Is there an actual Facebook crisis, or media narrative about Facebook crisis?

This article just redefines “crisis” to its liking. If only falling profits make for a “real” crisis, then, no, Facebook is not in such a crisis.

Indeed, the author actually agrees that there are legitimate concerns about FB, some of which are new. I don’t quite get why a crises of ethics should be less “real”, or not reported on by journalists. Is it the primacy of the almighty powers of the market?

Even in the latter case, investors and consumers would seem to rely on such information by the media to make market decisions. To require them to act before reporting on their reasons to act seems counterintuitive.

....but at that point the article has long diverged into rehashing 2016 conspiracy theories.

tldr: this is a shallow not-defense of Facebook, with a headline specifically engineered to appeal to HN’s current groupthink hating “the media”.

Jesus Christ, this blog post posits one of the most blatant and comical strawmen I’ve seen in awhile. The author seems to think the only kind of crisis (“crisis”, as the word is used in the headline of the recent NYT investigation) Facebook could face is one that involves a drop in users. Because the NYT purportedly provides little evidence of such, the author asserts “the whole thing seems imaginary: is there an actual crisis, outside the media narrative?”

The article the author references in his intro is talking about the PR crisis and internal conflict that blew up when Alex Stamos spoke out against FB’s lackluster response to a “Russian infestation”. When Sheryl Sandberg is said by multiple witnesses to have screamed “You threw us under a bus!” at Stamos, it is reasonable to think that FB had massive internal strife, unless the author believes the NYT fabricated the evidence of this conflict, which he provides no evidence of.

The lackluster user growth is said by the NYT to coincide with this strife, it is not claimed by the NYT to be the crisis. Does the author believe that the only crisis a tech company could possibly face is declining usage?

From observing FB over the years, I am of the view that they are effective problem solvers, and know how to regulate the behaviour of the users on their platform to put sustainability first. E.g. when the notifications were going wild on FB for those annoying games that friends played (Zenga days) FB regulated, when a weaker startup might have said "these metrics are going up and showed off engagement statistics!".

My hope is that FB takes this same approach to it's internal culture if there is an issue, perhaps I will be mistaken.

As a side note, I run a virtual telephone receptionist business. It is a very human focused business, with real life receptionists, and real life people calling them up. This creates troubles!! When real people get together issues occur (rudeness, spelling mistakes, taking down a telephone number instead of an email, etc..). FB is used by people, and people bring mess. So FB will always have disruptive stories because it is used by people. I am of the view that FB will get better at dealing with problematic people related problems, but currently it is the consequence of having a platform that people use to express themselves - it is inherently messy because that is what people interacting generates.

> every time someone uses Facebook, that person is implicitly showing that they like Facebook more than not and find it valuable more than not.

I know quite a few people who will say they are addicted to facebook, and many more who will at least admit that they use it more than they want to. I was the former until about a year ago when I finally pulled the plug. So I do not think that's a fair statement at all.

If you only care about making money and see ethical behavior and basic human rights like privacy only as things one talks about, then this is the perfect time for the camel in the sand approach.

The crisis here is not just facebook but the growing realization by the wider world of the scope of betrayal by the tech community. The echo chamber covering up this betrayal is now pierced with increasingly louder external voices that challenge the self serving narratives to justify morally bankrupt behavior.

This will have ramifications that those who are already disengaged from the world have no problem with, but many others will not take this loss of reputation as well. The real crisis seems to be we have large groups of people who are not invested and engaged in their world and see no problem in behaving like mercenaries while affecting normalcy. This kind of behavior is toxic and can only promote an environment of complete distrust, decay and degeneration.

Or a narrative about a narrative about a Facebook crisis?

Yes, there is an actual ethical crisis at Facebook. How it affects their bottom line or number of users is irrelevant.

Kara Swisher says "remember AOL". I say "remember Life magazine". Whether there is or is not a crisis at Facebook, there has definitely been an ongoing crisis/decline at magazines and newspapers. Revealed preferences, indeed.

I deleted my Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts just this weekend. It's not that I don't like the service Facebook provides (I liked Insta in particular), but I don't want to be a part of the data harvesting, privacy destroying, democracy usurping empire any more. I don't believe Facebook has your best interests at heart. I don't think Facebook is good for society.

Also I read recently that they have a crisis internally amongst their staff with employees considering jumping ship. Additionally, new graduates no longer consider Facebook as the premium place to work. This may start to hurt them in the coming years.

I'm actually not familiar with the "Facebook Crisis" the author alludes to, the one where Facebook is suffering massive losses of users. He only provides one link to a story of this kind. FB is certainly in the news a lot these days, but mostly in relation to its various scandals involving a) the 2016 election and b) its role stoking animus between various disparate ethnic groups. On top of this there is growing mainstream awareness of the effects and reach of surveillance capitalism, and that vague uneasiness is driving people to click on anything FB related because FB is generally singled out as the primary malefactor.

But yeah, I still use Facebook even though I know how bad it is. And even worse, I use a TON of Google products. The simple fact is that we consumers are all in an arms race with each other and these tools that invade our privacy are also critical in managing the complexity of our lives. That's why I think communities like the Amish really deserve more credit for what they've done, which is give up all these weapons of convenience at once, and so live a good life together.

Well Facebook leaders certainly seem to think they are in a crisis.

What's a boffin?

Interesting: this title ignores Betterridge’s law of headlines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

Media is trying really hard to blame Facebook on everything and anything.