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The twitter mob can boycott Facebook all they want, for a month or a year, but the vast majority of people and businesses will go on using it because that makes

The twitter mob can boycott Facebook all they want, for a month or a year, but the vast majority of people and businesses will go on using it because that makes no difference to them. Boycotts are always limited in time and scope because if the product wasn't useful you wouldn't need to boycott it, you'd just ignore it in perpetuity. Like, I'm not "boycotting" natural fur clothing for the 20th year, I'm just not interested. Facebook is useful to both people and businesses and will continue to be useful regardless of any boycotts. Maybe not to some tiny minority of people, but to everyone else. There are tons of companies that survive with shitty business practices that have much weaker market position than Facebook.

rhizome 6y ago
Well I don't think FB is so fungible as a market participant that they can be excused via relative privation[1]. They have close proximity to the lives of a lot of people, and the content that appears on their pages plays a prominent role in society, or at least the FB userbase. To be sure, sometimes its role in society is a result of splash damage. Facebook's grandeur is on display constantly, both in its expansive view of its business model competing against winking at someone on the bus, to the intransigence they express in resisting (if not refusing) any modification to their behavior. They're have toddler-mentality management, and it's a problem that the stock market rewards it. You don't have power over the fur industry by yourself. The purpose of boycotts is to spread, they aren't a state of being, and in your terms they could be said to be practice in ignoring something. "See? You can go without it." People and businesses still have MySpace pages, Friendster accounts, and all the kinds of powerless internet presence about which people like to say Facebook is immune, but the future isn't written yet. It stands to reason that Facebook could be the Penny Saver of the future, a webboard for people with online social inertia (I know of webboards that continue beyond decades with much more traffic than a lot of Facebook groups) and a place where yes, your business needs to put up a page. Facebook would love to be indispensible, and I wouldn't be surprised if they secretly want regulation (on their own terms, of course) because historically that is one method businesses can use to permanently implant themselves in the social fabric. Global reach complicates this, but with the TikTok controversy in the US right now[2], the world may wake up to regional restrictions on business access to individual nations (don't call it a Great Firewall) and we might wake up one day to find Facebook banned in the EU (for example) for their data practices. There are plenty of smaller social networks in the EU that don't have the problems FB does, and I don't think the users would miss anything more than being asked to friend a friend's friend that you met once (if at all). Everybody would know they have a month or three and in that time everybody sends everybody "I'm @abc123 on $somesite, and @xyz456 on $somesite2." Much easier than the old days of updating paper address books. And that's the illusion: that there's anything to miss, that it'll be difficult to maintain contact with people. All of the people you know online will still be online somewhere, and you know what? Email still exists. Facebook isn't indispensible. 1. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relative-Privation https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relativ... 2. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/tiktok-ban-us-trump-why-will-it-happen-remove-app-what-countries-a9618931.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...

rhizome 6y ago

Well I don't think FB is so fungible as a market participant that they can be excused via relative privation[1]. They have close proximity to the lives of a lot of people, and the content that appears on their pages plays a prominent role in society, or at least the FB userbase. To be sure, sometimes its role in society is a result of splash damage. Facebook's grandeur is on display constantly, both in its expansive view of its business model competing against winking at someone on the bus, to the intransigence they express in resisting (if not refusing) any modification to their behavior. They're have toddler-mentality management, and it's a problem that the stock market rewards it. You don't have power over the fur industry by yourself. The purpose of boycotts is to spread, they aren't a state of being, and in your terms they could be said to be practice in ignoring something. "See? You can go without it." People and businesses still have MySpace pages, Friendster accounts, and all the kinds of powerless internet presence about which people like to say Facebook is immune, but the future isn't written yet. It stands to reason that Facebook could be the Penny Saver of the future, a webboard for people with online social inertia (I know of webboards that continue beyond decades with much more traffic than a lot of Facebook groups) and a place where yes, your business needs to put up a page. Facebook would love to be indispensible, and I wouldn't be surprised if they secretly want regulation (on their own terms, of course) because historically that is one method businesses can use to permanently implant themselves in the social fabric. Global reach complicates this, but with the TikTok controversy in the US right now[2], the world may wake up to regional restrictions on business access to individual nations (don't call it a Great Firewall) and we might wake up one day to find Facebook banned in the EU (for example) for their data practices. There are plenty of smaller social networks in the EU that don't have the problems FB does, and I don't think the users would miss anything more than being asked to friend a friend's friend that you met once (if at all). Everybody would know they have a month or three and in that time everybody sends everybody "I'm @abc123 on $somesite, and @xyz456 on $somesite2." Much easier than the old days of updating paper address books. And that's the illusion: that there's anything to miss, that it'll be difficult to maintain contact with people. All of the people you know online will still be online somewhere, and you know what? Email still exists. Facebook isn't indispensible. 1. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relative-Privation https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relativ... 2. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/tiktok-ban-us-trump-why-will-it-happen-remove-app-what-countries-a9618931.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...