It has little to do with the information or sway that companies actual have, or how much they mishandle it — no one cares about Experian or even darker data traders, few people worry about Amazon’s ability to dump and rake up prices, etc. Facebook resonates, no matter how faintly the actual issue relates to something the company does.

What makes Facebook unique is that you interact with other people in your close environment: family, school, often colleagues, all together. Twitter doesn’t have that: you are not following everyone you know, just people you share an interest with.

That is a recipe for constant context collapse. When I was working there, my cousin told me that she hated Facebook. I asked why: there were some obvious issues with several boys she was interested in, who noticed each other and acted like jealous teenagers. She glazed over that but somehow chose to point out that her mother wasn’t the best at staying away from the situation. Nothing new, but with Facebook, my cousin had lost her ability to have the mating dances away from her family. Another thing she hated was that I was posting status updates in English. I don’t talk to her in English, so she felt this was me acting “fake”. It’s not our native language but I have legitimate reasons to be legible by most of my friends.

Having a single context is problematic for many reasons: hegemony I think is the best angle — there’s an acceptable public face and not everyone likes it but employees over-index people who are comfortable. I see this as the main reason Groups and large Messenger chats have proven so successful: you can reclaim context.

Facebook is not the worst data-handler or has the most incriminating details, but it is the place where you have to deal with your racist uncle, so stories about Trump being elected there add up. It’s the place where your aunt discovered her son’s “roommate” was half-naked and covered in glitter during Pride, so arguments about “sharing private data, including your sexual orientation” resonate.

I’ve made that argument in HN before, I know many responders will argue “There are _really bad! What about _that_ scandal?” Yes, Facebook has made bad choices, reacted poorly to some, and yes they are patterns of dominant position and abuses thereof (which I argued in my PhD 15 years ago). Hell, I’ve made bad errors when I was working there. It’s a large platform so they are close to a lot of unsavoury things.

But the attention, the likelihood of an article being clicked on depending it the title reads “Tech companies, including Google, have exposed…” vs. “Tech companies, including Facebook have exposed…” isn’t commensurate to the reality of their bad decisions. I think everyone should be as outraged by all similar scandal, not less — but I think we should first try to understand why certain stories resonate and not others, and I strongly believe it’s proximity and relatability.