I'm sitting here chuckling because of course the title is in jest, but Facebook has been having a rough go of it lately. Not financially, mind you, where they've been absolutely killing it. I'm talking about in the media and political sphere, where roughly half the country (well, half + 2.6 million if we're being accurate) blames the social media giant at least in part for the outcome of the 2016 election. You can't go a whole day lately without hearing or reading about fake news, and since Facebook is the amplifier of choice for your average American they're catching a lot of heat.
But this isn't about the election (God knows we've discussed that ad nauseum). This is more about Facebook's role in society, its role in your life, and an exploration of how a company with a free product does $25 billion a year in revenues.
71% of the adult population online uses Facebook. And they use it a lot. At last count, Facebook boasted 1.8 billion monthly active users. But that's not the scandal. Of those 1.8 billion, nearly 1.2 billion are DAILY active users. That means they're logging on every single day. And they're spending an average of 40 minutes per day on the site, which would be shocking enough until you consider that the average family only spends 36 minutes a day together. One in five pageviews in the United States happens on Facebook.
Clearly Facebook has a stranglehold on the market. And I get it; it's sticky as shit. Every time I think I'm going to quit altogether, I remember all the different accounts I use Facebook to log into and what a hassle it'll be to start over from scratch with all that crap. Plus there's the whole creepy factor to not being on Facebook. Don't give me that look; you know you think it's weird when someone doesn't have a Facebook account.
One thing this recent election has taught us all is how powerful the echo chamber is. If my feed is any indication, the people who are middle-of-the-road have nothing to say. All I saw for the better part of a year were extreme views (on both sides). And I'm not convinced that's organic. I think Facebook is juicing a lot of stuff for views, and tailoring the experience to drive advertising. And I don't mean that in a simplistic way (like, no shit Sherlock, of course it's about advertising). I'm talking about taking it to a truly diabolical level.
On some level we're all aware that whenever we get something for free that we're the product. But we've reached a point where we really have to start thinking about how much we're giving away. We've all heard horror stories about something someone thoughtlessly posted on social media went on to blow their whole life up. That's not the only trap, though. By dialing in the algorithms to a ridiculous degree, Facebook can guarantee that you only see things that appeal to you, and that leads to a pretty distorted world view.
So I'm curious. How concerned are you that you've basically given a metric shitton of personal data to a company you don't know anything about (aside from what you read in the news)? Have you or anyone you know actually successfully quit Facebook? If so, what is it like when you get asked why you don't have an account (I'm assuming employers sort of expect it these days)? Do you think Facebook influenced the election? Could it ever be trusted as a viable news platform? What do you think of the efforts to blacklist "fake" news sites?
Facebook has been with us for a decade now, and no single other company in the history of mankind has had their impact in such a short period of time. Zuck and Co clearly caught us all napping, and now we've given away the ranch. Facebook has been responsible for some really sketchy shit, both on and off the site. Are we better off with Facebook, or would we have been better off if the Winklevi had driven a Ferrari over Zuckerberg?
I'm looking at the world around me and I really have to wonder. Of course, without Facebook we'd never have epic Facebook pranks like this one.
Facebook is garbage. I deleted it over two years ago and you couldn't pay me to go back. It used to be incredibly useful and valuable, but with Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin, you can stay in contact and have relative control of your world.
The Company will linger on for a long time, but I think it will eventually go the way of Myspace and the ilk.
Do you really? Because I wonder about that. Logic seems to dictate that it'll go away and be replaced by something eventually, but we've never seen anything with this kind of traction before. I mean, they legit own the planet.
Agree that it's largely garbage.
I mean the difference between Myspace and Facebook is the product cycle and other business ventures. Myspace was early on and just social, before the advent of the Iphone and other connection devices. Facebook locked college kids in with an incredibly useful product and ramped as the Iphone and other devices took off. With that runway they bought other incredibly useful platforms.
If you talk to younger kids nowadays, all of them are on Twitter and think FB is for old people. The site went from being useful to connect with fellow classmates, to a professional and personal liability.
I was on both Myspace years years ago and Facebook during UG. FB won me over because of the ability to connect with classmates. I stayed on it post college to stay in contact and for the social aspect. As time went on, the site because more of a mess, with non-college people joining, games, endless ads and basically morphing into a social network/yahoo message board.
I stayed on it because of chat and seeing peoples pictures.
Gchat removed the need for Facebook chat and Instagram removed the need for pictures. So that left me with a site that is essentially an endless spam feed, full of moronic arguments, Candy Crush reposts and people having kids/getting married.
So now I do it pure. I chat with Google if I need to. I share pics with IG. And I use Linkedin to keep in contact with people. Each has different privacy settings, each can be tailored to the audience and if something better comes out, I can upgrade without compromising.
Ultimately, I simply cannot use a platform which has morphed into a social engineering tool. All the shit revealed during this election, with them choosing which articles to move to the top and fucking with conservative groups, is too much for me. This "fake" news garbage is the final nail in the head.
