if, as a start, everyone moved to a secure not-going-to-sell-your-data organisation for instant messaging. Then, if Whisper Systems could just bring out some magic Facebook alternative, well, that would be just amazing. We should care about this stuff, we should try to influence our friends and family.

ktta 9y ago
There's also Secret Conversations[1] which can be used in the Messenger app, that implements the Signal Protocol. Ideally people should move off Facebook, but I don't think most of people's friends (including mine) care about this event that much. [1]: https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/1084673321594605 https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/1084673321594605
jamesrcole 9y ago
> I don't see how there's any downside (other than the time of getting people to switch). Network effects. It's hard to switch if not all of your contacts also switch.
- patrickdavey 9y ago
  Absolutely, that's why people like you and me (who care) should put in the effort to try and influence those around them. Once enough people do it, and once it's cool to do it, it'll happen.
  - cx1000 9y ago
    We should also make them all switch to Ubuntu and vim too, right?
    - patrickdavey 9y ago

eric_b 9y ago

I've had a dormant FB account for years. I don't like the site and I never add content. I believe that social media has become a net detractor to quality-of-life for many (most?) humans who use it. I think Mark Zuckerberg is either incredibly naive, or a sleaze bag, but in either case should suffer some consequences from this. That said, I probably won't delete my account. It remains the only way many of my friends plan events. It exists, for me, solely so I can be invited to things. I imagine there are many others like me. Like it or not, I suspect this is a blip for FB.

rndmind 9y ago
I am sure that MZ is the latter. F*book is a farce. You are the problem. Be the change you want to see. Reach out to people other ways for events. FFS, you are connected 24x7 to the internet, not facebook exclusively, never in the history of humanity have we had this level of instantaneous hyperconnection, that excuse is a lie.
- visarga 9y ago
  > Reach out to people other ways for events. It's the other way around, he's being reached by other people through FB. What good would it do to make an account where his friends are not?
  - rndmind 9y ago
    Surely the reason he is being invited is not because he has an account on an online platform. We are in a hyperconnected world where an infinite number of ways to communicate exist. You don't need to rely on a single closed-garden platform for communication. F*book sole purpose as a corporation is built around harvesting as much personal data about you as possible and selling it to the highest and most nefarious bidder.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      As someone who never had an FB account, I can assure you I've missed multiple events over the years over this. People simply forget that I don't have an account.

sydli 9y ago

A point that is brought up occasionally, but probably not enough: Deleting Facebook really isn't possible for a nontrivial percentage of the world population, since Facebook is the internet in some places. Their monopoly over internet infrastructure in some developing countries is such that people can't afford non-Facebook internet packages, and seems to disincentivize actual low-cost internet infrastructure from being built out.

harry8 9y ago
I'm not in favour of nationalization as a rule. I can see it being a populist thing to do in those countries. Facebook are the agent of foreign states, we must control our own critically important infrastructure! (cheers) Free internet for all! (more cheers) Populism is so hot right now.
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  > I'm not in favour of nationalization as a rule. > we must control our own critically important infrastructure! (cheers) You're conflating two things. If the US somehow lost all steel foundries without being able to spin things up in a reasonable amount of time, we're screwed in a war. You must indeed make sure that you're self-sufficient in things that are essential for living in case you're cut off due to circumstances. I'm not quite sure what your point is.
tuna-piano 9y ago
Absolutely correct. I've met people in Asia (Myanmar and Nepal) who have just accessed the internet for the first time in the past 12-24 months (through their Android smartphones). But they don't know the true internet - they only know the internet through the Facebook app. They use it like we use Google and web browsers. To them, Facebook is the internet. They don't have email accounts. They don't use the browser. They don't search the web. I met someone in a small town who never even used the maps feature. I tried to think of what value the true internet might bring them, but when I suggested that "you can search for news and read other things", the response was that they already did that with the Facebook App. One guy handed me his phone, so I could add myself as a friend on his Facebook. While I started typing my name, I noticed his search history... and to him, Facebook was even a substitute for what people in the USA might use Incognito mode for! I would call Facebook their internet portal, but it's not really a portal to anything - Facebook is just the entire internet to them. Buzzfeed (yes, Buzzfeed) did an excellent writeup of Myanmar, that mirrors what I saw there: https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-tru.. https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-tru.... “Nobody asks, they don’t care about the email,” he said, explaining that most don’t know that creating an email address is free, and easy. “No one is using that. They have Facebook.”

