5 ms·

Just my impression: if this was Google, then yes. It is very hard to replace Google at this point in time. Facebook is on its way out. Due to the network effec

by phicoh 8y ago

Just my impression: if this was Google, then yes. It is very hard to replace Google at this point in time. Facebook is on its way out. Due to the network effect, Facebook will stay relevant for a long time. But if Facebook would leave the EU then it wouldn't take long for other social networks to take its place. Facebook is relevant because everybody is on Facebook. Not because it is such a great service. Personally, I am way more worried about Google.

adam-_- 8y ago
That network effect can't be underestimated. In the olden days of a new social network every other week the percentage of my friends and family on each social network (including Myspace, the most dominant) was relatively low, so the pain of switching was low. Now the percentage on Facebook is extremely high and I don't even know what an alternative would be. Lots of friends and family are on Whatsapp, quite a lot of people use Instagram but beyond that... there's very little uptake in any other heavily used social network. And of course, they're both owned by Facebook anyway. So, for me at least, to say Facebook is on the way out, is something I cannot agree with.
- phicoh 8y ago
  Due to the network effect, you may end up with lots of people using Facebook, but actually disliking the service. What you can see happening is that people treat Facebook more as a news feed then as a platform to communicate with friends. Once personal communication moves away from Facebook, other communication is likely to move as well. It may take as while though. When that happens, Facebook will be more like a twitter feed. I'm really curious what will happen to WhatsApp. Will it stay the way it currently is. Or will it become some sort of Facebook?
  - _Tev 8y ago
    I wish people would stop taking their anecdata so seriously . . . > What you can see happening is that people treat Facebook more as a news feed then as a platform to communicate with friends. I see the opposite trend. People ignore worse-than-useless feed more and more, moving to messenger and especially group chats. Until serious competitor appears (and I mean real one, not HN-ideal decentralized-blockchain-powered one), FB stays. Tons of people using it in spite of their dislike of the platform has not stopped FB's growth, and who knows if it brings any actual change any time soon.
- bambataa 8y ago
  Do the people you know actually engage with Facebook a lot, though? I'm still on it and log in a few times a week but I engage far less. I recently used a Chrome extension to delete my old comments and I'm surprised at how much more I posted on it (and publicly, too). Although changing the newsfeed to be mostly memes and adverts was one cause of my disengagement, I think it's also just changing use. I haven't really noticed the recent changes Facebook touted because my friend network simply seems to engage with it less. Maybe a few people still insist on posting dozens of photographs of every trip they take, but I see so much less public discussion and so on. What happens to a social network when the 'social' bit tails off?
  - damontal 8y ago
    anecdotal, but on my daily commute i see people "engaging" with facebook (and instagram) all the time.
rndgermandude 8y ago
Let's pretend facebook leaves and a EU competitor who follows the GDPR comes alive and Europeans start using it... And the other people outside the EU start using it to stay connected with their EU friends and family... and companies all around the world start using it to stay connected with their EU clientèle... and some major "celebs" start using it either as a political statement or because they don't like that facebook invades their privacy... and then other people outside the EU start using it to stay connected with the other outside-EU people, celebs and companies who already started using it... We actually had a "facebook" in Germany once named StudiVZ. What killed it was low quality (i.e. many bugs), mismanagement, but more importantly facebook's network effect. If facebook leaves or gets pushed out of the EU, it's entirely possible it will suffer a lot or even go the MySpace route, being hit by hard by the network effect a new European player may create.
- zerostar07 8y ago
  Unfortunately it is the nature of the internet social network sector to be monopolistic. Few (if any?) local social networks have survived because people typically - especially europeans - have friends outside EU. VK is a notable exception and i wonder how they made it - possibly anti-americanism played a role. In a way, facebook should wish they have some competition, so they can avoid all the nosy anti-trust questions, but they don't.
  - rndgermandude 8y ago
    vk is big in Russia (and some other parts) because they are proper Russian, in Russian and for Russians, and they are largely unmoderated, so you can easily find nice and nasty in the same place and also all the warez, porn (incl revenge and child) etc you will ever want. It's really the "wild east" there; I was pretty shocked when somebody started spamming child porn vk groups to one of the websites I moderate (and they were active weeks later still). Then again, I was told by some Russian acquaintances that vk does not try to push American/European morals (like no nudity for America, no "hate speech"/gore for EU) and that really is how they explain it is so popular (then again, of course you wouldn't want to run an LGBT community on vk). Other folks from the West and Latin America found it useful too. E.g. I read that some German Nationalists/White Supremacist fringe groups moved to vk because it will not crack down on those groups, unlike Facebook. But back to my point: if the EU really cracks down on facebook so that it is (forced to) stop(s) being available in the EU, then some new player from the EU might fill the gap and the network effect of friends and family may drive people to the EU version that anybody can use and away from the US version that EU cannot use and is a privacy nightmare anyway; so the effect may point in the opposite direction this time. I know the likelihood of this happening is pretty low, but a lot less low now with the GDPR and the EU politicians' new found interest in facebook's business model.
veddox 8y ago
I agree with that analysis. The main reason why Facebook is relevant in Europe is because everybody is still on it - but actual usage is steadily decreasing, especially in the younger generation. Most communications nowadays is done via WhatsApp, but that is trivial to replace. (Telegram is already quite popular, and then there is Signal, Threema, etc.) Of course, it would be a blow for individuals if all their uploaded content was suddenly locked. But at least in Germany FB already has such a bad reputation that public indignation might center more on the company than on the EU regulators.
- zerostar07 8y ago
  > least in Germany Germany is draconian about privacy , but a lot of the rest of the EU is really not. I would even expect a backlash to GDPR from businesses or politicians or people who lose access to audiences.
  - rndgermandude 8y ago
    Draconian? Just because we got laws in Germany saying you need permission to store personal data and you need to make available that data upon request and/or remove it upon request?
    - phicoh 8y ago
      One thing I always found rather bizar is where ISPs break internet connections after 24 hours to force the customer to get a new IP address. And then the next step was where the home routers would disconnect after less then 24 hours to make sure that the disruption happens in the middle of the night. Or something to that effect. I wonder if in Germany people get new telephone numbers every 24 hours as well.
      - rndgermandude 8y ago
        Ye, that's true... They started doing it so that you didn't just keep your IP for ages as a quasi static IP and then host things from there... because the "dedicated" lines with a static IP were/are different offers with a lot bigger price tag. Yes, it's ridiculous, but has nothing to do with privacy laws.
TotempaaltJ 8y ago
> Personally, I am way more worried about Google. The reason I'm not is that Google appears to be a /lot/ more willing to respect their user's privacy, and were ahead of the curve with allowing opt-outs of personalized advertising and the likes...
- collyw 8y ago
  Have a look at the data they have on you. I was really annoyed to see all my duckduck go searches via chrome got stored (there was a reason I was using duck duck go). Plus they know my email. Even if I used a different email address probably 50% of my emails would still go via google because that's what my contacts have. Facebook is less transparent, but they get a fairly crappy subset of my data in my opinion. Plus I barely use it this days.
devit 8y ago
How so? Pretty much everything that Google offers has good alternatives, and there are little or no network effects except for YouTube. E.g. you can use Bing Search, OpenStreetMap/Bing Maps, Office365, Fastmail, LineageOS, AWS/Azure, Vimeo instead of the Google products. In fact, the search engine is the only product that might be significantly better than alternatives.

