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 media companies.
Don't get me wrong: I'm barely a Facebook user and agree with much of the criticism. But what I do, anecdotally, is less significant than what users do and want to do.
I think the conventional media sources, including the NYT, doesn't want to confront its own role in the 2016 election (the relentless media focus on Clinton's email server was insane). We don't want to acknowledge that most people's epistemological skill is low. Why look at ourselves, when we have this handy scapegoat right... over... there?
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.
Tristan Harris, founder of the non-profit Center for Humane Technology (CHT) [0] has been quite successful at high government circles and board level of big tech companies.
At the time Mark Zuckerberg didn't want to testify in the UK, he testified to the UK House of Commons commission to inform them about Fake News [1]
In the corporate world the strategy is to 'Engage employees', make them aware of the harms of technology and philosophy of Humane Tech. I found it enlightening to see him address the opening keynote at Dreamforce 2018 "How to Stop Technology from Destabilizing the World" [2] to a hall full of SalesForce customers.
The CHT now focuses primarily on fake news, disinformation, political influencing problems that arise from tech - i.e. the topics where the risk for civic breakdown is highest, but they have also played a role in bringing the concept of 'Time Well Spent' - focussed on healthy tech use - across at e.g. Google and Apple (but much to be done still in this area).
PS. I represent the Humane Tech Community, which is affiliated yet operates independently of the CHT, as a grassroots movement [3].
Not sure if this was about the CHT then, as there exists still the Time Well Spent movement (as a FB group). But it could well be. The CHT realize quite well that TWS constitutes only a small part of what makes tech humane. Also the way that companies are adopting it, has a great deal of marketing to it (akin to 'greenwashing'). So you could say that regarding TWS some tiny steps were made in the right direction.
I'm also concerned that the fight against political influencing by fake news and whatnot quickly becomes a tool for political influencing itself. I've seen it first hand. I've just seen it happen in the third world: elections are actually well regulated and at the decisive last week, the incumbent party A who has been in power for 15 years accuses the outsider of using fake news (they even used a picture of Steve Bannon) spread through Whatsapp to influence the election. In due time the social network companies actually answered to department of justice probes and said nothing out of the ordinary (mass forwards, etc) had happened at all. This, of course, was after the election.
They "stole" quite a few points from the then-frontrunning outsider too. It wasn't enough because it was too-late-too-little; they were too far behind. And yet, the narrative that the outsider won because of fake news steve bannon donald trump russia stuck. International press reports of it are still around. What, is Glenn Greenwald going to own up to dirty maneuvering?
They're likely referring to The Master Switch, but I'd definitely recommend both. They're fantastic books, and Tim Wu really goes into significant depth in each.
I've been following Nicholas Carr for a while. It's just that Jaron Lanier specifically is making quite a splash in the "developing world". His message particularly resonate with our banana-republic election season online panics.
No. More than a quarter of Americans and half of "young people" have not reported anything about Facebook.
In point of fact, a quarter of the 4,594 people surveyed by Pew Research between May 29 and June 11 report deleting the Facebook app.[1] Of those, half who qualify as young deleted the app.
Stop getting your statistics from news. This kind of casual stats citing frustrates me beyond belief. Audit your sources.
>In point of fact, a quarter of the 4,594 people surveyed by Pew Research between May 29 and June 11 report deleting the Facebook app.[1] Of those, half who qualify as young deleted the app.
For a population of 330 million, if you want a 95% confidence level and a 2% margin of error, you need only 2401 people in your sample. This is assuming the survey sampled appropriately (i.e. random selection methodology).
It is standard to take well executed surveys and extrapolate to the population. Calling it out is calling the whole field of statistics out.
Nice try. I'm well versed in the statistics but I'm not blindly criticizing the sample because it's small.
I'm criticizing exactly what you called out as an assumption - the methodology of the sample; namely that they survey's distribution matches the population distribution.
So thanks for the lesson in p values, but it has nothing to do with my point. I take issue with blindly citing sources without doing due diligence, especially when the survey was collected over a very small window of time across a population that most likely doesn't match Americans in toto.
> I'm criticizing exactly what you called out as an assumption - the methodology of the sample; namely that they survey's distribution matches the population distribution.
Yeah, I’m reading your previous comment, and I’m still not seeing it.
You're not seeing the issue with extrapolating a survey that lasted barely a week, from Pew Research, to an authoritative statement about the zeitgeist of the entire country?
