I’d like to challenge the implied premise that the world needs Facebook to begin with. This is the premise under which Facebook seems to operate, but it doesn’t seem to concern with marketing the premise to users. What’s in it for any human person with a smartphone or computer? What value could possibly be extracted by such a person from being “on” Facebook?
Any redesign or other change made to the platform is pointless without a clear narrative concerning the underlying value proposition. How does the change affect that value proposition? My take is that the value of Facebook is zero in the best case, and possibly a net negative for society at large and for individuals. Isn’t Facebook supposed to convince us that their premise isn’t all evil, that there’s something in it for us beyond participation in mass data collection?
Facebook isn't obligated in any way to lay out their value prop in clear terms for users as you suggest. If users don't find their service valuable, they won't use it. Clearly that's not the case.
The value prop for advertisers is obvious. Without Facebook, thousands of small businesses (delivering great services) would be much smaller or out of business.
The value prop for users is manifold. To name a couple, without Facebook, people wouldn't connect and interact with people outside their proximal social circles. These otherwise lost connections often lead to strong healthy friendships, relationships, and/or partnerships. Many people also derive satisfaction from an entertainment perspective through Facebook whether that be through gossiping, viewing cat memes, or playing games. Though you may find these to be unimportant, that's you projecting your value system on someone else.
To say that Facebook's existence is a net negative to society requires some fundamental assumptions around what is valuable. For example, if all you value in this world is privacy, then of course Facebook is detrimental. If what you value is family, entertainment, and pleasure, Facebook is probably of great benefit.
>Facebook isn't obligated in any way to lay out their value prop in clear terms for users as you suggest. If users don't find their service valuable, they won't use it. Clearly that's not the case.
Of course they're not obligated, but it's a useful thing to ask in the context of this discussion. The average lifespan of a S&P 500 company is 18 years, tendency going down. So it seems to make sense to ask what Facebook's mi d and long term value proposition is.
And I think all the points you make don't apply to facebook in particular at all, but to online communication platforms in general. It's true that small businesses and communities profit from means to communicate online, but it's not obvious at all that in the future that means having a centralized, ad driven company run the show, or Facebook specifically.
In fact the entire pivot seems to indicate that all the things that facebook is built on, is ill suited for that future. How is Facebook going to sustain it's giant ad-driven money engine in a world of private, encrypted community interaction?
You seem to be saying: 1) An ad-driven business model isn't the best way for Facebook to monetize its business now or in the future 2) Facebook isn't the best organization to build the social network of the future.
These claims have little to do with the argument OP made (or my response). That is: 1) Facebook provides zero or negative value to users today 2) The world would be better off without Facebook today 3) If Facebook disagrees with 1 or 2, they're obligated to explain why
Facebook is engineered to be addictive and to keep people engaged and present on the platform so they can be exploited for data.
If you are going to say Facebook provides these people value then I'm going to say a heroin distributor and his chemist provides a similar value to his customers.
> 2) this is so vague and subjective that it's meaningless, what does it mean? Better off, how? By whose standards?
Of course it's subjective, it's an opinion. One shared by a growing number of people.
> 3) if the above were true, why would FB be obligated to explain it?
They're not. Neither are people obliged to use their platform or abide by their terms of service if the company doesn't want to be forthcoming with explanations for its conduct.
I strongly agree with point 3. I just wish people would accept that FB isn't for them, and move on. Instead, there is so much signaling going on that it's difficult to discuss real issues.
I actually also agree with point 1, because I think that drug seekers are more rational actors than the average person. It seems indisputable that drug dealers provide value; the argument is that the long term harm outweights the immediate value, not that there is no value.
With Facebook, I think it's much less clear that using FB causes harm, much less harm on the same level as an opiod addiction. (I'm aware of the research out there that correlates depressive symptoms with social media usage.)
>What value could possibly be extracted by such a person from being “on” Facebook?
It seems silly to deny that people genuinely enjoy Facebook and find it useful. It makes sense considering that Facebook has supplanted and absorbed many of the sites and software that people used to use - Flickr, ICQ/AIM, and vBulletin/phpbb for instance.
I know a lot of people who share family photos on Facebook. I know many people who discuss topics ranging from gangstalking to glassblowing to autism. A lot of people share memes and humor and political discussion and people consume that content. Clearly people value FB for communication and entertainment. Messenger is also clearly with value for text chat, voice calls and video calls.
Many artists I know have made a living from selling things for free on Facebook, with few restrictions and 100% less fees than Etsy and eBay (the market switched to Instagram ~4 years ago). Many advertisers get the majority of their leads from Facebook.
