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Comment by jseliger | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Facebook, after all, is a platform historically powered by prioritizing and rewarding a very simplistic idea of user engagement. You react to something, or you don’t. And if you do, you’ll see more of the same.

This again. It's another variant on the themes I discuss in "Is there an actual Facebook crisis, or media narrative about Facebook crisis?" https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo.... Facebook will change when users quit or dramatically cut back using it. Until then, actual users are telling Facebook, "Full steam ahead."

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I don't agree. Facebook has to make changes given the risk of regulation, reputational risk, recruiting challenges, and the mismatch in their own self-professed mission.

We can debate if the change will be substantial enough to truly change things (I'm doubtful), but they have already made changes due to this media coverage (hiring more content moderators as just one example).

Throughout history, media has always had to weigh the tradeoffs of informing people vs engaging people. Yellow journalism in the US was an example of when the engagement imperative overwhelmed the informing imperative, and the issues did lead to changes in media. Facebook is going through this same journey (though painfully and slowly).

One of the things that protects a business from political action is a large group of stakeholders who care. Facebook's problem is not that their users are entirely abandoning the platform, but that their users no longer care enough to defend them.

What if Facebook is exploiting the same weaknesses that cigarette companies or drug dealers or casinos do? Have you ever walked into a casino and seen truly sad people whiling away their time and money? Have you ever walked past a homeless heroin addict on the street? You might argue that those people have revealed their preferences, but to me it appears that they are trapped in addictive cycle reinforced by unscrupulous predators. That billions of people might be trapped in such an addictive cycle that feeds them intellectual poison is at least cause for alarm if not a full-on crisis.

The users are not the only driver of change. Government regulation is very likely to happen at this point, in both the US and the EU.

Content regulation is very unlikely in the US given the Court’s near-absolutist First Amendment jurisprudence. Regulation of advertising and privacy is more plausible, but something like the GDPR is a constitutional and political non-starter in America.

GDPR comprises many facets many of which are completely constitutional.

And it maybe a political non-starter federally but all it takes is a few states in particular New York and California to impose restrictions and you will have the same effect.

Especially considering Facebook is based in California, which is controlled by the Democratic party. Many people in that party blame Facebook for helping Trump win the 2016 election.

> Until then, actual users are telling Facebook, "Full steam ahead."

Are they? U.S. Facebook traffic fell nearly 50% over the last two years.[1]

Yes, they've got other properties cushioning the fall. But Yahoo! had lots of other properties, too.

[1] https://market-intelligence.io/analysis/shakeup-in-top-five-...

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