7 ms·

As Facebook Struggles, Rivals’ Leaders Stay Mostly Mum

114 points by domevent 8y ago

rco8786 8y ago
Because they’re all doing the same stuff?
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  Exactly! Google, Twitter, Snap and others are exactly the same. It's exactly the same business models as Facebook's. The whole focus on Facebook is pretty misguided. Maybe it will hurt Facebook but there will be a ton of companies ready to jump in and do exactly the same or worse. In the end we need privacy regulation and make the business of selling customer data difficult to the point it doesn't make sense for most companies.
  - creato 8y ago
    They are not the same. Yes, they all collect a lot of information, but only Facebook allowed much of that information to come into possession of third parties.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      Just wait. They will all look for ways to monetize their data once there is pressure to meet growth numbers.
- ror6ax 8y ago
  Yep. What this situation shows is that open data is faaaar faaaar worse represented than open source. There is not even a faint whisper of possibility, you know, not using proprietary platform and use the internet the way it was meant to be used.
kelukelugames 8y ago
lol, what did you expect? I worked at Microsoft when the Playstation got hacked. They were like, "let's not say anything and attract attention from the hackers."
- aswanson 8y ago
  Thats kind of sinister.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    Is it "sinister" to not want to also get hacked? Hackers love a challenge, the worst thing you could do in response to a competitor getting hacked is suggest you aren't as vulnerable. It's basically an invitation.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  That's exactly the same logic my director applied to pentesting. If you don't test no vulnerabilities will be discovered.
fancyfacebook 8y ago
I've been wondering for a few years now what it would look like if one of these tech behemoths collapsed, mainly in the context of how intertwined and globalized they all are now. We're also not allowed to talk about how important and integrated these companies are with the defense industry, but they are. Lots of people working on lots of projects that they can't put on their resume. Some of these companies are practically governmental entities, particularly the telecoms. Maybe too big to fail isn't the correct term, more like too integrated to fail. Market caps can move around but the apparatus must be maintained.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  AOL and Yahoo are now both properties of Verizon. The idea that one of these companies could fall in a "literally just gone from the Internet" standpoint isn't realistic. They're worth too much, and someone will buy them for some amount, and keep the basics of their company online.
dom96 8y ago
They stay "Mum"? Boy that sounds odd to a British resident.
- petepete 8y ago
  Not to this one, mum means to stay silent (mum as in 'mmm', not your mother). Even Shakespeare used it in Henry VI > Seal up your lips and give no words but mum
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    'mum' meaning silent dates from the 15th century. 'mum' meaning 'mother' (in England) dates from the 17th century. Various English posters and signs in WWII warned readers to 'be like dad – keep mum'. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/INF3-243_Anti-rumour_and_careless_talk_Be_like_dad_-_keep_Mum_Artist_Alexander.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/INF3-243... https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/be-like-dad-keep-mum-c-1940s-propaganda-sign-encouraging-news-photo/102731046 https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/be-like-dad-ke...
    - a_e_k 8y ago
      Yep. And of course "Mum's the word!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mum%27s_the_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mum%27s_the_word Though in terms of Shakespeare, my favorite bit on keeping quiet is actually Iago's last line: "Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: From this time forth I never will speak word." My wife and I tend to quote it around Christmas and birthdays. :-)
marricks 8y ago
Speak out against FB, people call you a hypocrite. Speak out in defense... we’ll who would be stupid enough to do that. I bet their real play is lobbying legislators aggressively to weaken any potential legislation against them. https://theintercept.com/2018/03/29/the-u-s-government-is-finally-scrambling-to-regulate-facebook/ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/29/the-u-s-government-is-fi...
primitur 8y ago
The elephant in the room is not Facebook. Its the generations of people who have, over the last 10 years, grown up to assume that their personal lives are of interest to others, and wish therefore to capitalize/profit on exposing their life to strangers. This is going to be a much more difficult precipice to step back from than, say, the rampant piracy of things like Napster, and so on. We'll definitely have to push technology harder and further to establish better ways for these addicts to come down from their highs and return to a more normal level of social interaction - but then again, maybe its too late. (Upvote me if you agree.) Seriously though, I believe we have to appeal to one demographic that gets ignored through all of this, thick and thin: parents. Its truly the only way to adjust this cultural liability for future generations - we simply must insist on parental controls over social media from now on. And, in addition, we have to establish that parents should regulate their kids' use of online/social media tools in such a way that we reduce the devolutionary effect on human interaction that is occurring now. Perhaps its truly time for a revolutionary new service: FamilyBook. You can only gain access with a birth certificate .. mmm ...
- Eric_WVGG 8y ago
  The notion that parents are always or even usually wise and responsible, that seems like a very shaky foundation upon which to repair a culture. Homer Simpson “beat” Dr. Huxtable, after all, quite handily...
  - primitur 8y ago
    They don't have to be wise or responsible. They do have to have a desire to raise their kids with future-proof values. These are not necessarily the same thing. And .. Homer Simpson? Fiction, yo.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
      The future is notoriously hard to predict. How are we to know what future-proof values are, and how are we to go about instilling those values in our children? One problem with children, despite our best intentions, is they tend to go on to create things like Facebook.
dawhizkid 8y ago
Snapchat is definitely not staying mum this April Fool's https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/980341288753967109 https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/980341288753967109
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dictum 8y ago
  It's disappointing how this kind of commentary, disparaging a whole nation/language instead of a government/chief of state, is seeping into mass media. Another recent example is the mock-Cyrillic in the Silicon Valley intro. It stops being about Putin, the Russian government, leading Russian politicians, Russian oligarchs or some identifiable group. It becomes "the Russians". (It's not a new phenomenon—remember Dr. Seuss's cartoons about the Japanese?—but it's being done by people who arguably didn't skip the lessons about the problems with national exceptionalism and just recently were making sure everyone knew that.)
  - oblio 8y ago
    That tends to happen when you’re supposed to be living in a democracy. At least with the Soviets there was no pretending.
    - Nuzzerino 8y ago
      There was plenty of pretending in the Soviet Union. Perhaps even more.
  - prolikewhoa 8y ago
    It's turning into Russiophobia. Criticism of Putin and the Government, fine, understandable. When you start bringing the language, culture, and innocent people just trying to get by into it and start picking fun at it, that's not OK. The same people who are OK with this are appalled at the similar right wing/4chan generalizations about Israel and Jewish people.
sheeshkebab 8y ago
When is Verizon going to buy Facebook? Any rumors out there?
dominotw 8y ago
how do they facebook is struggling? Their numbers might have been unaffected by all the scandals, for all we know. Remember all the articles about 'Toxic Struggling Uber' , turns out no one really cared and their numbers didn't change much.
- machinehermit 8y ago
  I think it is reflection of the total bubbles people live in. I have facebook and not a single person has deleted their account. Honestly, I doubt any of my friends on facebook know or care about this "movement". It is just some goofy form of entertainment for young people who waste too much time on twitter.
hx2a 8y ago
Today the WSJ has an article with the opposite headline: Silicon Valley Rivals Take Shots at Facebook https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-rivals-take-shots-at-facebook-1522595763 https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-rivals-take-shot...
- hx2a 8y ago
  Also note there is fake news or a lame April fool's joke going around saying that Zuckerberg quit.
- paxys 8y ago
  Other SV companies (Apple, Salesforce etc.) and former Facebook executives, but no one that actually compete with them in social networking/advertising. The lone Google statement is a personal one from an engineer, not a company stance.
ror6ax 8y ago
YOLO, people from IBM and Apple chiming in to preach about business decency. Now I've seen everything.
paxys 8y ago
> Part of the silence, people in the industry say, comes from a desire to avoid the business equivalent of bad karma — knowing that they, too, may one day face the buzz saw of public censure. This is pretty much it. Rule 1 of PR is not to criticize competitors for problems you have as well.
bookofjoe 8y ago
“Never try to kill a man who’s trying to commit suicide.”—anonymous