Okay. I specifically called out the date range issue in my original comment. But it seems like people can't move past the impulse to (in)correct me about pop statistics. I never said the issue was small sample size.
The reason you're getting downvoted is that your argument is basically "well what if they're wrong?"
Pew has established a reputation as an organization who conducts polls regularly and properly. You are a throwaway account on HN. To be Bayesian about it, the priors are way better for Pew than for you.
If you have specific, substantive criticisms of how Pew conducted that particular poll, by all means, share them and folks can discuss that.
I don't really care why I'm being downvoted, nor did I ask. It's not relevant. I'll continually double down on this point regardless, unless you can actually refute what I'm saying instead of (like the others) trying to point out perceived inconsistencies in what I'm saying, or attacking points I didn't make.
I already made my substantive criticism. You cannot extrapolate the results of a survey evaluated over a 1 - 2 week period to the modal opinion of the American population. To spell it out for you: I vehemently disagree that you can adequately randomly sample a representative subset of the American population in a two week period.
Do you have a substantive rebuttal to that criticism? Evaluate my point on its own merits, not whether or not it's coming from a throwaway account (which this is not).
To put it bluntly, I'm a little stunned no one else is considering that survey as critically as I am. Even if it's ultimately a sound methodology, it's pretty frustrating for that to be taken as an uncontroversial fact without any challenge.
Yeah—too bad that wasn't the part you put in emphasis, and the part that you did put in emphasis is something you're claiming wasn't your criticism at all.
> Is there an actual crisis, outside the media narrative?
There isn't much short-term stock prices are good for. Determining if investors will bet there is a problem is one of them.
Facebook's stock is down 20% YoY [1]. Unless you believe investors were blindsided by stalling rich-country MAU growth due to demographic saturation, the market is pricing something in. Facebook, too, appears to believe there something is awry--Q3 2018 operating income was down 8 points relative to the same period in 2017, due mostly to costs and expenses ballooning 53% over the same period [2].
If the New York Times' sources about Zuckerberg hiring PR firms to write hit pieces against those criticizing Facebook are accurate, it seems he, too, sees a crisis.
It requires multiple suspensions of disbelief to think this is a manufactured problem. Facebook has been a principal actor in major scandals and atrocities around the world, appears to have reacted petulantly, and relies almost existentially on not having Instagram and WhatsApp torn out of it by antitrust regulators. The final point makes political vulnerability salient to its future.
[1] 144.55 on 12 November 2018 / 177.95 on 15 November 2017
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.
It's definitely significant for a company that a) has grown steadily since inception, and b) has a valuation based on continued growth. Facebook's stock is trading something like 35% below this year's peak, and this is part of why.
Testifying before Congress doesn't mean one is in crisis. People are called to testify before Congress all the time and you don't hear about it because the testimony is irrelevant.
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.
> 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.
The media doesn't just report on the public's current taste; its also an agent for advising the public to change their taste. To throw light on darkness. The article is not just some slander on Facebook, it goes into detail about exactly how much Facebook execs knew about the problem and the (extreme, IMO) political steps they've taken to protect their interests.
About second half 2016, iirc, Facebook changed the News Feed, so instead of showing first Pages content in your feed, they were showing what your friends posted/shared first. One could argue this was a good thing. What happened after is that many, if not all pages got a hit in reach/traffic. Who do you think has been hit the most by this? Media maybe? (less traffic redirected to their websites, less opportunities to show adds on said websites, less money for them). I think there even was a story about Murdoch trying to persuade Zucky to change his mind, found one: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-rupert-murdoch-thre...
Because of Trump and the US Government abdicating all responsibility in checking the Executive Branch? NYT's subscriptions jumped after the 2016 election because a free press is extremely vital at this point.
The US is in a very weird spot right now with Democratic norms sliding. Once we exit this weird period and US Government returns to normal, lets see how the NYT's stock price fares then.
> The US is in a very weird spot right now with Democratic norms sliding. Once we exit this weird period and US Government returns to normal, lets see how the NYT's stock price fares then.
I don't think the US Government will ever return to what it used to be pre-Trump, and I think its a good thing. One thing we've seen is just how brittle our Republic really is; how much we rely on so many people doing the right thing. I suspect the new wave of younger Congresspersons, who campaigned in an environment with a completely undemocratic and vile POTUS, will be deeply suspicious of unchecked Presidential authority. And I would argue that's a good thing.
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.
