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Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco

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Re: Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco

#31

Post by throw20102010 »

MisterOctober wrote: post #9
SilasX wrote: post #5

I think it's a good (if inflammatory) analogy: in both cases, people are aware, in the abstract, of dangers, but systematically underestimate them by a big margin. People knew "smoking is bad for you", but didn't appreciate how bad. People know "Facebook violates privacy" but not the depth of the profile they've made on you across numerous websites. People know "You shouldn't compare yourself to others and feel bad a…

Yep. I resisted FB for years, but finally gave in in ~2009 due to pressure from old school pals, after what I thought was a thorough risk/benefit analysis. Turns out that I _vastly_ underestimated the risk. I quit FB in ~2012, but not before I had already experienced some pronounced ill effects. Kind of like my auntie with smoking .

Also yep. Facebook is valued at $158 per user. There is absolutely no way that the average user will click on $158 worth of ads in their entire time on the platform, nor will their children, nor will their grandchildren. At some point, a sane person has to realize that Wall Street is pricing in something other than the net present value of all the ad revenue that Facebook generates. Their buildings and servers are worth peanuts to their $227 billion market cap. What the market is pricing in addition to the advertising is how Facebook sells your data to companies for uses that most people have never even considered.

https://arkenea.com/blog/big-tech-companies-user-worth/

Re: Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco

#32

Post by badfrog »

bsder wrote: post #11
markstos wrote: post #8

As someone without a Facebook account, it's awkward to read these articles that assume inevitably of Facebook's influence. You can quit. We can quit. Sometimes I run into a group that I want to be more involved with that organizes on Facebook. When I mention I want to be involved but am not on Facebook, there is usually sympathy and a response that there are others interested in the group which are not on Facebook, e…

> You can quit. We can quit. No, you can't. And that's the problem. If any of your friends take pictures and tag you, Facebook now has data on YOU . And it starts building a profile around that. You didn't consent to it; you can't see it; you can't delete it.

> If any of your friends take pictures and tag you, Facebook now has data on YOU. And it starts building a profile around that.

There are two large areas of criticism about Facebook:

1) Business ethics / privacy

2) Psychological effects on users

Your comment is about #1, but the person you're replying to seems primarily concerned with #2.

Re: Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco

#33

Post by throw20102010 »

panarky wrote: post #30
markstos wrote: post #8

As someone without a Facebook account, it's awkward to read these articles that assume inevitably of Facebook's influence. You can quit. We can quit. Sometimes I run into a group that I want to be more involved with that organizes on Facebook. When I mention I want to be involved but am not on Facebook, there is usually sympathy and a response that there are others interested in the group which are not on Facebook, e…

As someone who doesn't smoke, it's awkward to read these articles that assume inevitably of tobacco's influence. You can quit. We can quit. Sometimes I run into a group of smokers that I want to be more involved with. When I mention I want to be involved but not breathe pollution, there is usually sympathy and a response that there are others interested in quitting smoking, too. Many organizations are smoke-free, and…

Snarky, but poignant. However, note that there are many government funded programs to help people quit smoking if they want. The government doesn't ban smoking, but it does tax it to encourage healthier behavior. There is no such funding to help people get rid of social media, and there are no such taxes to push people towards other options.

Re: Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco

#34

Post by itsaidpens »

throw20102010 wrote: post #31
MisterOctober wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I resisted FB for years, but finally gave in in ~2009 due to pressure from old school pals, after what I thought was a thorough risk/benefit analysis. Turns out that I _vastly_ underestimated the risk. I quit FB in ~2012, but not before I had already experienced some pronounced ill effects. Kind of like my auntie with smoking .

Also yep. Facebook is valued at $158 per user. There is absolutely no way that the average user will click on $158 worth of ads in their entire time on the platform, nor will their children, nor will their grandchildren. At some point, a sane person has to realize that Wall Street is pricing in something other than the net present value of all the ad revenue that Facebook generates. Their buildings and servers are wo…

Actually, in my experience that number is low.

- Facebook Advertiser with $500k in annual spend (mice nuts actually)

Re: Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco

#35

Post by Funes- »

malvosenior wrote: post #19
aplummer wrote: post #18

Look I'm a broken record at this point (if you check my history), but I feel like _someone_ has to say it. Lets treat big oil like big tobacco. Big coal. Big fast food. Big soda. These things _literally_ kill so many people every year and while Facebook is surely attributable to some deaths as a medium, it has at least some social utility. Why are there so many articles about facebook and not soda!

> Why are there so many articles about facebook and not soda! Because soda doesn't threaten Bloomberg or The New York Times' business model.

