Live data from Hacker News

Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers are pulling out

business.financialpost.com

21–30 of 282 posts

Re: Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers are pulling out

#21

Perhaps some good will come out of all this. Maybe in the future, when some PHB asks development to add a questionable data gathering function to a platform they can say, "Remember Facebook?"

Facebook runs a messaging service with ~1.2 billion monthly active users. One of the core features of the product is to integrate with other contacts on your phone, and you have to explicitly enable this feature, agreeing to "ongoing upload" of your "text and call history".

Apple runs a messaging service called iMessage. It logs all of your call metadata, SMS history, etc. There is no opt-in, it's just default behavior. Apple also runs iCloud. All of your data is sent there, too, including complete conversations.

Can someone for the life of me explain to me what makes Facebook the villain here? Apple does exactly the same thing.

Facebook has never sold this data. There is no evidence they've even used the data for anything except its explicitly-stated purpose.

Re: Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers are pulling out

#22
post #7

In other words, FB has done somewhat worse than the NASDAQ, and about the same as GOOG over the same time period. Best not to take broad market movements and try to ascribe specific market expectations to individual companies.

Except NAZDAQ rallied today, so did Google. Facebook did not. Google's decline was part of the halo effect cast over big data techs as a result of the facebook debacle, and indexes in general were down over fears of pending trade wars with China that have now eased slightly. Facebook's decline continued despite these other factors getting some relief. Its issues are all its own at the moment.

In point of fact, FB is also up today, although only modestly.

Re: Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers are pulling out

#23
post #19

What's interesting for me is that I finally deleted my account. I never used it anyway but now I feel empowered to say "I don't have an FB account" and that's ok. I think this is a sea change - there will never again be this dominant of a social network imho. From now on the space will be fractured into niches (AngelList, LinkedIn, NextDoor, etc...).

We shall see. Media lends itself to being highly concentrated. Social media, because of network effects, even more so.

Re: Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers are pulling out

#24
post #13

This is the beginning of the Big Churn. Less top talent will want to be associated with facebook. Already even a few more privacy clueless friends family members are deleting their accounts. Adverts were always so low yeild, and fb pages 'because we need one'. Now that is all changing due to perception. The FTC, stocks falling, are further indicatuons of falling trust. And all business is built on trust.

> Less top talent will want to be associated with facebook.

I don't necessarily consider myself top-talent, but I'm personally avoiding facebook's open source projects (e.g. React) because I don't approve of their company values.

Re: Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers are pulling out

#25
post #13

This is the beginning of the Big Churn. Less top talent will want to be associated with facebook. Already even a few more privacy clueless friends family members are deleting their accounts. Adverts were always so low yeild, and fb pages 'because we need one'. Now that is all changing due to perception. The FTC, stocks falling, are further indicatuons of falling trust. And all business is built on trust.

>Less top talent will want to be associated with facebook

How certain is this? Whether you like what Facebook does or not, you can't deny their engineering talent is top tier. I don't even use Facebook but I'd still want to work there just to work with the people there and the environment. Companies like Facebook and Google are pretty engineer friendly, more so than other companies. I don't think this event will be the tipping point for top talent to leave Facebook.

Re: Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers are pulling out

#26

Perhaps some good will come out of all this. Maybe in the future, when some PHB asks development to add a questionable data gathering function to a platform they can say, "Remember Facebook?"

Facebook runs a messaging service with ~1.2 billion monthly active users. One of the core features of the product is to integrate with other contacts on your phone, and you have to explicitly enable this feature, agreeing to "ongoing upload" of your "text and call history". Apple runs a messaging service called iMessage. It logs all of your call metadata, SMS history, etc. There is no opt-in, it's just default behavi…

Apple doesn’t use your data for asdvertisements.

Re: Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers are pulling out

#27
So while it seems like $100B dollars is a large sum, it's really about 12% ish of the market valuation. Yes it hurts, but no, it's not the end of the company.

Think of it this way. How much money will FB have to spend to rebrand itself and fix the privacy issues. $1 Billion, maybe $2 Billion?

You can do a lot with $2B dollars.

Re: Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers are pulling out

#28
post #9
post #2

The bigger problem is recruiting. How many offers will be declined in favor of Google, startups, etc...

It's not like Google is a privacy haven for people who care about that sort of thing.

Google has a much better public profile than Facebook. In the eyes of the public, Facebook is a good deal more "evil" than Google.

Re: Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers are pulling out

#29
post #13

This is the beginning of the Big Churn. Less top talent will want to be associated with facebook. Already even a few more privacy clueless friends family members are deleting their accounts. Adverts were always so low yeild, and fb pages 'because we need one'. Now that is all changing due to perception. The FTC, stocks falling, are further indicatuons of falling trust. And all business is built on trust.

>Less top talent will want to be associated with facebook How certain is this? Whether you like what Facebook does or not, you can't deny their engineering talent is top tier. I don't even use Facebook but I'd still want to work there just to work with the people there and the environment. Companies like Facebook and Google are pretty engineer friendly, more so than other companies. I don't think this event will be t…

If top talent working somewhere was enough to keep top talent from leaving, then no company that employed top talent would ever loose their position without missing payroll.

Re: Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers are pulling out

#30

Is it crazy to consider investing in their stocks soon-ish. I totally hate the company but if this is global-minimum i can make some cash pretty easy. I'm relying on the premise that most users will continue to user the site and that this is a short term media frenzy similar to youtube advertiser fiasco.

If you hate the company, don't invest. If you're non-fussed but think it will return to it's glory days invest. If you love the company, invest.

You aren't the only one who doesn't like the company, it "can" be taken as a negative signal and suggest the company will continue to lose.

How many people LOVE facebook? I don't think they really exist anymore. Apple has it's haters, but it also has it's fans. Google has more haters than fans.

Of course, we're talking about more mature companies here, so the upside is not as great, the downside could have a real impact.

Of course, you have to consider FB as more than FB. If you loved Occulus, I'd say maybe invest. Big fan of Whatsapp, maybe invest.

There should be other opportunities to invest in things you do like that you would be proud to own.

Post reply on HN