Facebook Usage Has Collapsed After Privacy Scandals, Data Shows (theguardian.com) 109
mrspoonsi shares a report from the Guardian: Facebook usage has plummeted over the last year, according to data seen by the Guardian, though the company says usage by other measures continues to grow. Since April 2018, the first full month after news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in the Observer, actions on Facebook such as likes, shares and posts have dropped by almost 20%, according to the business analytics firm Mixpanel. Taking that month as a baseline, total actions fell by more that 10% within a month, recovered a bit over the summer and then fell again over the autumn and winter of 2018, except for a brief rally over the period of the U.S. midterm elections.
The decline coincided with a series of data, privacy and hate speech scandals. In September the company discovered a breach affecting 50 million accounts, in November it admitted that an executive hired a PR firm to attack the philanthropist George Soros, and it has been repeatedly criticized for allowing its platform to be used to fuel ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. "On top of that, Facebook has continued to lose younger users, who are spreading their time and attention across other social platforms and digital activities," eMarketer said.
The decline coincided with a series of data, privacy and hate speech scandals. In September the company discovered a breach affecting 50 million accounts, in November it admitted that an executive hired a PR firm to attack the philanthropist George Soros, and it has been repeatedly criticized for allowing its platform to be used to fuel ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. "On top of that, Facebook has continued to lose younger users, who are spreading their time and attention across other social platforms and digital activities," eMarketer said.
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Guess what, dumbass? ...
Guess what dumbass, they create a profile on EVERYONE who's ever been to a site that had tracking enabled, whether or not you have ever made a profile on their website. Creating a profile is just binding the details you provide to an already existing unique id in their system.
Re: What privacy? (Score:1)
They create a profile on you whether you use their service or not. Look up "shadow profiles".
If facial recognition can detect you as a unique person then you'd be surprised how many pictures of you exist that were not taken by you. Sometimes they aren't even taken by anyone you know (e.g. you're in the background). This sort of tech has problems when it becomes married to the state apparatus. Right now they're turning the screw on Zuckerberg but it's quite possible the only reason is because he won't give u
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"I'm sorry, were people putting private information on Facebook? Lol.
I'm perfectly happy using facebook, I don't even let it know my phone number."
It's kinda cute that you think this helps.
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Here's a thought America: don't go to his rally on the July 4th on the National Mall. Make it an even bigger "no show" than his inauguration. That'd be a fuckin' laugh-and-a-half.
People like you and me were never going to go anyway. If you want to shame him, you need to convince his base that they have been conned. I think the empty seats in Orlando would have been filled by people who have now made that transition.
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Never thought I'd see the day when I agreed with that douchebag on whether or not the sun was shining, but he's exactly right on the money here.
Only old people use it (Score:1)
Social media marketers all say that Facebook is only used by old people, so if you want to reach an older audience, use Facebook.
Oh and it's also full of trolls and petty fights between randoms.
I remember when Facebook used to be a fun place to share friend and family pictures and maybe learn about events going on. That's when Facebook was fun.
Then it got an injection of capital and it turned into a media cesspit and BS central. It's like the CIA outsourced it's spying to this company.
As soon as you get pol
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Instagram. They just don't realize it's also Facebook.
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Yep. This has nothing to do with the "privacy scandals" - almost no one cares about those and I suspect almost no one could tell you about them, other than that they vaguely have something to do with Russia and the election. (I suspect most people here would have trouble explaining exactly what the scandal was about, thanks to the media confusing it with "election meddling." It was actually about Facebook allowing people to essentially hand over their friend's data, without telling their friends that was wh
just got bored with it (Score:5, Funny)
My kids don't use it. I got bored with it. Every single IT tech I know had no illusions about privacy when they signed up for their first account.
Zuckercoin should have an interesting media bubble however. Facebook! Now with money laundering!
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Instagram is owned by Facebook, and there are signs that data is shared between the two services. Heck, they even have the same GDPR statement.
Die facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
The most anti social way to interact, producing people with their head buried in an application designed to provoke endomorphine responses in the brain and keep them addicted whilst providing the illusion they are "social".
Fucking die facebook.
Re:Die facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
What the fuck is "endomorphine"?
The thing that just gave you that rush of moral superiority because you 'believed' you were being intellectual but couldn't risk posting as a pseudonym because the risk of being made to look foolish produces a massive withdrawal that sends the sufferer into a downward spiral of depression.
It's the thing that has produced the "outrage culture" that reasonable people have to put up with now.
Re:Die facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
No, buddy, those would be endorphins.
