Quit Facebook Day flops as only 1 in 15,000 pledge to quit • Hacker News Board

Re: Quit Facebook Day flops as only 1 in 15,000 pledge to quit

#21

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 02, 2010, 12:00 PM UTC

philk wrote: post #16

iamdave wrote: post #10

This is sort of emblematic of the Facebook Faux Activist generation. While they are so prepared to step up and say something about their convictions, wrapped up and emotionally spirited after been told, all throughout their school lives about how their parents were activists (for things that actually mattered, but that's a different story), my generation lacks what matters when it comes to being an activist: The abil…

Given there are followers of Islam out there who (off the top of my head) bombed the Danish embassy in Pakistan, murdered Theo Van Gogh and put a bounty on Salman Rushdie's head I don't find it shocking at all that there were people willing to stand up and declare that they weren't intimidated.

[deleted]

Re: Quit Facebook Day flops as only 1 in 15,000 pledge to quit

#22

Post by what » Wed, Jun 02, 2010, 12:17 PM UTC

sorbus wrote: post #3

what wrote: post #2

This is silly, they have no idea how many people actually quit. Not that I think many people quit anyways.

That's exactly what I was thinking; it would be more interesting to know how many people kept that pledge. Still, it does put it into perspective; the vast majority of people simply don't care, or don't know, about Facebook's privacy issues, despite all the noise lately.

I was thinking more that the people actually concerned with their privacy might not want to submit their name and email address on some random site. So the the number of pledges could under represent the people that actually want to quit (or did quit).

But, yeah, it's far more likely that most people just don't care.

Re: Quit Facebook Day flops as only 1 in 15,000 pledge to quit

#23

Post by jokermatt999 » Wed, Jun 02, 2010, 1:59 PM UTC

iamdave wrote: post #10

This is sort of emblematic of the Facebook Faux Activist generation. While they are so prepared to step up and say something about their convictions, wrapped up and emotionally spirited after been told, all throughout their school lives about how their parents were activists (for things that actually mattered, but that's a different story), my generation lacks what matters when it comes to being an activist: The abil…

You might like the phrase "slacktivism", it seems similar to what you're trying to describe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism

Re: Quit Facebook Day flops as only 1 in 15,000 pledge to quit

#24

Post by codexon » Thu, Jun 03, 2010, 1:46 AM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #17

codexon wrote: post #15

I have multiple Facebook accounts back from the day an edu address was required. I never bothered to delete them. Same with my main account. I am not sure why everyone takes Facebook's 500 million member number at face value when a quick look around reveals numerous spam, fake, and barely updated accounts.

That's their active user number, not their total-user-accounts-in-our-database number.

Why would you believe that is their active number?

Back when I was active on Facebook, there was no shortage of fake accounts that survived multiple attempts by Facebook to purge them.