I'd wager most Americans hate their cable company.
Pro tip (no pun intended): never use residential cable service. Always sign up for business-class service. You will get more-or-less infinitely better support, less telephone tag when things go wrong, faster maintenance attention, and fewer hassles in general, all without paying much more. Anecdotally, this also keeps you off the radar of anti-piracy crusaders, since users in business-grade IP blocks are more likely to have the resources to fight back.
No takers so far after 6 hours. Expected to see at least one person.
I'm definitely not one of them. I use it for networking. Pretty much everyone in the board game industry is on Facebook at the moment (publishers, designers, developers, artists, media, etc), to get feedback from each other, coordinate events, and reach out to fans and potential customers.
I did it 3 months ago. Its really made my life so much better. No more worrying about not being good enough as my peers who live far away in a different country. No more dealing with ads.
However, I cheated somewhat and switched to twitter and continued to stay on Instagram (for sharing photos) and Whatsapp (talk to social circle).
If newspapers were only interested in clicks, no one would write such a story. No journalist would spend 6 months of their time researching such a story. Would you please stop with this simplistic media meme? This is not how things work in journalism.
I think what you'll see is a similar divergence to what we now see with obesity rates: uneducated/low income people experience higher rates of obesity than more educated/higher income e.g. low income or less educated people will remain oblivious and continue using FB normally while higher income or more educated people might start using FB less and less.
Sure there is. If they've been proven to have repeated privacy violations and ethics violations on a social space where people post a lot of their information it absolutely affects lives.
> ...doesn't want to confront its own role in the 2016 election...
Of all the things to blame the media for, being too critical of Clinton is an unfamiliar one to me. Especially when conventional media sources were clearly hostile to Trump but enamored with Trump stories.
If we are going to blame the media for something, it should be feeding the trolls, which it still has a hard time with to this day. Trump got incredible amounts of free press despite having much lower funding levels than Clinton.
We could call the email controversy uninteresting but it is clearly a story about corruption and unevenly applied laws and regulations. The story was about the corruption and cover-up, not IT infrastructure.
Facebook’s downfall does not necessarily have to come from “lower user engagement”. Think about the context that FB operates in.
Imagine more and more governments reading more and more stories about how this powerful platform is influencing elections, allowing hate speech, spreading lies and even causing genocides. You don’t have to have a too big imagination to see what they will do next.
Not to mention the influence of all these awful stories on how end users feel when they go on the site. Smoking, too, has many “daily active users”.
A crisis for Facebook surely can start with media narrative. “Growth solves all problems” is only for early-stage startups, not for social networks used by 1 in 4 humans.
Also, what effect does "we are evil" have on employee morale? What effect does a 20% decline in stock price (for a company where the RSU's and options were a significant hiring advantage) have on their ability to hire and retain talent? If they lose the talent war, does that affect their future growth potential?
> It's like the "Why this is the year of Linux on the desktop," but for media companies.
I don't think this is an accurate analogy. In fact, I think this analogy just muddies your argument. Its only analogous in that its a an event ("year of linux desktop" == "lets delete facebook") that pops up every now and then. But while the former argument is mostly one of technical adoption, usability and taste, the latter has morphed into a more insidious need to protect the public from targeted disinformation campaigns. The delete facebook movement is not just a technological/taste argument anymore, its a political one and you're doing it much disservice by comparing it to something which has much less impact.
> I think the conventional media sources, including the NYT, doesn't want to confront its own role in the 2016 election (the relentless media focus on Clinton's email server was insane). We don't want to acknowledge that most people's epistemological skill is low. Why look at ourselves, when we have this handy scapegoat right... over... there?
I think its important to not lump conventional news media into one big blob, just like we don't lump tech firms into one big blob. Cable News is, IMO, much more culpable for Trump's rise than NYT. NYT does actual reporting while CNN/MSNBC/FOX cable news have more punditry/opinions (NYT does have opinions too, but it doesn't dominate the medium).
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 media companies.
Don't get me wrong: I'm barely a Facebook user and agree with much of the criticism. But what I do, anecdotally, is less significant than what users do and want to do.
I think the conventional media sources, including the NYT, doesn't want to confront its own role in the 2016 election (the relentless media focus on Clinton's email server was insane). We don't want to acknowledge that most people's epistemological skill is low. Why look at ourselves, when we have this handy scapegoat right... over... there?
https://www.iep.utm.edu/girard/#H3