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U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

(www.marketplace.org)
1293 points rmason | 1 comments | 06 Mar 19 20:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.304s | source
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no_wizard ◴[07 Mar 19 02:55 UTC] 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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jd492 ◴[07 Mar 19 04:32 UTC] No.19325515[source]▶
I did not leave Facebook because of privacy concerns. That's your biggest mistaken assumption.

I work on Big Data for a living and know how inept companies are at actually doing anything useful with personal data. The data being generated is massive and the vast amount of it is random and useless.

My reason for reducing my social media presence is the Like count next to every thought expressed. By adding a publicly visible number next to every expressed human thought, you influence behavior and thinking. This has all kinds of consequences that tech corps and society are waking up to - ledger.humanetech.com

That is why I have consciously reduced my social media usage.

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1. class4behavior ◴[07 Mar 19 06:52 UTC] No.19326060[source]▶
>I work on Big Data for a living and know how inept companies are at actually doing anything useful with personal data. The data being generated is massive and the vast amount of it is random and useless.

Your anecdotal experience isn't evidence businesses aren't doing anything with data collection which would be worrying to consumers or that privacy concerns are overrated. And yes, this is what that paragraph of yours is implying.

If your company didn't have a strategy for analytics, it doesn't mean others do not either. The mere fact that users get used to that practice is already a win to those who wish to take advantage of that information.

Not to mention that the greatest threat comes from sharing and connecting those databases, so what may have been random and useless may find significance when sold to other aggregators.