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Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

nytimes.com

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Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#21

Post by bepotts »

tareqak wrote: post #15
jseliger wrote: post #11

Is there an actual crisis, outside the media narrative? Has Facebook seen an actual fall in monthly, weekly, or daily active users? To me, this story reads a lot like a media narrative that has very little to do with users's actual lives. And I've been reading variations on "Why Facebook sucks" and "Why Facebook is doomed" for a very long time. It's like the "Why this is the year of Linux on the desktop," but for med…

Would you consider a significant drop in Facebook's European user base to be crisis [0]? [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-revenue-and-user-gr... - Facebook's user base is declining in Europe, and that ought to terrify its American bosses

Losing 2 to 4 million users out of 375 million users is hardly "significant". It's something to look out for of course, but trying to insinuate that Facebook is in trouble in Europe with those numbers is a stretch.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#22

Post by sevensor »

kakaorka wrote: post #9

Makes me think about the quote ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!’ Of course they don’t care about anything but profit and growth because it’s what makes them richer.

Perhaps, but this quote is used so frequently on HN that you should probably just assume it's already been posted to every comment thread.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#23

Post by chickenfries »

samfisher83 wrote: post #7
minimaxir wrote: post #4

Funny quote: > “We’re not going to traffic in your personal life,” Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said in an MSNBC interview. “Privacy to us is a human right. It’s a civil liberty.” (Mr. Cook’s criticisms infuriated Mr. Zuckerberg, who later ordered his management team to use only Android phones, since the operating system has far more users than Apple’s.)

If Tim cook believed this why is he taking billions from google to be the default search engine? Why not pick a more privacy friendly search engine?

DuckDuckGo’s search results aren’t as good for the average user.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#24

Post by ilovecaching »

To me the negative press cycle involving Facebook and other advertising companies is more about the hidden war between the new age digital advertisers, and the former rulers of ads: the conventional news outlets. The news outlets will jump on any chance they can get to kill their competitors just like any other company. Without Facebook, they could become the sole source of news again, and reap the lost ad revenue themselves.

That's why I don't trust anything I read in the news. If I don't hear it from a friend working at one of the SV companies (which isn't that hard to find, we're a much smaller community than one would imagine) then I consider it to be sensationalized, hyperbolic, and/or downright wrong.

At the very least, we certainly are never going to hear of the things Facebook is doing right. We aren't going to hear about the economic opportunity or positive connections it has produced. To say that something is completely one sided is a strong sign of bias.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#25

Post by leroy_masochist »

Facebook's recent preoccupation with staying in Washington's good graces, as described in the article, seems misplaced. It almost seems like the long-term personal legacy concerns of Zuck, Sandberg, Bickert, and others (many of whom clearly aspire to elected or appointed office) is taking precedence over FB's actual strategic priorities.

If I were running FB, my main worry would be the fact that it's devolved into a platform for baby boomers to yell at each other about politics. An angry Congress, even a really angry one, has a limited ability to kill FB. In fact, I'd posit that a bona fide War With The Man might even be good for employee morale, another Cartago Delenda Est moment.

User shrinkage, declining engagement and general loss of relevancy, on the other hand -- that would be the death knell, and it already kind of appears to be happening.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#26

Post by wlesieutre »

tareqak wrote: post #15
jseliger wrote: post #11

Is there an actual crisis, outside the media narrative? Has Facebook seen an actual fall in monthly, weekly, or daily active users? To me, this story reads a lot like a media narrative that has very little to do with users's actual lives. And I've been reading variations on "Why Facebook sucks" and "Why Facebook is doomed" for a very long time. It's like the "Why this is the year of Linux on the desktop," but for med…

Would you consider a significant drop in Facebook's European user base to be crisis [0]? [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-revenue-and-user-gr... - Facebook's user base is declining in Europe, and that ought to terrify its American bosses

I can't tell, are those monthly active user numbers for all Facebook owned services, or just Facebook itself?

If everyone quit Facebook and replaced it with Instagram, that's a very different story.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#27

Post by bepotts »

jseliger wrote: post #11

Is there an actual crisis, outside the media narrative? Has Facebook seen an actual fall in monthly, weekly, or daily active users? To me, this story reads a lot like a media narrative that has very little to do with users's actual lives. And I've been reading variations on "Why Facebook sucks" and "Why Facebook is doomed" for a very long time. It's like the "Why this is the year of Linux on the desktop," but for med…

This is exactly it.

Look, Facebook needs to get its act together. They are in need for serious reform. However, mainstream media knows that Facebook is under a ton of pressure and these types of stories generate a ton of clicks. I know people want Facebook to die, but Facebook's usage has remained pretty much the same during all these negative stories. The public is not hating Facebook as much as people want to believe.

But the media has its narrative and it'll continue this "Facebook is evil" beat. The same with Clinton's email server, and more recently, the same with that immigrant caravan coming up from Central America.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#28

Post by skeptic_69 »

ilovecaching wrote: post #20

To me the negative press cycle involving Facebook and other advertising companies is more about the hidden war between the new age digital advertisers, and the former rulers of ads: the conventional news outlets. The news outlets will jump on any chance they can get to kill their competitors just like any other company. Without Facebook, they could become the sole source of news again, and reap the lost ad revenue th…

how would hear about this story unless you are personally friends with alex stamos or zuckerberg or sandenberg? I am all for skepticism but blanket rejection of responsible journalism seems like an over-reaction. the reporting of the new york times on facebook has been continuously borne out by events.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#29

Post by TrevorAustin »

jseliger wrote: post #11

Is there an actual crisis, outside the media narrative? Has Facebook seen an actual fall in monthly, weekly, or daily active users? To me, this story reads a lot like a media narrative that has very little to do with users's actual lives. And I've been reading variations on "Why Facebook sucks" and "Why Facebook is doomed" for a very long time. It's like the "Why this is the year of Linux on the desktop," but for med…

More than a quarter of Americans, and half of young people, report having deleted the flagship Facebook app from their phones in the wake of these scandals. (https://www.recode.net/2018/9/5/17824116/delete-facebook-mar...) The losses are offset in their topline numbers by growth in the developing world, but that's a lagging indicator, and those are much less lucrative user eyeballs.

It's mitigated to the extent those users migrate to other FB-owned properties like Instagram and WhatsApp, but there the negative media narrative increases the chance that antitrust regulators will break up FB and force it to divest those properties.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#30

Post by ForHackernews »

bepotts wrote: post #27
jseliger wrote: post #11

Is there an actual crisis, outside the media narrative? Has Facebook seen an actual fall in monthly, weekly, or daily active users? To me, this story reads a lot like a media narrative that has very little to do with users's actual lives. And I've been reading variations on "Why Facebook sucks" and "Why Facebook is doomed" for a very long time. It's like the "Why this is the year of Linux on the desktop," but for med…

This is exactly it. Look, Facebook needs to get its act together. They are in need for serious reform. However, mainstream media knows that Facebook is under a ton of pressure and these types of stories generate a ton of clicks. I know people want Facebook to die, but Facebook's usage has remained pretty much the same during all these negative stories. The public is not hating Facebook as much as people want to belie…

I mean, you can bloody well hate some business and still patronize it. I'd wager most Americans hate their cable company.

I agree there's little risk of users deserting Facebook en masse, but what we may see is lawmakers coming down on FB like a ton of bricks. It will be popular, too: Heavily regulating social media and slapping them with massive fines will be winning issues with constituents on both sides of the aisle.

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