mirimir 9y ago

OK, but is Facebook really that much worse than other mainstream social media? Or at least, now, not four years ago.

rsuelzer 9y ago

I am getting a bit annoyed by how shocked people on here are about this. The friends end point in the graph API was hardly a secret. It is an open API. There was no way for Facebook to enforce that data collected from authorized apps wasn't being saved. It's part of the reason the friends API was put under tighter restrictions a few years ago.

qwerty456127 9y ago
> I am getting a bit annoyed by how shocked people on here are about this. Exactly. Didn't people know all the proprietary social networks are spyware+adware? That's the way they earn money. BTW Ghostery says it knows 92 trackers in the social media category.
- coatmatter 9y ago
  I tried Ghostery twice and didn't understand it - sites seemed to keep breaking so I go with an alternative method (uBlock Origin + DuckDuckGo extension, and Brave on mobile). Based on this experience, Ghostery is not something I would simply throw on "most people's" computer. I would not for a single moment think that most people (as you implied) understand social networks. I think we become a part of the problem if we simply assume all users are just like us and know all about the negatives of tech. Facebook evidently didn't anticipate/address it early enough despite all that talent - did they really want this Cambridge Analytica situation to happen? What are we doing to fix this?
  - qwerty456127 9y ago
    I've only mentioned Ghostery to show there are dozens other social networks known spying on you. Do you happen to know one that doesn't?
    - coatmatter 9y ago
      Ah fair enough; I think DuckDuckGo's extension does a similar thing with regards to trackers and appears to be easier to use (for me). As for a social network that doesn't spy like the current big ones? I'd go with IRC. I know people have proposed alternatives like Mastodon or Diaspora*, but I don't think they're good alternatives either compared to gradually giving them up to learn old offline alternatives: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/jobs/quit-social-media-your-career-may-depend-on-it.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/jobs/quit-social-media... As for Steemit, I think this "feature" is most absurd. I hope it never takes off: https://steemit.com/faq.html#Can_I_delete_or_deactivate_my_account https://steemit.com/faq.html#Can_I_delete_or_deactivate_my_a... > "Can I delete or deactivate my account?" > "Accounts can not be deactivated or deleted. The account along with all of its activity is permanently stored in the blockchain."

forapurpose 9y ago

If you want this to happen, users need an alternative. I'm not sure it matters to them if the alternative truly protects their confidentiality or if they will understand whether it does or not. I know there are alternatives out there, is there one that is user-friendly, confidential, and secure, and that users can switch to right now? It reminds me to remind myself: A project that seemed quixotic a month ago suddenly has potential and value. You need to start developing such things when the market is in the 'quixotic' stage in order to have them ready when the world suddenly understands. Congratulations to those who started months or years ago.

whyenot 9y ago

I already deleted my FB account once, maybe 6-7 years ago (not suspended, deleted). It was a mistake. I lost contact with a lot of people, including my relatives in Europe and old friends from grad school. Once I rejoined FB, it took a long time to re-build my friends list. FB has a lot of flaws and I don't use very much or share very much on it, but for staying in contact with people... I can't think of anything better, unfortunately.

v_lisivka 9y ago
And then FB bans you and your friends for 30 days in random order. Users started to post reports about who is banned today, for how long, and where to find their backup account (usually, on Telegram).

throwaway76524 9y ago

This is fake news. That article is a sob story opinion piece with 5 peoples views. I deleted facebook 3 years ago, don't use whatsApp or insta and despise them but at least give some statistics

shaki-dora 9y ago

To be honest: I’m not willing to delete my account just now. I fear people will just forget inviting me to events if I’m not in the list of friends. But I will stop posting, liking, and commenting. Let’s slowly starve the monster.

