Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 352 posts

Re: Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings

#51

Post by austincheney »

cyberferret wrote: post #13

The question is - will this be just a minor blip to Facebook and then normal services will resume after the indignation wears off? Or will it the beginning of the end of the social media dominance of the platform? For me personally, I use FB primarily to keep in touch with friends, family and old colleagues who are spread all over the world. It is purely a contact tool, and not really used to market products of servi…

It will be a minor blip. Most users are utterly addicted and don't value their privacy over their convenience despite what they say.

I deleted my account in 2010 and there was absolutely no change in my daily behavior, but then I wasn't a chronic addict either. Honestly, if users haven't figure out by now that their privacy is utterly void when they use Facebook they absolutely don't care.

Re: Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings

#52

Post by foxylad »

cyberferret wrote: post #17
maskedinvader wrote: post #6

Facebook did report the first decline in monthly active users (MAU), is this the turning point [1]? Ive always wondered if facebook would die a quick death or a slow crawl. Wonder who gains from this ? twitter resurgance ? dont think so, snap ? not so sure, time for google to give another go to push google+? 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-north-america-daus-...

Twitter resurgence? Is there one? I am basically turned off Twitter far more than I am Facebook at the moment. The signal to noise ratio there has tilted FAR into the red zone of late. The proliferation of bots, and the ability for anyone with a pulse and a stupid meme graphic to plaster them into any conversation has just killed the conversational or learning capacity of that platform for me.

I'd love to get off both Twitter and Facebook, but that network effect...

I went and had a look at Vero, but it doesn't allow posting text, only associated with an image, movie, link or book. I checked how Diaspora was going, but the most popular pods have 2K users, and there are no pods in NZ or even Australia.

I guess I should get off my chuff and set up a New Zealand pod, but life is full enough already without taking that on.

Maybe we should all go back to blogging.

Re: Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings

#53

Post by mr_spothawk »

netsharc wrote: post #45
cyberferret wrote: post #13

The question is - will this be just a minor blip to Facebook and then normal services will resume after the indignation wears off? Or will it the beginning of the end of the social media dominance of the platform? For me personally, I use FB primarily to keep in touch with friends, family and old colleagues who are spread all over the world. It is purely a contact tool, and not really used to market products of servi…

A year or so ago I noticed I would wake up and the first thing I did was load up Facebook in my phone. I deleted the app, and what do I do? i still open it on my phone's browser. So I changed my password to 32 characters generated by Keepass, and make sure I logged out of it on my phone. I'm still logged in on the desktop, but nowadays it's pretty quiet anyway. Thr last few days I've been using a Chrome extension (1)…

which chrome extension are you using, plz?

Re: Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings

#54

Post by d--b »

cyberferret wrote: post #13

The question is - will this be just a minor blip to Facebook and then normal services will resume after the indignation wears off? Or will it the beginning of the end of the social media dominance of the platform? For me personally, I use FB primarily to keep in touch with friends, family and old colleagues who are spread all over the world. It is purely a contact tool, and not really used to market products of servi…

I hope I'm wrong but I think this in no way bringing facebook down.

Keeping in touch with friends & family is too important to ditch entirely, and having everyone switch to a different platform is very hard. That said, my whole extended family uses whats app nowadays...

Re: Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings

#55

Post by dleslie »

matte_black wrote: post #40
dleslie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, building it is easy but getting people to update it is hard.

Maybe if you emailed people every month or so asking them to update their info if it’s out of date?

A great many people that I communicate with stopped using email regularly ages ago. For younger folks the means of communication are messenger apps and social platforms.

Re: Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings

#57

Post by kibwen »

netsharc wrote: post #45
cyberferret wrote: post #13

The question is - will this be just a minor blip to Facebook and then normal services will resume after the indignation wears off? Or will it the beginning of the end of the social media dominance of the platform? For me personally, I use FB primarily to keep in touch with friends, family and old colleagues who are spread all over the world. It is purely a contact tool, and not really used to market products of servi…

A year or so ago I noticed I would wake up and the first thing I did was load up Facebook in my phone. I deleted the app, and what do I do? i still open it on my phone's browser. So I changed my password to 32 characters generated by Keepass, and make sure I logged out of it on my phone. I'm still logged in on the desktop, but nowadays it's pretty quiet anyway. Thr last few days I've been using a Chrome extension (1)…

Similar story here: a while back I installed a browser extension to delay the loading of unproductive sites that I was habitually visiting just to distract myself from tasks, imposing a 30 second wait barrier. What it's revealed is that there are some sites that I'm very willing to wait 30 seconds to visit (e.g. if there's a certain song on YouTube that I want to play in the background), but not once have I ever bothered to wait 30 seconds for Facebook to load. My fingers instinctively type the domain, the delay page appears, and then I close the tab. Makes it easy to realize how little value Facebook was providing me.

Re: Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings

#58

Post by grogenaut »

matte_black wrote: post #29
mr_spothawk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the sooner you're off it, the sooner you can build your graph in other places that work JUST AS WELL.

But then where else could I show off my idealized version of my life?

Holiday cards and your yard decoration like people have for eons.

Re: Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings

#59

Post by mr_spothawk »

matte_black wrote: post #22
mr_spothawk wrote: post #9

I think it's worth stating: if you're not deleting your friend connections, you're not leaving. I say that because your friends retain their friend count, and that's a big part of FB-identity. Also, you can always pick it back up when "they" fix the problem (which isn't fixable). I made my act public, left a message with contact info as my last message, and then deleted all my "friends" (which was, honestly, a pretty…

What did you do about weak link connections, did you send them emails as well or just drop them out?

Yeah, absolutely I sent an email to the weak connections I wanted to retain, though it didn't include all of them. To be fair, i'd been pruning for years. The CA thing wasn't such a surprise (though it's impacts certainly were) because I've been a paranoid shit for most of my recent life.

I had been using a false name on my primary FB since I started the account in ~2008... funny anecdote, I once got a popup on my real account with a question about my "fake" profile: "Is this a real person?" Yes, of course... and now I'm going to make a post on my wall asking my friends to please say "yes" if they got the same question.

Re: Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings

#60

Post by duck »

kercker wrote: post #25

"The hashtag #DeleteFacebook appeared more than 10,000 times on Twitter within a two-hour period on Wednesday, according to the analytics service ExportTweet. On Tuesday, it was mentioned 40,398 times, according to the analytics service Digimind." Is this really such a big deal for Facebook? Suppose 50000 persons delete their Facebook everyday, then it will just lose 1,825,0000 users one year, not counting new users…

I would say most people on Facebook aren't on Twitter, so this isn't a great sample and thus it is hard to know yet. The thing that could go against FB is exactly what made it grow fast - the network effect.
Post reply on HN