With social media boycott campaigns it's hard to separate the noise from impact on the bottom line but with recent stories of Uber and what was occurring behind the scenes, the #DeleteUber campaign actually did have a negative impact on the bottomline that was felt and was definitely a huge driver for the board moving to remove Travis which is underreported as everyone instead focuses on the drama that occurred as that sells as a better story from the press side.

With Facebook it will really be about how many people truly delete Facebook.

The difference of course is that every Uber user was generating significantly more revenue on average than the avg Facebook user, so the number of users that delete Facebook would have to be much more significant.

Also interesting, is what is the global response. Is this localized to the US, are many people globally doing the same thing?

If it doesn't impact the bottom line through a massive amount of users deleting, then the stock will bounce back well before the next quarterly earnings report.

Most of the examples from above - Intel, UA, Wells Fargo etc had serious issues. But the average person didn't own the problem. Today if you talk to an average person about Intel's issues they will respond - Is my laptop/pc working without issues? If yes. Then I don't care, let Intel come up with a patch.

Chipotle on the other hand was a case of customer's owning the problem. In people's mind having a burrito from Chipotle posed a health risk. Hence, the bottom line impact.

If you tell an average person, and I did try, about how Facebook sold their data and the issue with Cambridge Analytics etc, they dint seem to care. The reason is while Facebook did let CA misuse the data, it didn't really "force" people to share their data -- this is an actual quote from a non-technical user.

So, as far as an average person is concerned, the question is - will Facebook change it's structure to make it difficult to share their location, last meal etc for some likes? If not, then they don't care.

Chipotle is an excellent example of how this might affect Facebook.

I think Chipotle could have recovered from this scandal if not for the fact that many people were already less into the 'chain restaurant' thing (in particular 'millennials', I remember reading somewhere).

Of all the people I know, a shockingly small percentage actually uses Facebook actively. And just looking at my FB feed, it's become a ghost town compared to what it used to be. Many have moved to WhatsApp/Telegram/Snapchat/Instagram/etc. for their regular interactions, and mostly use Facebook for overt marketing/self-marketing purposes, if at all (events, business pages, etc.). And there's a surprising amount of grumbling about WhatsApp and Instagram being owned by Facebook, by people who I wouldn't characterize as the 'type' for this kind of grumbling.

The fact that Facebook is still used for some things, and that they own WhatsApp/Instagram might end up saving them, but I still wouldn't be surprised if, similar to the Chipotle situation, this is just that last push that many people need to ditch the FB ecosystem, or at least actively look for alternatives. And so far I get the impression that the WhatsApp/Instagram 'moats' are much more sensitive to disruption than FB is, or used to be.

Online privacy is too abstract to cause a visceral reaction of disgust in the average person, but food poisoning scandals can do that, especially to parents or people who recently ate at the restaurant. (Actually, framing the Facebook privacy issue as one involving the endangerment of children would probably get a lot more traction among the general public than the current media narrative.)

Its also about action seeding, for later events. With each strike like this some people leave and its likely they are early(ish) adopters, and also likely that they are opinionated ones (just my theory). So their leaving reduces the quality of the network, for the bulk of passive users. And I know (anecdotally) few passive users. People who just read and never do any comments or likes. So the value of the network goes down for them. And they may then spend lesser time. Or may have lesser satisfaction. So network effects brought it to where it is, and they also work very well in the other direction.

On the other thread on HN today, on WhatsApp founder, I wonder if they wouldn't have sold to Facebook (of all the players), what would have been the social media landscape be like today?

I am just hoping, like I am sure many others on HN, that this event finally seeds an open social network, which works like emails do.

They need to move toward Snapchat in droves or another social media alternative.

MySpace died because of Facebook.

Digg died because of Reddit.

AOL died because of ATT, Verizon, Comcast, TWC/Charter, etc..

You covered the fundamental reason why Facebook _could_ suffer from this but I believe it won’t. Uber is very easy to ditch because it has well-known competitors that are just or almost as good and readily available. And uber doesn’t have years of photos, friends and interactions that I’d be losing.

But for real friends, you will always keep in contact no matter the medium.

May be you can consider the moral side of what you are doing, if you care.

This makes me really sad. People say, they care about privacy - theirs and others'. But they are okay making money investing for the same.

You know what would do good in the world? Invest in evil companies and use the profits to fund advocacy against what they are doing. Turn their success against them.

But if you refuse to invest in companies you don't like, it makes no difference to them at all.

Buying stock increases demand, thus increasing the price of a stock unit. That, in turn, benefits those who own it (which I'm guessing is primarily the CEO and the shareholders)

I don’t like being a product. Yes, Google products still make money off me, but I try to minimize it, and they’re at least slightly less callous.

I'm right there with you. I try not to use Google products either...I guess probably the only one I explicitly use still is Waze...there needs to be a mapping/traffic alternative.

or at least better at not getting caught.

For example, I literally haven't seen some of my high school friends since we graduated 22 years ago, but I know all about their kids and families and their recent successes at their jobs. I like knowing that I'm still connected to people I spent literally every free hour with in my youth.

It's especially salient for me because Facebook didn't exist when we graduated. Many of them I've only reconnected with in the last 5 to 10 years, so I remember what it was like when we didn't have Facebook to keep in touch.

It has real value for me.

Why is that so useful though? If they were really important to you personally, you'd have kept in (active) touch with them. If you don't live in the same town as them, then you're not likely to encounter these people outside of a reunion.

I'm not trolling or criticizing, I'm genuinely curious why "staying in touch" in this way is so valued. I can see the value of LinkedIn (it's always possible you may develop business or professional relationships with passing acquaintances from your past and I take care to prune my connections occasionally) but the draw of FB is a bit mysterious to me.

Facebook to me feels like those xeroxed summary-of-my-fantastic-year letters that some people stick in their Christmas cards. Mildly interesting, maybe, but also kind of tacky and pretty impersonal and low effort.

The asynchronicity of the service is what enables me to keep in touch with so many friends.

The secondary role Facebook fills for me is as an address book with up to date contact info for all these people.

People you're actually close to matter 100x more, and you're going to stay in touch with those people regardless.

I have a Facebook account that I set up for some service that needed it for a login. But I've never used it beyond that.

It's definitely not about social fulfillment.

People already have had serious reservations about how fast things have been changing, and if you think that death by robot car and privacy violation by social media isn’t going to create a backlash, you’re not reading your history. It won’t help the tech sector that “old media” has everything to gain by keeping this dripfeed going.

This is a first wave, and while it will recede, there are more and bigger waves to come.