nukeop 9y ago
You are still forcing others to use it through network effects. Either let it go completely, or don't pretend you're fighting it. We need more people to draw a line in the sand and ditch this oppressive system completely. Facebook wants you to be afraid of living without it.

knodi 9y ago

I hope many many ditch Facebook, a message must be sent. I personally made my last facebook comment "Das vidanya facebook" and disabled my account and deleted facebook & messenger apps.

adjkant 9y ago

If you want to cripple Facebook but still get the advantages of using it as a contact book / for events and groups, just block the news feed. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat... Yes, I know they make money other ways. But if no one uses the news feed, their ad revenue will take a noticeable hit. Most of the negatives come with the endless feed/scroll in the first place. I still spend time on Facebook, but only when I want to. No endless scroll, and I don't miss a thing when it comes to groups/events/messaging.

prklmn 9y ago
And if you want to access messaging from mobile but have deleted the app, you can go to http://mbasic.facebook.com http://mbasic.facebook.com
r00fus 9y ago
But you're forgetting the tracking pixel and cookies used in many many sites... Plus then privacy loss is not just for you but the shadows you cast (shadow profiles for those who never logged in based on relationships and inferences from live users)

post_break 9y ago

Used tools to delete all of my facebook and twitter content. I'm free from it. Feels great.

joering2 9y ago

It was nice to "see" Zuckerberg on CNN today, given he was at his office reading from the script (you can see the eye movement) and interviewer was somewhere else in a greenbox room. Unless CNN went SO amateurish that you only show a back head of interviewer and you never show him with the journalist together!

math0ne 9y ago

Unfortunately if I want to stay in contact with my family I have to use facebook. Pretty effective lockin.

jdlyga 9y ago

I truly believe only a vocal minority are actually deleting their Facebook. I think a majority will simply cut back on their Facebook and social media use.

dingo_bat 9y ago

None of the everyday fb users even know about this. They're just using fb like normal. Only those who were already anit-fb are creating hype.

kccqzy 9y ago
That's the purpose of news media like The New York Times. At first the already anti-fb people delete their Facebook accounts and create hype, the media reports it (a newspaper in this case), and more ordinary users get to know the trend and would consider doing the same.
- visarga 9y ago
  > the media reports it (a newspaper in this case), and more ordinary users get to know the trend and would consider doing the same If FB allows these reports to be shown in their feeds. /s

intrasight 9y ago

I've been passively looking for a good FB alternative for a couple years. And I mean a web site not an app (don't get why anyone would use social media apps). Perhaps I need to more actively look. But I figured some on this thread have done some research. With a good alternative, I think I could get enough of my friends to convert.

sumoboy 9y ago

If people knew the amount of info collected and sold they would abandon everything. Even 7 months before your born, someone has a profile on you. What CA did leveraging data for targeting is just the beginning, ML applied to data in the future will make what CA did look like amateur hour. Like others have said with elections, this all started long ago with social, CA just happened to do it better this time. Even without them, sophisticated targeting can still be developed regardless, so it's just a matter of money and audience reach.

confounded 9y ago
> ..CA just happened to do it better this time. Even without them, sophisticated targeting can still be developed regardless... I think the thing to take away from all this is that people don’t like it. Our societies have democratic principles; governments can (and have a duty to) prevent sophisticated targeting from non-consensual data collection and if it’s not what people want. You can make an argument that it is what people really want because they’re too desperate, ignorant or subjugated to consider anything else, so the serfs must be farmed. Let’s find out!
- ChicagoBoy11 9y ago
  Not so sure. Remember when the Newsfeed came out? The NYT similarly thought people really did not like it. Facebook certainly didn't get rid of it and we certainly stopped caring. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/fashion/10FACE.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/fashion/10FACE.html
joering2 9y ago
Which part of 64,000 users accepted App connection but their friends been exploited to the tune of 50,000,000 you don't understand??
0xcafecafe 9y ago
While you make a valid point, my pet peeve of late has been people using "your" in place of "you're" since it makes me reread the sentence.