Does the world need Facebook to do this? No, there are alternatives. But people clearly find it useful and it would be hard to support that the platform is without utility or value. Are you saying that the harm done by Facebook’s business practices exceeds the value of providing this for free to consumers?
Facebook has marketed its value prop pretty clearly with this update - (1) you can find events you like in your area, (2) you can participate in communities of people who have shared interests.
And to confidently claim that all 2.3 billion users of Facebook are getting zero or negative value out of it is pretty naive.
It seems they market their premise to users every day. Every event that I find it easier to keep track of, every event I find it easier to plan. Every community I participate in.
This is a clever redesign because events are even 'stickier' in their network effects than the news feed is. I don't think it's altruistic, but I think it's smart.
It's not that the world "needs" Facebook. The world wants Facebook. Facebook is a social network and people want to use social networks, for various reasons. Facebook happens is the biggest social networks. That's the value proposition. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant.
> My take is that the value of Facebook is zero in the best case, and possibly a net negative for society at large and for individuals.
You could confidently make the same claim about alcohol and cigarettes, yet both of these are good business.
> I haven't seen anything that has convinced me this is true.
Well over a billion daily active users on Facebook don't convince you that people want Facebook?
> I don't consider the dopamine-driven compulsions of its users to be evidence of 'want'.
Oh, you're looking for a semantic argument, possibly diving into the meaning and consequence of the concept of free will (or lack thereof). I ain't got time for that today.
I was simply making an observation of Facebook's business model.
It employs staff whose entire job consists of making Facebook's product more addictive; to keep people clicking, liking, viewing and handing over data to facilitate their being tracked all over the internet.
Heroin dealers often employ people to make their shit more addictive too. Yet we don't sit here musing about how much 'value' they've added to a society that clearly wants their product.
To be clear, I'm not saying "good business" equals "moral value" or "value to society". Individually, if I'm a heroin user, clearly I must be valuing the shooting of Heroin higher than my own health.
Again, this is moving into "semantic dispute" territory, where little insight is to be gained.
> Individually, if I'm a heroin user, clearly I must be valuing the shooting of Heroin higher than my own health.
Right, which is why I think 'creating value' in and of itself is meaningless if you can't distinguish it from the kind that grants prosperity without exploitation and the kind that is simply parasitic.
I think the net-negative claim can be said for all real-time social media, including the site we're communicating on right now.
Healthy communication with other humans requires empathy and careful consideration of how your words affect others. Both get thrown out the window when you blast something into a text box, aimed at a random username.
how many people on the planet do you think smoke cigarettes?
I mean sure you can argue, in circular fashion, that everything people do provides net value to them or else they wouldn't do it, in which case there's no actual way to falsify that claim, but in a more genuine sense it's not at all clear that social media consumption has long term, net individual or social benefits.
It is an extremely new technology that has entered our society without much oversight and there's no reason to believe we have a good grip on its mid and long term effects. The evidence we have, for example concerning mental health of adolescents, in particular girls, is quite devastating.
my counterpoint would be that cigarettes also have an obvious value prop: they give you a nicotine high that users find satisfying. having a value prop doesn't imply an absence of negative consequences, otherwise cars are also devoid of value prop.
People get addicted to social media too. Next time you get in an elevator notice how many people immediately whip out the phone and start scrolling the minute they are standing still. It's completely subconscious, like what are you going to read in the 20 second elevator ride, yet people do it all the same because there's a dopamine hit.
There's value in staring into corners imo. Try forgetting your phone at home one day. No longer are you instinctively reaching for it the minute you have 20 seconds to spare, you allow yourself to daydream again.
I ended up being way more focused that day just from cutting out those >30 second moments on the phone. Instead of my brain just shutting off and tuning out, I was actually thinking about my day and what I'm working on. I felt like a Buddhist monk!
Another comment has already provided a pretty solid refutation of your argument, but I have to ask: Why in the world do you think that the implied premise of Facebook redesigning one of its surfaces (for the 100th time..) is that the world needs it?
That's because you don't know what you're missing. Or, at least, that's what FB wants you to think.
FB is a vortex of dopamine hits, and zero 0⃣ value. It made me mad to be addicted to news I don't care about. I've manage to get myself out of that dopamine hit, and addicted to HN. But HN brings in some good information from time to time.
Any redesign or other change made to the platform is pointless without a clear narrative concerning the underlying value proposition. How does the change affect that value proposition? My take is that the value of Facebook is zero in the best case, and possibly a net negative for society at large and for individuals. Isn’t Facebook supposed to convince us that their premise isn’t all evil, that there’s something in it for us beyond participation in mass data collection?