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Comment by natrius | Hacker News Reader

As with any sort of vote, it's not your vote (or account deletion) that matters, it's the number of votes you convince people to make. It just seems odd to me when people trumpet insignificant actions when they clearly won't make a difference. If you want Facebook to change their policies, you're going to have to do more than delete your account.

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I don't care if they change or not. Get rich, I'm happy for them. Mean time I've deleted all my data (except that part of my data that they don't allow me to delete). I'm slowly deciding whether I'm going to (attempt to) delete my account. Not because I want them to change, but because I'm really irritated at having to review my privacy settings multiple times a year. At some point they're going to make a change that I'll miss.

As people (and I) have said over and over, don't put anything on the net that you don't want to be public.

Well, I haven't put my mother's maiden name up. But the more information about me that's up, the more connections are possible, until someone derives my mother's maiden name (or some other security question). Remember, we don't always get to choose a security question, that's relatively new. Banks, credit agencies, phone company, someone has something about you that's derivable.

Like I said, I don't care if FB changes or not, that's not necessary for me to want to leave, or at least diminish my presence.

He did do more. He deleted his account, and told everyone on HN he had.

That's a good point, but most people on HN are well aware of the arguments for deleting one's Facebook profile. Persuasion also didn't seem to be the intent of his comment, but I could be wrong.

There is a significant effect from account deletion. You are removing some of the motivation of your friends to interact with the web site. My account deletion had a significant effect within my social group, as I was a moderately heavy user. When I left, the "pull" from my comments and interactions ceased, and peoples usages of the site decreased considerably. (Confirmed via my girlfriends account, which lives in a very similar part of the social graph).

Every vote counts. What the masses lack in influence, they make up with in numbers... unless you discourage them with comments like yours.

That's my point. There are no masses. You have to create masses if you want things to change.

There are masses. If everyone starts doing it, other people will jump on. Most people value their privacy, they just need a bandwagon to jump on to.

I think we're agreeing with each other.

No we aren't. A bandwagon isn't always started by 1 influential person.

Every vote counts is a huge lie, perpetrated by those that govern, to make us feel that we actually have a say in the government. So we don't actually try to do something.

And you are not a mass, you are one person. And if your friends are anything like mine, you are not going to convince them to leave. Most people are happy to give up a little privacy, for the ease of keeping in touch with their friends that FB offers.

FB has a critical mass, so it is not as easy as suggesting an alternative.

I think you're missing that point. By saying, "You're a single person, you cannot affect change," you are discouraging everyone that would have (in this case) deleted their Facebook account. What if the number of people independently inspired by such an article is enough to make a minor dent in Facebook's bottom line? But they won't do that because of the constant beating of the, "Your vote is just a single vote and cannot matter" mantra.

Sure, convincing a group of people to delete their Facebook accounts is better than just deleting your own, but discouraging people en masse from enacting simple changes also discourages emergent behaviours in the crowd before they even start.

And it always seems odd to me when people berate these "insignificant" actions even though they are a step in the direction many would like to go. Change doesn't happen over night.

The reason they berate them is that people frequently say "If everyone does a little, we'll get a lot done.", and then do a little and stop, congratulating themselves about what they've done. In order to affect real change, a lot of people need to do a lot.

Focusing on and performing little actions distracts from doing the the big things that actually make a noticeable difference.

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