oh-kumudo 9y ago

CA scandal is just a final push. I kinda stopped using FB like half a year ago, for that I don't really know what I could get from this platform. Viral videos, nope. Sensationalized editorial with an angry face attached below, nope. Friends having party like no tomorrow, fine. But there are so many of them, and they are kinda repetitive. Since it is public and real name social network, I have to be extra careful sharing anything that might be offensive to any member of my 'friends'. This kind of self-censorship is pretty stressful, I end up just shutting up. Novelty and fun is gone from this platform for me.

osrec 9y ago
That's how it starts. The clever folk quit first (they also start first) as they can clearly identify with their intrinsic dislike of the platform. The less clever take a little while longer to realise how much they're hating it too, often getting suckered by cheap tricks used by the platform to keep them hooked. They will figure it out soon enough though! I think I'll probably start shorting some Facebook stock in the next couple of weeks. The platform is nearly worthless now that popular prejudice has started to turn against it.
- abakker 9y ago
  You might have missed the short opportunity. Better go long on whatever you think might pick up the slack. I don’t think the void that Facebook leaves will be left unfilled.
  - aws_ls 9y ago
    If the replacement is a federated social network, then there may be 2/3 large competing players for the interfacing part. My dream is a cryptocurrency based social network, so that those running p2p nodes can also get paid. Also the end clients can compete with each other for the interface part - dumb/some-algo based (Facebook can also be one of the clients ;-))
    - abakker 9y ago

locusm 9y ago

App access to private data should have an expiry date. Looking at app access and seeing apps you tried for a day 5 years ago shouldn't be the default.

TimJRobinson 9y ago

I've started using Scuttlebutt recently (A decentralized social network, setup guide at https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/) and it's surprisingly good. It's mostly geeks on there, and it'll still be a few years before my Mum can use it, but that's the way I like it. Facebook is mostly just a photo feed of what I'm up to for my family now.

codingdave 9y ago
That is exactly my fear - that people will use this as an opportunity to try to jump in and literally become the next Facebook. Not that I am opposed to a replacement... I even put together a design myself to avoid the problems we've learned in the last 10 years. But I'm not building it -- because unless it is a service that is paid, open-source, and easy enough for Grandma to use, the realities of operating such a beast are going to drive it off-course.
- lifty 9y ago
  Scuttlebutt is open source and peer to peer, but not paid, because there is no one to pay. I recently joined, although I knew about it for a long time, and I was pleasantly surprised on how well it works. The communities have a very nice feel as well, like IRC had in the 90s.

sv12l 9y ago

I think this is just another Uber-fiasco in the making, there were lot #deleteuber campaigns, but they came out unscathed, I believe.

erikb 9y ago

There were still people on Facebook? Hard to believe. I think people fleeing from Whatsapp or Instagram would be real news.

john_wang_doe 9y ago

Quitted facebook a long time ago when I started to feel extreme dopamine hits when I get a new message. Social media, gaming, and internet is too addicting for me

brylie 9y ago

This is a good opportunity to join and/or recommend decentralized networks, like Mastadon: https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ https://instances.social/ https://instances.social/

eevilspock 9y ago
"Private posts are not encrypted. Make sure you trust your instance admin not to just read your private posts on the back-end. Do not say anything you would not want potentially intercepted." fatal flaw.
- JetSpiegel 9y ago
  Well, it's not worse than Facebook, since you can choose what instance you use. Choose an instance ran by someone you trust.

thinkMOAR 9y ago

If only all the sites stopped embedding the social media buttons, i don't mind people on Facebook, twitter, instagram, etc etc, i do mind their tracking buttons everywhere.

baki 9y ago

Users still abandoning Facebook for a while, but not really for "Cambridge Analytica Findings", but because of social media censorship for conservative, libertarian and for (classical) liberal views...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

fredley 9y ago

I haven't deleted mine, but I will the moment GDPR kicks in, and I have a legal right to expect that my data will be completely removed from their systems, which is not the case now.

mark_l_watson 9y ago

I don’t care much about what platforms other people use. My preference is paying for services. While I use DuckDuckGo, I am an enthusiastic Google customer for GCP, Google Play books/movies/tv shows, premium music with no ads YouTube. I would like to use Twitter more, but I don’t like the ads. I would gladly pay $50/year for ad free Twitter. I like Gnu Social, but not enough like-minded people to follow. I spend 20 minutes a month in FaceBook, but jump through hoops not to be tracked.