Exactly! While I don't think that Facebook has any utility that stands out or is exclusive to it--as the parent comment asserts, this was my very first thought when I read the headline. It seems to me that they are up in arms now that FB's reputation has decreased substantially and their true motives aren't as flagrant.

Re: Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco

#36

Post by josh2600 »

throw20102010 wrote: post #31
MisterOctober wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I resisted FB for years, but finally gave in in ~2009 due to pressure from old school pals, after what I thought was a thorough risk/benefit analysis. Turns out that I _vastly_ underestimated the risk. I quit FB in ~2012, but not before I had already experienced some pronounced ill effects. Kind of like my auntie with smoking .

Also yep. Facebook is valued at $158 per user. There is absolutely no way that the average user will click on $158 worth of ads in their entire time on the platform, nor will their children, nor will their grandchildren. At some point, a sane person has to realize that Wall Street is pricing in something other than the net present value of all the ad revenue that Facebook generates. Their buildings and servers are wo…

I suspect whale users on Facebook are worth way more than $158 lifetime.

Re: Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco

#37

Post by emptyparadise »

The companies themselves created so many of the dangers that social media now poses. If we didn't have all-but-mandatory lack of anonymity, we wouldn't have issues with doxxing, addiction (to the degree that anonymity can break the psychological tricks used by the apps), and so on. I doubt we can treat social media companies like any Big Whatever, because there hasn't been anything like them before. It's a new problem that needs a new solution - and that solution surely has to be something better than giving leverage over how we connect to any government. Sadly, I don't know how to best convince people to give up big Facebook for some decentralized family photo sharing website that would lack the addictiveness.

Also, on promoting the health dangers, I wonder, hen did "never trust strangers on the internet" turn into "give strangers on the internet a detailed log of every aspect of your life"?

Though with regards to that, I can easily say I made many more meaningful connections back when the internet was this separate realm of screen names and forums, rather than this meta web of connections overlaid on top of the real world.

Re: Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco

#38

Post by 1123581321 »

panarky wrote: post #30
markstos wrote: post #8

As someone without a Facebook account, it's awkward to read these articles that assume inevitably of Facebook's influence. You can quit. We can quit. Sometimes I run into a group that I want to be more involved with that organizes on Facebook. When I mention I want to be involved but am not on Facebook, there is usually sympathy and a response that there are others interested in the group which are not on Facebook, e…

As someone who doesn't smoke, it's awkward to read these articles that assume inevitably of tobacco's influence. You can quit. We can quit. Sometimes I run into a group of smokers that I want to be more involved with. When I mention I want to be involved but not breathe pollution, there is usually sympathy and a response that there are others interested in quitting smoking, too. Many organizations are smoke-free, and…

Please don’t make posts like this. Additionally, what you describe in your parody is actually how tolerance for state public smoking bans became large enough to make it viable.

Re: Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco

#39

Post by skinnymuch »

throw20102010 wrote: post #31
MisterOctober wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I resisted FB for years, but finally gave in in ~2009 due to pressure from old school pals, after what I thought was a thorough risk/benefit analysis. Turns out that I _vastly_ underestimated the risk. I quit FB in ~2012, but not before I had already experienced some pronounced ill effects. Kind of like my auntie with smoking .

Also yep. Facebook is valued at $158 per user. There is absolutely no way that the average user will click on $158 worth of ads in their entire time on the platform, nor will their children, nor will their grandchildren. At some point, a sane person has to realize that Wall Street is pricing in something other than the net present value of all the ad revenue that Facebook generates. Their buildings and servers are wo…

That piece wasn’t doing proper due diligence. It used Yahoo whose value at the time was already known to be largely from Yahoo Japan and Alibaba.

For Facebook it was ignoring their other assets of FBM, IG, and depending on the date, Whatsapp.

Also domestic, European, other developed countries. and the rest of the world all have much different user values. Some places are barely monetized at all right now.

Re: Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco

#40

Post by skinnymuch »

elefanten wrote: post #26
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fundamental difference is that smoking actually shortens lives by years. On the other hand, Facebook's privacy violations have . . . made people feel a little squicky? What concrete harm has been done? Nothing to rival even a hundredth of tobacco's death toll. That's not to say we shouldn't have laws and regulations around privacy, but personally I think it's a bit of a stretch to compare Facebook and Phi…

1. You're only addressing the privacy component and leaving out the psychological / sociological / political components of the criticism. 2. The harms of privacy violations are hard to quantify the same way as deaths or dollars. But collapsing them down to "feeling a little squicky" vastly undershoots. There's a category of very large potential harms that come from privacy violations and littany of smaller more direc…

Is it vastly undershooting compared to death? It seems like it is perfectly appropriate to say death from smoking is far far worse.
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