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Comment by eatbitseveryday | Hacker News Reader

> Facebook's behavior is getting more and more territorial, anti-competitive, and revenue driven. They are turning into the scary behemoth that many people feared they would.

I do not fear whatever Facebook turns into because I can decide to stop using it. If they want to continue doing evil things, I can stop logging in, no? Why would someone fear that FB is turning into something?

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Let's say you run a restaurant. Facebook decides that they aren't getting enough money from local restaurants, and thus choose to greatly reduce the exposure of content that users share with their friends about restaurants that aren't paying them. You aren't even a Facebook user, but your competitors are and do pay them. Mentions of their restaurants actually get higher visibility than normal content and go viral, while mentions of your restaurant get no exposure at all. Your restaurant dies, while your competitors thrive.

It doesn't matter if you log in or not. Facebook policies can affect the fortunes of nearly every type of business.

While I see your point, I would believe this more with a website that was specifically used to search, aggregate, recommend, and communicate with restaurants (or other businesses). When did we start using Facebook to search for restaurants, movies, malls, shopping? I honestly do not consider FB as a source to find such places -- Google Maps (or just any search engine people use), Yelp, or whatever else serves its purpose much better, wouldn't you say?

Is a crowd that uses FB the most also the one with enough spending power to have such an influence?

Where I live now (Philippines) this is exactly how Facebook is used. Local businesses don't even put up websites many times because it's far more important to have an updated and active Facebook page.

Additionally, all sectors of the market use it here.

However, I definitely recognize this isn't the case in the US and many European countries.

This is no different to any other form of advertising in history.

No, it's not. As the preferred social sharing platform, they control conversations about things by controlling the exposure that various shares get. That is entirely different from everything that came before it.

Presumably as it became apparent that Facebook was squelching conversations about businesses that had not paid the tax, people would learn to have those kinds of conversations elsewhere instead.

"Let's say you run a restaurant. Facebook decides that they aren't getting enough money from local restaurants, and thus choose to greatly reduce the exposure of content that users share with their friends about restaurants that aren't paying them. You aren't even a Facebook user, but your competitors are and do pay them. Mentions of their restaurants actually get higher visibility than normal content and go viral, while mentions of your restaurant get no exposure at all. Your restaurant dies, while your competitors thrive."

This is no different to word-of-mouth reviews, that came from people who found out about a restaurant from a paid advert in a newspaper in 1950. If your restaurant didn't list in the paper (i.e. you didn't want to pay the premium for the advert) then you were at an immediate disadvantage.

This seems like basic market economics at work; as a restaurant owner, you have to make a choice - do I make more money back by paying Facebook their fee or by not paying them. If the answer is that I make more by paying them, then obviously they are providing a service that is worth what they are charging. If not, then it is not worth it and you don't pay it.

I am really struggling to see the problem with what you describe; how is it any different that advertising anywhere else? You decide if the cost of the ad is worth the ROI. Part of that decision includes knowing that your competitors might also advertise.

Does Pepsi get mad that Coke spends millions of dollars on Super Bowl commercials so they have to, too?

The network that displays the Super Bowl doesn't get to decide which brand people talk about after the game. Facebook is using News Feed to control conversations and narrative by controlling what is seen and not seen.

Does Pepsi get mad that Coke spends millions of dollars on Super Bowl commercials so they have to, too?

Probably. Advertising is somewhat analogous to mutually assured destruction.

>I am really struggling to see the problem with what you describe; how is it any different that advertising anywhere else?

Facebook holds a near monopoly on social networks, and it's exploiting that to extract rents in the form of advertising

Well, yes, but that's sort of like saying "I don't care what they teach in public schools, I can choose a private school for myself or my family." In the end, since the majority of people are consuming that thing you are rejecting, there's a high likelihood of it affecting you in some manner anyway.

That is, FB is a behemoth, is a major source of current events for a large swath of people, and their decisions unfortunately may have wider consequences than we or they necessarily predict.

I must be missing out on FB because I do not use it for searching products, concerts, movies, news, restaurants, etc. It only shows me updates from family, specific business I have "liked", etc. But perhaps your point is, many people spend hours on it instead of news sites, thus see the content shared through that via walls instead of the main pages of news websites?

> But perhaps your point is, many people spend hours on it instead of news sites, thus see the content shared through that via walls instead of the main pages of news websites?

Yes. I don't use Facebook, but my significant other does, and of the few news items here that I think are relevant to her, she usually sees them shared through someone's wall post 12-48 hours later. For some people it's a giant peer-to-peer new sharing site, and it's the primary source of news they have. That's extremely powerful position for Facebook, which is also why they got into so much trouble when it came out a while back that they were tweaking people's feeds slightly based on political views.

Are you sure you're blocking all their cookies? Any site with a like button or Facebook comments will track you and use it to monetize your visits.

Ultimately it's like saying you aren't concerned about drug laws because you aren't in the drug economy... It has a high possibility of affecting your life in some way regardless.

If PrivacyBadger blocks them, then hopefully those are.

Cause you assume that you can just stop using it. If enough companies/people build in hooks on mobile or across the web or in any of the other million places that they are integrated (VR etc...), you're part of Facebook whether you want to be or not.

You can stop logging in, sure, but they still own all your data

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