bshimmin 9y ago
I use Tweetbot on my Mac for Twitter and don't get ads. I imagine the same probably applies to other third-party Twitter apps too.
xexers 9y ago
Are you sure those companies aren't still selling your data? Especially in your example of youtube premium... I'd imagine youtube is selling the data about which videos you liked, watched, etc. The premium part may just be that you don't see any ads
- pythonaut_16 9y ago
  I don't think Google "sells" any data at all. They use data they have to sell advertising space, and in the case of Youtube I'm sure they use it to inform different platform decisions, but it doesn't ever leave Google. Their huge amount of data is their strongest competitive advantage.
coatmatter 9y ago
I wouldn't recommend taking up a Twitter habit - it's more addictive than Facebook (because of the wider/deeper talent pool). However, what ads are you referring to on Twitter? Promoted tweets (DuckDuckGo's comes to mind)? Because apart from that, I don't recall seeing any when using uBlock Origin. I also can't really recall many intrusive ads when using the official Android app - perhaps I'm already so far in that I don't see them anymore. To be honest, I wouldn't be upset if all social media and news websites were to become paywalled tomorrow. Perhaps I would then get back into books again (even free ones from the local library).

readhn 9y ago

I think it would be fun if consumers of digital information did perform en masse exodus from Facebook after an event like this. It may serve as an example for other service providers that there is a risk of losing their customers base if they screw up too. As of today google, twitter, fb, apple really have carte blanche from consumers since they know most consumers are not going to lift a finger and the whole thing will be forgotten in a week due to short attention span of most consumers.

zerostar07 9y ago

Would be funny to track how many of them will post to facebook about it. And then how many will relapse a month later. And then how many of them will come back to post about how their 1 week without facebook went.

donmb 9y ago

Small hype. In 1 month its business as usual.

acorkery 9y ago
The report of my death was an exaggeration.

AnatMl2 9y ago

Does anyone know if there's a way to delete the account completely? I mean, I tried deactivating it months ago, but knowing that the profile is still out there bothers me a lot.

tjwds 9y ago
Allegedly there's a form to specifically request that they remove your data: https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=faq_content https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=faq_co...
- AnatMl2 9y ago
  Thank you, I might try it out!

EvanAgnar 9y ago

I don't think we'll see a hard decline in usage as much as we might see people become more thoughtful in /how/ they use the platform. I made this mental adjustment last year when I went through and deleted /every single comment and post I had ever made./ Since then I've made maybe a dozen posts on Facebook? Less? And I'll even go and delete some of those from time to time. Don't feed the beast.

el_cid 9y ago

puts tinfoil hat on There's an avalanche of articles from the news corp lately regarding Facebook. Is this a battle of the titans? puts tinfoil hat down

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

agentofoblivion 9y ago

If you’re worried about privacy, there’s an alternative strategy to removing data/tracking, and that’s obscuring your data by burying it in the noise of fake data. I’ve installed plugins that automatically issue searches, crawl pages, and click on ads. Clicking on irrelevant ads destroys the value of ads themselves. This pleases me.

mancerayder 9y ago
Any specific browser plugin recommendations? I use Firefox with uBlock and a few others, but Google has me by my mobile device.
- fenwick67 9y ago
  I have AdNauseum installed. I can't tell you whether it actually throws them off or not, but I agree with the post above - "this pleases me". The best thing I've found for social media ads is to manually click on ads that are way off-base and reply to the posts. Now I have lots of ads for pedialyte and vinyl releases of video game soundtracks - which I have no use for.