No, I mean Endomorphin [wikipedia.org]. I am not talking about a response to pain or other sensory activity, I'm talking about neuropeptides generated from psychological interactions. DING!
There was a time when Slashdot was a website where smart people posted about things they knew about. Now it's this. People like you made it this way. Thanks.
Wow, you've got it bad. You really have to get off FB. That self righteousness is what you're addicted to and it makes you feel like a fool. When you go away from this interaction your lack of being able to get what you want from me may cause you to set up a nasty interaction with someone else that will leave you wondering why you behave that way. You probably asked yourself that before.
The reason why you can't control that behavior is because you are addicted to endomorphin. That's the answer to the question you ask yourself.
That's why you don't have anything useful to add to this conversation.
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I'd love to hear you explain how endomorphins are triggered by using facebook, as opposed to the well-known dopamine and endorphin responses.
Same way it does with many cluster B personality disordered people, like yourself.
It's a well studied mechanism in the brain however I could not bothered educating you because I am tired. I don't really care what you think Mr AC you aren't using a pseudonym because you need to protect your shredded self esteem. You probably feel like an idiot because that is what your original projection onto me was. You were unsuccessful and now you have all of these uncomfortable feelings you have to deal with.
You'
bots? (Score:2)
Let it die (Score:1)
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I see you are well acquainted with rational debate.
so... (Score:2)
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I'm an old person, but I still use Facebook. I end up having fairly intellectual conversations with people I went to high school with (and others). There's a solid set of maybe 30 people that make up 90% of my interactions (not all, or even most, from high school).
At this time "old persons" are all that's left on Facebook. The young dropped it a while ago.
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Censorship (Score:3, Interesting)
All those reasons are nonsense.
Firstly, tere was a mass exodus once they went on a mass killing spree of pages that countered or mocked the far-left narrative.
Then they started "deplatforming" the publishers. Say what you want about Alex Jones, but Anarchyball was hilarious and innocuous.
This was after years of worsening policies, including removal of YouTube links from feeds (so you can't even share your kids' recital with Aunt Mildred outside of their awful video platform) and they went after nonprofit pages to pay for "reach" with ads and promoted posts. I run a few community organizations and we went back to email .
FB became an unreliable communications platform.
P.S. I am glad for all of this because I was wasting life on it.
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Most people like Facebook's censorship. They don't want to see homophobic, racist, gory, upsetting material. They go to Facebook to look at baby photos and selfies, not engage with the KKK.
If what you said was true then we would see rival platforms booming. That's simply not happening. Tell us, where are they all going?
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The OP cited Alex Jones, the guy who harasses he families of the Sandy Hook victims, in-between selling dubious soy-based brain pills.
The reason that the data scandal had such an effect is that it affected a lot of people. Most users don't notice the censorship.
If it really collapsed... (Score:2)
Re: If it really collapsed... (Score:2)
Well, they're down 7% for the year. Other tech companies have seen 10-30% gains. For a company that big, that's the rumble you hear as the collapse starts.
Big companies don't disappear over night. They have to be given time for the oligarchs to extract their wealth first.
Re: If it really collapsed... (Score:2)
I've seen over 30% gains from MSFT over the last year.
I don't need research to see that (Score:3)
As soon as I saw them advertising on TV, I knew they were feeling heat.
The decline begins.... (Score:1)
Give it about 5 years, and Facebook will become the next "Myspace" (ironic seeing that Myspace was *the* social media platform when Facebook was starting up), and fade into obscurity, Another rotten social media platform will take it's place (Tik Tok?), and the mass data/privacy abuse will begin anew.
Doesn't matter (Score:2)
_usage_ is going down, but "Actions such as shares and likes down nearly 20%, though user numbers still growing" - they are still gaining users, and this is all that counts.
even the people i hear that are no longer using facebook and moved to other social networks are now using; instagram & whatsapp.
really, that is how you want to escape facebook? it's the same thing with another name.
up until now, facebook has nothing to worry about.
even from the most of us here. so many things have migrated to faceboo
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"user" numbers will always go up- the number of added bots alone will be higher than the number of people who figure out how to actually remove their facebook account and make the effort to do so instead of simply ignoring it.
Facebook account evaluation (Score:1)
Switched to Instagram, showed them! (Score:2)
Kids aren't using it (Score:2)
Re:There never was any "scandal". (Score:4, Insightful)
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"the company says usage by other measures continues to grow" ...so...bots, misinformation campaigns, anti-vaxxers, and right-wing nutjobs?