Fuck Zuck and Fuck Facebook.
With you on that, I don't use it either. It was great in college 8 years ago but then about 2 years ago I found myself just scrolling through people's opinions all day who I don't really care about. whats the point in that.
I imagine that I use Facebook a lot differently than most. I am a news junkie, so instead of visiting 10+ news sites per day, I like their pages on Facebook and use it as an RSS feed of sorts. My only complaint is that Facebook is now pumping ads by the dozens into my news feed, and 99% of the ads are irrelevant to me.
EDIT: The fake news stuff is certainly worrisome, but people's inability to fact check and think on their own has existed long before this election cycle. If I were to put together an objective list of why Trump won and/or why Hillary lost, Facebook would be close to the bottom.
Well I think the issue with "fake" news is more with Facebook curating liberal news vs. actual fake news. Like after seeing the level of collusion between "real" news and the Democrats, I consider censoring any garbage news site to be hypocritical at best.
If you like news feeds without the ads, set up a Twitter. Or get a good RSS feeder. I read the Finviz news section as well as a couple other sites so I never got around to setting the RSS up to a solid level, but I have seen it done.
Twitter is definitely great for news, especially breaking news.
The issue with fake news is that no one fact checks anything. "Wait..you're telling me that Imright.liberal.blogspot isn't the most accurate source of information? Well just go ahead and fuck me sideways.."
If people just fact checked occasionally then garbage wouldn't surface on people's feeds because people are clicking through less compared to credible news.
Also, agreed on finviz, it's the single most convenient news aggregate site I've found. Skews financial but also incorporates political news relating to markets. Really hits my sweet spot.
You are the best!
This is similar to how I use fb. It's a decent news aggregator. I follow music related pages such as artists and labels and there isn't another platform that can do this.
Same. I pretty much only use FB to follow bands and labels, so that I can stay on top of releases without checking a thousand different personal webpages or forums. It's very useful for that. The rest of it can pretty much fuck off.
I have no respect for people who use Facebook as their primary news source.
Don't have it, found it useless to my life
.
Facebook gives uninformed people a platform to express their views and an audience to reinforce them. Thats what was most noticeable to me during the last few years, involving the election and social movement. That being said, I am amazed at how quickly Facebook has moved from primarily written content to become a major competitor to YouTube in the video content world.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Never had FB. Wife has an account and is connected with a few of my friends, so I can occasionally check their updates / pics, etc if I need to. But for the most part I have no use for it.
I don't get on FB but I think you guys are dreaming if you think the company isn't here to stay. Even if their core platform loses it's luster Facebook's investments in instagram, virtual reality, and whatsapp will drive growth for years to come. As the developing world gets further access to the internet, they will become a vital back stop against the lack of new users slowing down in already developed markets. FB/ GOOG are probably the only new tech companies I'd be comfortable investing my money in for the next 20 years (not AMZN, NFLX, etc).
As for the election: I don't think FB, or any other media organization, affected the outcome either way. The media is a tool to confirm people's beliefs, the media doesn't change people's minds. I was saying this when a lot of people on this forum were whining about the media swaying voters away from Trump and I'll continue to say it. Sites like Breitbart are tailor made for people who were never voting for HRC no matter what, their far-right views attract ppl who are already far-right, a liberal or even a moderate isn't making decisions based on Breitbart, in fact, neither is a conservative.
You do realize, sadly, that a large number of Americans are uninformed. And that these people get their news from a variety of sites, Facebook included. When you have a site that started off manipulating news stories and is now migrating to punishing "fake" news, specifically as a result of Hillary losing, you have a dangerous situation.
It is one thing if a person chooses to live in an echo chamber and another when you have a social media platform choosing behind the scenes what people see and view. It is also worrisome if that platform has a well known, liberal slant.
People have short memories. It wasn't long ago when liberals were trying to get Fox News to remove the News because they said it was slanted media. Now they've moved on to the new boogie man. Sad, since it has been blatantly shown that CNN, MSNBC, etc are the ones who lie and manipulate.
1.) Fake news is real and while I don't think it affected the election that doesn't matter, FB as a reputable organization should try their best to put a stop to it, I don't care who won. Some guy just fired a shot at a pizza shop over an idiotic fake news story. 2.) "uninformed" does not mean "entirely malleable by the media". uninformed conservatives will ascribe to whatever validates their conservatism, same thing with uninformed liberals. 3.) If you think CNN is more biased than Breitbart or Fox News then we need to stop talking because you don't care about reality.
pretty much the same as TNA except I still have mine and only check it to keep in contact with family I don't want following me on instagram
4chan cracks me up. When Hillary had a rally at OSU that was being touted as biggest rally yet. It was an effort to show she can pull big crowds (http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/11/hillary-clin…).
Some dude on 4chan used photoshop and facial recognition software to place a small red dot on every face in the wide angle, official picture of the "massive" crowd. Then he counted the dots. Something like 3K people, max in the crowd. Then someone posted a screen shot of some professors offering extra credit for anyone who attends.