Khaine 9y ago

Good. It is about time people wake up to facebook and Zuckerberg's lack of belief in privacy[1][2]. I remember when this chart[3] first made the rounds. If this didn't convince people that facebook is evil. I don't know what will [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-privacy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-statements-on-privacy-2003-2018.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg... [3] http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

PeterStuer 9y ago

I personally stopped using Facebook as an experiment in September of last year. The idea was to go 1 month without the social network. After the month was over, I never went back. This wasn't about the data sharing. I was aware of this all along. I also didn't delete my account. All data 'breached' has been sucked out long ago. It was just that I realized Facebook made me feel worse. I was constantly engaged with championing causes I feel passionate about. However, I did realize that for all my activity I achieved fairly little, and that the daily 'triggers' and 'write-offs' didn't function as a relieve, but rather as a self-reinforcing of a feeling of perpetual anger and discomfort. I do miss some of the social interactions with friends and acquaintances with whom FB was the only link left. I kept Messenger and occasionally use that still to communicate more directly. I don't think I will go back to FB (or similar social networks), even if they would solve the 'privacy' issues. I currently feel this type of 'long distance/low threshold' social paradigm is more harmful than beneficial to our psychological makeup.

wheresvic1 9y ago

Users leaving the platform is definitely a dent in Facebook's image. However, I'm pretty sure that at the end of the day if companies start withdrawing their funding for Facebook ads, the platform's shine will drop sharply. So far apart from Mozilla, there really hasn't been any comment from the corporate side. I suppose it's a bit of the chicken and the egg problem - Fb has a lot of data so companies want targeted advertising and companies paying for it leads Fb to collect data.

alokitr 9y ago

I give all these fb junkies (yes that's what they are, they just don't know it, just like smokers used to) about 5 days. Then the withdrawal symptoms will kick in and they 'll give in. Facebook knows what it is doing.

sigi45 9y ago

Its time to regulate this. Make facebook and all other social media platforms to open up connectivity to other platforms. It can't be, that one company has so much power.

tanu057 9y ago

Today I switched off the location tracking for Facebook on my Phone. I never enter the correct birthday on Facebook. Unfortunately we cann't trust any of the tech companies.There are a lot of people working and keeping track of security for now seems impossible. Anyone in the company can put in code with a security hole. May be AI in future can help in making systems secure. For now, none of the apps is secure. There are companies that can unlock any iphone. Would you leave apple for that?

pmlnr 9y ago
Disable/uninstall FB from your phone completely and use https://mbasic.facebook.com https://mbasic.facebook.com in the browser instead.

phonebucket 9y ago

This whole comments is full of people talking about FB in general, and not this specific article. As far as the article goes, it's hardly suprising. There are a few specific people who have left, and others who are thinking of leaving. Picking out individual cases like this is hardly any evidence of a mass exodus. Also, it's interesting to note that lots of people who are leaving say things like 'I more or less stopped using it, but Cambridge Analytica was the last straw'. It's almost like those users were going to leave FB anyway. So is there really any exodus to speak of, or not?

lu11 9y ago

I deleted my Facebook in 2012 because I don't like it. However, scraping user profiles is a privacy problem? What about archive.org that will scrape your personal website so you are never able to get rid of your previous version?

gnode 9y ago
You can prevent crawling (and retroactively remove your site content from the Internet Archive) using robots.txt, with the ia_archiver user agent: https://www.fightcyberstalking.org/how-to-block-your-website-from-the-wayback-machine/ https://www.fightcyberstalking.org/how-to-block-your-website...
- lu11 9y ago
  You can. That doesn't change the fact that they did not ask your permission to scrape your personal data from your personal website. They are many other sites that will do the same. Facebook profile seems to be safer option than personal website if you look at it from the angle of data privacy. You can't walk down the street wearing invisibility cloak in real life. Likewise, you can't have a rich digital life without leaving some of your data here and there. Maybe scraping personal data should be illegal.

te_chris 9y ago

Key point to remember: A user in the developed world is MUCH more valuable to FB, so even if only westerners quit, each westerner is worth up to 35x what someone from the developed world is worth, in terms of ad income. They may have '2 billion' users, but they're super vulnerable to an exodus of even 5% of them in terms of income, if they're from the right regions. (This is based on my hazy recollection of stats which had a US FB user worth $35USD to FB in income, where someone from the developed world drew in <$1USD)

diego_moita 9y ago

This will fade away. Facebook will thrive. (Disclaimer: I closed my FB account 4 years ago). The majority of people behave by classical Pavlovian conditioning: they'll get addicted for what gives them immediate pleasure even if it brings them pain in the long run. That's why we have so much obesity, tobacco, cocaine and opioids. This is why FB will keep thriving.