My concern is they aren't monetizing the platform correctly for the shareholder investment. They need to allow more crime on their network.
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Disclosure: currently I have shares of FB, but I am looking to exit for now, perhaps via covered calls.
I like the service Facebook offers (I am an infrequent user) but I am concerned about how they have (mis)handled user privacy, fake news, and management accountability. I do not see Facebook going away by any means, but in the short term I have to wonder whether it will go through some restructuring, either of its own accord, or compelled to do so through regulation.
I would not hesitate to get back in if F
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I'm pretty sure that facebook was comprised of about 80% bots, so 20% loss may very well be all of the actual idiots that continued to use the shitty platform after it began being publicly traded.
So, good on you, humans! Go out into the world and hang out with your friends, take pictures, play games, go on road trips, etc... One day you'll be dead.
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Also probably not a collapse, 20% lower is more like a reduction. Also can be due to many factors. Facebook is a fad but it should have a decent amount of staying power, as an investor I would not be stressed by this as much as a CEO who will not listen to his shareholders. (I am not currently invested in FB.)
Facebook is becoming more and more annoying to use. As such I'm using less, posting less content, because I'm posting less content my friends are using it less, posting less content, because they're posting less content I'm using it even less. It's a negative feedback loop. It was happening before the Cambridge Analytica scandal, realistically it's been happening for years as they've been getting more and more blatant and forceful with adverting, even trying to circumvent adblockers, been making the applica
Re:George Soros is a 'philanthropist'? (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like another day w/ an SJW w/ mod points
Incidentally, this is one more reason Facebook has collapsed. In the name of combating Hate Speech, which is anything from Alex Jones to mainstream conservative opinion (like LiveAction), Facebook has happily cracked down on users just b'cos of their views, making it clear that they're not welcome. Well, guess what? When you start pulling stunts like that, don't be surprised when the people you've indicated you don't want around leave, and go elsewhere.
Yeah, all the privacy violations were bad, but there was a good segment of the population willing to put that down to well meaning, but badly executed, policies. But when Facebook, like so many other 'tech' companies these days is willing to ostracize people on the basis of what SJW activists demand, they should not be surprised when more and more people decide to shun them, out of disgust.
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Facebook has happily cracked down on users just b'cos of their views, making it clear that they're not welcome. Well, guess what? When you start pulling stunts like that, don't be surprised when the people you've indicated you don't want around leave, and go elsewhere.
If that were the case then some of the so-called "free speech" platforms would have picked up the slack. You've got gab, but it's got less than a million users, peanuts by Facebook's standards. What else? That's the biggest of them.
Seems much
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Seems much more likely to me that people don't like the privacy violations and have sort of noticed that the network of 1000 "friends" is useless. There's a reason you lost contact with those idiots from school or whatever. Its because they were idiots and they still are. And seriously who want's to see yet another tranche of 10,000 baby photos?
This is spot-on, 100% bingo-accurate.
The privacy issues probably bother people (somewhat), but I think the thing about having 1000 friends who aren't really there coupled with the repetitive content and endless preening is what's turning people off.
I personally couldn't care less about the people I knew in school (they probably feel the same way) and I've no interest in seeing an endless stream of baby pics and "I just bought this thing, I'm so great!" posts.
I'm not sure why this kind of fake interaction is
Perceptions of Facebook purposes (Score:2)
I get your point, but there was a novelty about Facebook when it was new, and people actually could rediscover their old school friends - not that they necessarily wanted to reconnect w/ them. And keep in mind - all of that was voluntarily put in by people. I never joined Facebook (aside from some fake accounts I set up w/o phone numbers for particular game purposes which I rarely visit), but it was fun to see what relatives and friends of mine elsewhere in the world are doing.
I do agree w/ Serviscope o
Facebook vs alternatives (Score:2)
Yeah, there's gab, but as Brad Parscale pointed out, where is the gab app that one can run from an iPhone or an Android phone? Most people are not like us - sitting in front of a computer typing away. Nor are they willing to go to their browser and type in a URL: they'd like an app that they can open and use. Just like Twitter or Facebook.
So far the number of banned people hasn't reached a critical mass, but once it does, it's a matter of time before alternate platforms emerge. May not even necessari
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"on users just b'cos of their views"
I'm curious- what do you do with all the free time you save typing "b'cos" instead of "because"?
Or do you do it to look edgy and hip? Is that what all the cool kids are doing now? Help an oldster out and clue me in. I'll even buy a fidget spinner if it'll help.