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1293 points rmason | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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no_wizard ◴[] No.19325224[source]
Here's the kicker, which I think others have pointed out, but I want to say this succinctly:

First, to quote the article:

> The big gainer, interestingly, is under the same roof as Facebook. It's their co-owned Instagram

Now, to my point: The average person does not care about privacy, just the illusion of privacy (I suspect people reading this site intuitively know this. At some level, nearly everyone is in different ways, it turns out.)

Instagram provides that illusion by not injecting opinionated content into your feed (The most obvious example: you aren't seeing injected news stories in your Instagram feed, generally its only ads and people you follow, and the ads are marked)

Rest assured, they're getting their data's worth, maybe not the same way, but photos (particularly metadata on the photos that most smart phones, for instance, default collect) are just as (if not more so) valuable, not to mention there are still a myriad of other ways of collecting privacy intrusive data about users.

Hows about that?

(just to show my assertion is not completely unfounded, check out this survey:

https://www.pewinternet.org/2015/05/20/americans-views-about...

The survey says: 9 out of ten americans care deeply about privacy (particuarly around data privacy and collection)

Yet, our actions, even faced with the outright knowledge of those very things being actively and routinely violated by services, is not enough for people to leave platforms for good, simply, people shift between social media outlets, like those leaving Facebook over privacy concerns yet still continue to use Instagram, in fact, Instagram is projected to grow as noted in this article, in part because of people migrating away from Facebook)

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dgudkov ◴[] No.19325442[source]
I don't think the migration is caused by privacy concerns. Facebook has become ridiculously bloated with all kinds of features up to the point where it starts resembling enterprise software rather than an online consumer service. Even I, a techie, sometimes have hard times understanding how to do this or that in Facebook.

On the other hand, Instagram is plain simple and understandable.

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1. sizzle ◴[] No.19326005[source]
When I first joined Facebook after jumping ship from Myspace, it was really simple to use with minimal intrusion of media clickbait which is in stark contrast to the bloated and highly optimized for engagement monstrosity it has become today.

I was grandfathered into this experience and it no longer appeals to me today as an adult. I suspect this phenomenon is affecting other early adopters as well. Can anyone else relate?

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2. pndy ◴[] No.19326313[source]
I joined 10 years ago after the local equivalent of classmates become utterly useless which mean creators had to seek for revenues and that included but wasn't limited to sponsored profiles of local brands and famous people, virtual currency (you could spend on ridiculous pictures that were meant to enrich your profile and interaction with people), games, annoying promotion of their twitter-alike microblog nobody had idea how to use and which caused great uproar. Service was of course filled with ads of which most controversial one was sucking out your profile picture to dump you an customized credit card ad. Before those "improvements" it was a good place to reconnect with people you knew but since it was something new and unknown, a lot of them had no idea how to use it and made fool of themselves or deliberately used it as dating site - hell, at some point profiles of prostitutes of both sexes started to appear. Facebook largely dethroned naszaklasa in upcoming years but IMO didn't improved social skills of most people who carried those along to the new network. The service was sold but still operates and it's popular among less experienced with technology people.

The similar scenario happened with news agregator similar to digg - at the beginning wykop was aimed for powerusers, IT professionals but quickly idea was extended and included content of various type. Userbase grow had an upward trend which of course lead again to monetization; ads, sponsored content, microblog, shameless promotion of certain political agendas were introduced and at the same time, the content quality heavily piked down. Site still operates today under third - if I'm not mistaken, owner but I'm no longer there since interaction with biased content and teenager, 20-something trolls is not appealing at all.

So yeah, I believe it's pretty the same thing everywhere: a simple service idea is successful, userbase grows and revenue sources are needed. Sources are being introduced along with new features but content quality starts to drop. Unpopular decisions are made leading users to migrate in search for better and simple alternatives.

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3. sizzle ◴[] No.19330800[source]
Do you think there is enough abandonment of the core userbase that Facebook can be dethroned?
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4. pndy ◴[] No.19332177{3}[source]
I really doubt it; they may lost users in long term but not because of new player - they have seem to reached already over-complexity stage with features and thus service will simply become unappealing to existing and new users but that will take time. If they start changing messenger into more discord-slax alike service then they may keep users as this form of communication seems to be getting more popular