114 points by domevent 8y ago

rco8786 8y ago

Because they’re all doing the same stuff?

maxxxxx 8y ago
Exactly! Google, Twitter, Snap and others are exactly the same. It's exactly the same business models as Facebook's. The whole focus on Facebook is pretty misguided. Maybe it will hurt Facebook but there will be a ton of companies ready to jump in and do exactly the same or worse. In the end we need privacy regulation and make the business of selling customer data difficult to the point it doesn't make sense for most companies.
- creato 8y ago
  They are not the same. Yes, they all collect a lot of information, but only Facebook allowed much of that information to come into possession of third parties.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    Just wait. They will all look for ways to monetize their data once there is pressure to meet growth numbers.
ror6ax 8y ago
Yep. What this situation shows is that open data is faaaar faaaar worse represented than open source. There is not even a faint whisper of possibility, you know, not using proprietary platform and use the internet the way it was meant to be used.

kelukelugames 8y ago

lol, what did you expect? I worked at Microsoft when the Playstation got hacked. They were like, "let's not say anything and attract attention from the hackers."

aswanson 8y ago
Thats kind of sinister.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Is it "sinister" to not want to also get hacked? Hackers love a challenge, the worst thing you could do in response to a competitor getting hacked is suggest you aren't as vulnerable. It's basically an invitation.
maxxxxx 8y ago
That's exactly the same logic my director applied to pentesting. If you don't test no vulnerabilities will be discovered.

fancyfacebook 8y ago

I've been wondering for a few years now what it would look like if one of these tech behemoths collapsed, mainly in the context of how intertwined and globalized they all are now. We're also not allowed to talk about how important and integrated these companies are with the defense industry, but they are. Lots of people working on lots of projects that they can't put on their resume. Some of these companies are practically governmental entities, particularly the telecoms. Maybe too big to fail isn't the correct term, more like too integrated to fail. Market caps can move around but the apparatus must be maintained.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
AOL and Yahoo are now both properties of Verizon. The idea that one of these companies could fall in a "literally just gone from the Internet" standpoint isn't realistic. They're worth too much, and someone will buy them for some amount, and keep the basics of their company online.