by phicoh 8y ago

adam-_- 8y ago

That network effect can't be underestimated. In the olden days of a new social network every other week the percentage of my friends and family on each social network (including Myspace, the most dominant) was relatively low, so the pain of switching was low. Now the percentage on Facebook is extremely high and I don't even know what an alternative would be. Lots of friends and family are on Whatsapp, quite a lot of people use Instagram but beyond that... there's very little uptake in any other heavily used social network. And of course, they're both owned by Facebook anyway. So, for me at least, to say Facebook is on the way out, is something I cannot agree with.

phicoh 8y ago
Due to the network effect, you may end up with lots of people using Facebook, but actually disliking the service. What you can see happening is that people treat Facebook more as a news feed then as a platform to communicate with friends. Once personal communication moves away from Facebook, other communication is likely to move as well. It may take as while though. When that happens, Facebook will be more like a twitter feed. I'm really curious what will happen to WhatsApp. Will it stay the way it currently is. Or will it become some sort of Facebook?
- _Tev 8y ago
  I wish people would stop taking their anecdata so seriously . . . > What you can see happening is that people treat Facebook more as a news feed then as a platform to communicate with friends. I see the opposite trend. People ignore worse-than-useless feed more and more, moving to messenger and especially group chats. Until serious competitor appears (and I mean real one, not HN-ideal decentralized-blockchain-powered one), FB stays. Tons of people using it in spite of their dislike of the platform has not stopped FB's growth, and who knows if it brings any actual change any time soon.
bambataa 8y ago
Do the people you know actually engage with Facebook a lot, though? I'm still on it and log in a few times a week but I engage far less. I recently used a Chrome extension to delete my old comments and I'm surprised at how much more I posted on it (and publicly, too). Although changing the newsfeed to be mostly memes and adverts was one cause of my disengagement, I think it's also just changing use. I haven't really noticed the recent changes Facebook touted because my friend network simply seems to engage with it less. Maybe a few people still insist on posting dozens of photographs of every trip they take, but I see so much less public discussion and so on. What happens to a social network when the 'social' bit tails off?
- damontal 8y ago
  anecdotal, but on my daily commute i see people "engaging" with facebook (and instagram) all the time.