coatmatter 9y ago
Supposing you're right, what is Facebook so good at that MySpace couldn't manage to do? What really is their "moat" that no one else can touch? Interesting that you mention obesity, tobacco, cocaine and opiods because not all of those problems are inevitable for all societies. Personally, I think the two most misused technologies from last century is the car (invented late 19th century, but mostly innovated on in the 20th), and television. We've been here before, and the problems can be fixed so long as the answer isn't "more technology". As for cigarettes, Australia has led the world in curbing smoking rates through a number of "socialist" measures. I don't know enough about the other two but I don't think it's as bad as in America.
- IshKebab 9y ago
  Now it is network effects. But when it first started it became popular because: a) MySpace wasn't actually that popular (was your mum on it for example?) so there weren't many network effects. b) It looked clean, unlike the eye-stabbing experience of MySpace c) It was more secure than MySpace because only people from your university could see your profile. Things are different now so you're never going to have success with that strategy (although the university-based access thing could potentially work again). I think what will kill Facebook now is the sheer volume of low quality content on it - not just adverts but "Dave tagged you in this meme", and "Jen shared this gif of a cute dog" and "Remember what you were doing one year ago today!". It's just, not very pleasant. You can tame it by using an ad blocker and unsubscribing from most of your friends... but even then there are some post types you can only "See less of" (yeah right), and it's .. just... crap. This privacy thing is bullshit. It was an obvious problem in 2012 and nobody quit over it then. They removed the API in 2015. Why would people quit now?

MindTooth 9y ago

Good.

wpasc 9y ago

First, I think what happened with Facebook/Cambridge Analytica is appalling. With that said, I think this article is silly and emblematic of poor technology coverage in the media. I think it would be awesome if users really did delete their facebook accounts if they thought these actions crossed some line. But the article cites ~50,000 #deletefacebook mentions. Come on, 50k hashtag shares is evidence of "Users Abandon..."? it then proceeds to document case studies of people leaving. The article title would imply that users truly did see this action as a last straw and are leaving in droves, and it seems that is the narrative that the writer wanted to write about. Is that truly happening though? I'd love to see the data, but I don't think they will delete their accounts. Why would the writer elect to write an article fitting a narrative for which there is little data? Surely, the more interesting article would be "Are users deleting their accounts? Why not?" That I would read and find interesting.

ashelmire 9y ago
Who do you think would give us that data? Facebook? Doubtful. I think it's reasonable to assume that if 50k people tweeted about it, a far larger number probably took action (active tweeters are just a small subset of the population) or are at least thinking about reducing usage or deleting. Deleting facebook has been a topic of conversation in my circle for months since I did it ~4 months ago or so. It's definitely on people's radar as far as other media seems to indicate (we've had anti-facebook threads daily for months on HN), and my friends (mostly tech people and very active facebook users) have almost all reduced their usage significantly.
- edraferi 9y ago
  Facebook is a public company, so this should all show up in their quarterly earnings reports. At minimum the Cambridge Analytica scandal will have to be addressed. If users are leaving the platform, that would need to be reported too.
- rmc 9y ago
  We'll be able to tell how many people did it by how Facebook reacts. If they do basically nothing and carry on as normal, then we know that FB knows that hardly anyone has deleted their accounts. If it looks like FB is shitting bricks, then we know they're hella scared, which means enough people deleted it to scare them.

hvass 9y ago

This article will have merit if it was posted after their next earnings call and there was a percentage decline in users. This is all anecdotal and speculation. Habits are the hardest thing to break. And 50,000 people, even if US-only, are a rounding error for their MAU/DAUs. C'mon, NYT.

cvaidya1986 9y ago

The headline is quite ambiguous to say the least.

danjoc 9y ago

Manufactured outrage. Nobody is leaving Facebook. They're too vain. Even Brian Acton was saying #DeleteFacebook from his Facebook. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633630