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1 in 10 Americans in survey say they deleted their Facebook account over privacy

businessinsider.com

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Re: 1 in 10 Americans in survey say they deleted their Facebook account over privacy

#21

Post by cfadvan »

prepend wrote: post #3

In a survey of people I know, 0 out of infinity kept their Facebook accounts deleted. But lots of people told me they did. Probably 30% of people I know. Some actually deleted. Some said they did and didn’t (really weird since you can see their account). Some thought they did, but screwed it up. Some said they did but switched to Messenger, or WhatsApp or some other part of Facebook. Over the past 5 years, not a sing…

A good friend of mine, his wife, his parents and their extended family all decided to (and did) delete their Facebook as a result of this furor. I deleted mine after a few months of first making it, and I’d say all told I know more than a dozen other people who either never had them, or deleted them. They’re not using Messenger or WhatsApp. Some use email chains, others are using Signal, and only two reverted to Facebook.

I guess we know different people? It’s probably one of the challenges when talking in terms of anecdotes.

Re: 1 in 10 Americans in survey say they deleted their Facebook account over privacy

#22

Post by 908087 »

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #5

We can all be ignorant. I would never have thought so many people would consider this a new concern and felt the time to act was now, in April 2018. Although I don't personally use Facebook I think most people who like it should just continue using it but just think more carefully about the information they share. Deleting now isn't going to bring back the data that has already been shared.

The problem is that "the information they share" and "the information Facebook collects" are two very different things. During the recent hearings, Zuckerberg kept stressing the fact that users "choose what they share", while conveniently dodging addressing the fact that Facebook collects much more than that.

Re: 1 in 10 Americans in survey say they deleted their Facebook account over privacy

#23

Post by lancefisher »

evo_9 wrote: post #14

So if you have never had a FB account, is there a way to delete your shadow profile and/or even check if they have one on you?

Move to Europe, and file a right to be forgotten request after May 25th, when the GDPR goes into effect.

Re: 1 in 10 Americans in survey say they deleted their Facebook account over privacy

#24

Post by jwilk »

evo_9 wrote: post #14

So if you have never had a FB account, is there a way to delete your shadow profile and/or even check if they have one on you?

Good news: Facebook has UI for getting your personal data if you don't have an account.

Bad news: Apparently it only works if you have an account. Go figure...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16821437

Re: 1 in 10 Americans in survey say they deleted their Facebook account over privacy

#25

Post by musage »

prepend wrote: post #3

In a survey of people I know, 0 out of infinity kept their Facebook accounts deleted. But lots of people told me they did. Probably 30% of people I know. Some actually deleted. Some said they did and didn’t (really weird since you can see their account). Some thought they did, but screwed it up. Some said they did but switched to Messenger, or WhatsApp or some other part of Facebook. Over the past 5 years, not a sing…

I got asked by FB to identify myself with my passport after 9 years of being on it with like 150+ RL friends and classmates etc. and I just thought "fuck that, show me the passport of the random strangers who didn't like my political posts", and haven't look back since. And by political I mean quotes by Noam Chomsky and Hannah Arendt and whatnot, not racist rants or whatever people primed with the notion of FB having some sort of liberal bias might dream up. So I took it as a compliment. FB had precious little to give me, and precious little use for what I had to offer. No worries, like reading a poem to a dog and only then realizing it's a dog. Still a good poem, but the dog wouldn't know.

Now if only HN required email addresses for accounts, then I could be real productive. Merely being shadowbanned is actually kinda neat, I can still speak my mind however I want and don't have to check for replies on a site that has zero notifications anyway.

Re: 1 in 10 Americans in survey say they deleted their Facebook account over privacy

#26

Post by InterestBazinga »

codingdave wrote: post #9
acconrad wrote: post #7

Would you be concerned if less than 2% of your userbase left?

Yes. Having worked at a company with a 99.8% retention rate, I'd absolutely be concerned if that jumped 10x. Because that is the real metric... not how many people left, but how does it compare to the retention rate prior to the recent events?

I agree. But, I feel it is not as serious as in other areas because there are no true competitors to Facebook?

Re: 1 in 10 Americans in survey say they deleted their Facebook account over privacy

#27

Post by bertil »

cfadvan wrote: post #21
prepend wrote: post #3

In a survey of people I know, 0 out of infinity kept their Facebook accounts deleted. But lots of people told me they did. Probably 30% of people I know. Some actually deleted. Some said they did and didn’t (really weird since you can see their account). Some thought they did, but screwed it up. Some said they did but switched to Messenger, or WhatsApp or some other part of Facebook. Over the past 5 years, not a sing…

A good friend of mine, his wife, his parents and their extended family all decided to (and did) delete their Facebook as a result of this furor. I deleted mine after a few months of first making it, and I’d say all told I know more than a dozen other people who either never had them, or deleted them. They’re not using Messenger or WhatsApp. Some use email chains, others are using Signal, and only two reverted to Face…

What worries me is that email chains (and WhatsApp in many cases) are significantly worst at keeping disinformation at bay:

- Hardly anyone writes back the recipients, often copied in the different layers of the email, so disinformation spreads without being corrected; but

- Spammers gladly collect the emails through those anyway.

Re: 1 in 10 Americans in survey say they deleted their Facebook account over privacy

#28

Post by djsumdog »

prepend wrote: post #3

In a survey of people I know, 0 out of infinity kept their Facebook accounts deleted. But lots of people told me they did. Probably 30% of people I know. Some actually deleted. Some said they did and didn’t (really weird since you can see their account). Some thought they did, but screwed it up. Some said they did but switched to Messenger, or WhatsApp or some other part of Facebook. Over the past 5 years, not a sing…

Ironically, being able to keep track of who deletes their accounts disappeared when they closed that hole in their API that was used to extract friends lists (it broke this app I wrote years ago):

https://penguindreams.org/blog/discoverying-friend-list-chan...

Because I've lived in so many places and different countries, there are a lot of people who I can only communicate with over Messenger. I usually use the purple-facebook and purple-hangouts plugins.

I never read status updates. I only update my status to promote my other blogs/websites.

I guess I could switch to sending international texts or ask people for their e-mails (which also means asking them to remove my e-mail from spam since I run my own e-mail server and Google/Microsoft don't really use DMARC/DKIM/SPF and always mark my stuff as spam), but messenger is just easier.

I think we'll only see people get rid of Facebook when there are better alternatives to connect on. Even then it's dumb to delete a Facebook account; just stop using it like people did with MySpace.

Re: 1 in 10 Americans in survey say they deleted their Facebook account over privacy

#29

Post by djsumdog »

mr_spothawk wrote: post #6
prepend wrote: post #3

In a survey of people I know, 0 out of infinity kept their Facebook accounts deleted. But lots of people told me they did. Probably 30% of people I know. Some actually deleted. Some said they did and didn’t (really weird since you can see their account). Some thought they did, but screwed it up. Some said they did but switched to Messenger, or WhatsApp or some other part of Facebook. Over the past 5 years, not a sing…

I kept my facebook, but deleted my social graph.

How did you do that?

Re: 1 in 10 Americans in survey say they deleted their Facebook account over privacy

#30

Post by greggarious »

Thaxll wrote: post #19

This kind of survey are bs, why do people even talk about them. No one care about the privacy issue and people will keep using Facebook.

Do you have any specific criticism's of the methodology, or are you advocating that all survey results are meaningless?
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