rndgermandude 8y ago

Let's pretend facebook leaves and a EU competitor who follows the GDPR comes alive and Europeans start using it... And the other people outside the EU start using it to stay connected with their EU friends and family... and companies all around the world start using it to stay connected with their EU clientèle... and some major "celebs" start using it either as a political statement or because they don't like that facebook invades their privacy... and then other people outside the EU start using it to stay connected with the other outside-EU people, celebs and companies who already started using it... We actually had a "facebook" in Germany once named StudiVZ. What killed it was low quality (i.e. many bugs), mismanagement, but more importantly facebook's network effect. If facebook leaves or gets pushed out of the EU, it's entirely possible it will suffer a lot or even go the MySpace route, being hit by hard by the network effect a new European player may create.

zerostar07 8y ago
Unfortunately it is the nature of the internet social network sector to be monopolistic. Few (if any?) local social networks have survived because people typically - especially europeans - have friends outside EU. VK is a notable exception and i wonder how they made it - possibly anti-americanism played a role. In a way, facebook should wish they have some competition, so they can avoid all the nosy anti-trust questions, but they don't.
- rndgermandude 8y ago
  vk is big in Russia (and some other parts) because they are proper Russian, in Russian and for Russians, and they are largely unmoderated, so you can easily find nice and nasty in the same place and also all the warez, porn (incl revenge and child) etc you will ever want. It's really the "wild east" there; I was pretty shocked when somebody started spamming child porn vk groups to one of the websites I moderate (and they were active weeks later still). Then again, I was told by some Russian acquaintances that vk does not try to push American/European morals (like no nudity for America, no "hate speech"/gore for EU) and that really is how they explain it is so popular (then again, of course you wouldn't want to run an LGBT community on vk). Other folks from the West and Latin America found it useful too. E.g. I read that some German Nationalists/White Supremacist fringe groups moved to vk because it will not crack down on those groups, unlike Facebook. But back to my point: if the EU really cracks down on facebook so that it is (forced to) stop(s) being available in the EU, then some new player from the EU might fill the gap and the network effect of friends and family may drive people to the EU version that anybody can use and away from the US version that EU cannot use and is a privacy nightmare anyway; so the effect may point in the opposite direction this time. I know the likelihood of this happening is pretty low, but a lot less low now with the GDPR and the EU politicians' new found interest in facebook's business model.

veddox 8y ago

I agree with that analysis. The main reason why Facebook is relevant in Europe is because everybody is still on it - but actual usage is steadily decreasing, especially in the younger generation. Most communications nowadays is done via WhatsApp, but that is trivial to replace. (Telegram is already quite popular, and then there is Signal, Threema, etc.) Of course, it would be a blow for individuals if all their uploaded content was suddenly locked. But at least in Germany FB already has such a bad reputation that public indignation might center more on the company than on the EU regulators.

zerostar07 8y ago
> least in Germany Germany is draconian about privacy , but a lot of the rest of the EU is really not. I would even expect a backlash to GDPR from businesses or politicians or people who lose access to audiences.
- rndgermandude 8y ago
  Draconian? Just because we got laws in Germany saying you need permission to store personal data and you need to make available that data upon request and/or remove it upon request?
  - phicoh 8y ago
    One thing I always found rather bizar is where ISPs break internet connections after 24 hours to force the customer to get a new IP address. And then the next step was where the home routers would disconnect after less then 24 hours to make sure that the disruption happens in the middle of the night. Or something to that effect. I wonder if in Germany people get new telephone numbers every 24 hours as well.
    - rndgermandude 8y ago
      Ye, that's true... They started doing it so that you didn't just keep your IP for ages as a quasi static IP and then host things from there... because the "dedicated" lines with a static IP were/are different offers with a lot bigger price tag. Yes, it's ridiculous, but has nothing to do with privacy laws.

TotempaaltJ 8y ago

> Personally, I am way more worried about Google. The reason I'm not is that Google appears to be a /lot/ more willing to respect their user's privacy, and were ahead of the curve with allowing opt-outs of personalized advertising and the likes...

collyw 8y ago
Have a look at the data they have on you. I was really annoyed to see all my duckduck go searches via chrome got stored (there was a reason I was using duck duck go). Plus they know my email. Even if I used a different email address probably 50% of my emails would still go via google because that's what my contacts have. Facebook is less transparent, but they get a fairly crappy subset of my data in my opinion. Plus I barely use it this days.

devit 8y ago

How so? Pretty much everything that Google offers has good alternatives, and there are little or no network effects except for YouTube. E.g. you can use Bing Search, OpenStreetMap/Bing Maps, Office365, Fastmail, LineageOS, AWS/Azure, Vimeo instead of the Google products. In fact, the search engine is the only product that might be significantly better than alternatives.