Pretty hilarious stuff. Site is full of fuckery, but some of it is rather sharp wit.
I have no Facebook, it's for fucking losers.
I'm not a big fan of mind control, especially by some dorky silicon valley liberals. I'm free.
It shows how disconnected with everyone else you are if you think most regular people have some sort of issue with posting a bunch of shit all over FB. They love it for that purpose. No one who works a normal 9-5 job cares if people see them sharing obscene images or making incorrect political statements or engaging in some controversial discussion. Only people that are career-oriented have those sorts of qualms with social media, and that's less than 25% of the population. If you are this type of person (practically everyone on WSO, I'm speaking from someone that sees the sheer dunce that spews all over that place with some very normal working class folks), you're more likely to use LinkedIn over FB. A lot of people are using FB as a legitimate outlet, especially with the constant news reels, live updates, and memes. FB isn't going anywhere within at least the next 10 years because, just as someone else said, they're interconnected with nearly every other platform. Kids today will certainly outgrow Twitter, Instagram, and maybe Snapchat. When they graduate from college they'll either become LinkedIn professionals looking to network, or regular working class people on FB.
i would imagine it would be hard to have a social life living abroad w/out facebook so i've always kept up with it + use it as a journal of sorts
long live facebook
Beyond it being a bit unnerving for a company to have a lot of data on you -- I'm not really sure what the practical negative ramifications of using facebook are.
I've bought shit off social media ads and been happy with the products (they are tailored to what I'm interested in - GREAT).
I don't post stupid stuff (or I've deleted the stupid stuff) that could negatively impact my career.
I ignore or block people/sources that I dislike.
Not sure what's wrong with being able to communicate and stay connected with people. I can see how if relying on your friends' posts as your primary news source can warp your world view -- but not anymore than watching fox news 24/7.
Stopped logging into it as well. I have personally seen many of my friends spending less and less time. When my own parents and grandparents are logging on, it becomes a buzzkill.
If you think Facebook is scary, then what about WeChat? They control more personal data than Facebook and it is supported by the Chinese government. If evolution is the future, Facebook will become more like WeChat in the future (i.e. online payment, e-commerce booking).
What's concerning is that they recently trimmed the list of trending topics and appear to aggregate a little bit of bias news topics.
Fuck Facebook. As others have commented on especially TNA, I grew up with MySpace and early-days Facebook which were awesome (not only because you had your own music playing on your sick myspace page and could customize it with HTML, but that's another story) because it was your peers aka mostly your classmates and everything revolved around that. maybe your cousins and other close family members who you were cool with. but as soon as the aunts and uncles, mom and dad, grandma and grandpa started joining, then getting offended when you didn't accept their friend request at Thanksgiving because you didn't give a fuck about whatever politics or vacation they had, it went downhill really quick.
Facebook is now a huge swarming cesspool of dogshit. It is a fantastic platform for attention seekers and insecurity. If you are dumb enough to get your primary source of news from whatever is trending on Facebook, you deserve to be fooled by fake news. 100% agree it is a personal and professional liability.
Fuck Facebook. To think that company is making the world a better place is absolutely ridiculous.
You guy's passed yourself for smart people and yet you are discussing fake news on facebook? God dammit. Hey Einsteins, newsflash, there is a button "Hide all from this user", yeah, check out the manual. You can also input whatever personal information you want, if you do not want to share something, you are free to do it. You can even use a different name so your employer won't find out how sh*tfaced you get every weekend. How do you even clean your kitchen if you can't clean your facebook news feed.
This is making me feel old...
This whole thread reminds me of this video about why doesn't MTV play music videos anymore.
TLDR: You are not the target demo anymore
no issues with facebook, but i do get somewhat annoyed when ugly girls pose as babes on tinder and bumble
Honestly, the only reason I have Facebook is to use tinder, bumble, the league, etc. I use messenger sometimes because I have friends that prefer it over text, but I deleted the actual Facebook app a while ago. Really don't see any use for it.
tl;dr
Yes.
Damn. You guys really put a lot of thought into this.
I deleted my Facebook because it was full of bunch of garbage and was a productivity killer. Twitter never caught on. Tinder is what bars are for (you even have the benefit to seeing what would your swipe really looks like vs the dreaded 'angles'.)And Instagram is full of a bunch of staged photos giving a fake snapshot into sad people's meaningless lives.
LinkedIn is the only SM account I still have and my involvement on it is limited. It's purely to help generate new opportunities for myself (recruiters, execs, other new and valuable business connections.)
Call me old school but anyone I care to stay in touch with I can and prefer to do so by phone or text. If I really like them I'll even take some time to hangout with them in person.
Ironically, Social media never added an incremental amount of value to my life (in fact, I'd argue it did the complete opposite). So to answer your question calling FB the devil is a little bit too Ted Cruz for me, but FB (and generally all other SM) is certainly dead to me. My intuition tells me I'm not the only one who feels this way.
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