dom96 8y ago

They stay "Mum"? Boy that sounds odd to a British resident.

petepete 8y ago
Not to this one, mum means to stay silent (mum as in 'mmm', not your mother). Even Shakespeare used it in Henry VI > Seal up your lips and give no words but mum
- jacobolus 8y ago
  'mum' meaning silent dates from the 15th century. 'mum' meaning 'mother' (in England) dates from the 17th century. Various English posters and signs in WWII warned readers to 'be like dad – keep mum'. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/INF3-243_Anti-rumour_and_careless_talk_Be_like_dad_-_keep_Mum_Artist_Alexander.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/INF3-243... https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/be-like-dad-keep-mum-c-1940s-propaganda-sign-encouraging-news-photo/102731046 https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/be-like-dad-ke...
  - a_e_k 8y ago
    Yep. And of course "Mum's the word!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mum%27s_the_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mum%27s_the_word Though in terms of Shakespeare, my favorite bit on keeping quiet is actually Iago's last line: "Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: From this time forth I never will speak word." My wife and I tend to quote it around Christmas and birthdays. :-)

marricks 8y ago

Speak out against FB, people call you a hypocrite. Speak out in defense... we’ll who would be stupid enough to do that. I bet their real play is lobbying legislators aggressively to weaken any potential legislation against them. https://theintercept.com/2018/03/29/the-u-s-government-is-finally-scrambling-to-regulate-facebook/ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/29/the-u-s-government-is-fi...

primitur 8y ago

The elephant in the room is not Facebook. Its the generations of people who have, over the last 10 years, grown up to assume that their personal lives are of interest to others, and wish therefore to capitalize/profit on exposing their life to strangers. This is going to be a much more difficult precipice to step back from than, say, the rampant piracy of things like Napster, and so on. We'll definitely have to push technology harder and further to establish better ways for these addicts to come down from their highs and return to a more normal level of social interaction - but then again, maybe its too late. (Upvote me if you agree.) Seriously though, I believe we have to appeal to one demographic that gets ignored through all of this, thick and thin: parents. Its truly the only way to adjust this cultural liability for future generations - we simply must insist on parental controls over social media from now on. And, in addition, we have to establish that parents should regulate their kids' use of online/social media tools in such a way that we reduce the devolutionary effect on human interaction that is occurring now. Perhaps its truly time for a revolutionary new service: FamilyBook. You can only gain access with a birth certificate .. mmm ...

Eric_WVGG 8y ago
The notion that parents are always or even usually wise and responsible, that seems like a very shaky foundation upon which to repair a culture. Homer Simpson “beat” Dr. Huxtable, after all, quite handily...
- primitur 8y ago
  They don't have to be wise or responsible. They do have to have a desire to raise their kids with future-proof values. These are not necessarily the same thing. And .. Homer Simpson? Fiction, yo.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    The future is notoriously hard to predict. How are we to know what future-proof values are, and how are we to go about instilling those values in our children? One problem with children, despite our best intentions, is they tend to go on to create things like Facebook.

dawhizkid 8y ago

Snapchat is definitely not staying mum this April Fool's https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/980341288753967109 https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/980341288753967109

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dictum 8y ago
It's disappointing how this kind of commentary, disparaging a whole nation/language instead of a government/chief of state, is seeping into mass media. Another recent example is the mock-Cyrillic in the Silicon Valley intro. It stops being about Putin, the Russian government, leading Russian politicians, Russian oligarchs or some identifiable group. It becomes "the Russians". (It's not a new phenomenon—remember Dr. Seuss's cartoons about the Japanese?—but it's being done by people who arguably didn't skip the lessons about the problems with national exceptionalism and just recently were making sure everyone knew that.)
- oblio 8y ago
  That tends to happen when you’re supposed to be living in a democracy. At least with the Soviets there was no pretending.
  - Nuzzerino 8y ago
    There was plenty of pretending in the Soviet Union. Perhaps even more.
- prolikewhoa 8y ago
  It's turning into Russiophobia. Criticism of Putin and the Government, fine, understandable. When you start bringing the language, culture, and innocent people just trying to get by into it and start picking fun at it, that's not OK. The same people who are OK with this are appalled at the similar right wing/4chan generalizations about Israel and Jewish people.

sheeshkebab 8y ago

When is Verizon going to buy Facebook? Any rumors out there?

dominotw 8y ago

how do they facebook is struggling? Their numbers might have been unaffected by all the scandals, for all we know. Remember all the articles about 'Toxic Struggling Uber' , turns out no one really cared and their numbers didn't change much.

machinehermit 8y ago
I think it is reflection of the total bubbles people live in. I have facebook and not a single person has deleted their account. Honestly, I doubt any of my friends on facebook know or care about this "movement". It is just some goofy form of entertainment for young people who waste too much time on twitter.

hx2a 8y ago

Today the WSJ has an article with the opposite headline: Silicon Valley Rivals Take Shots at Facebook https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-rivals-take-shots-at-facebook-1522595763 https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-rivals-take-shot...

hx2a 8y ago
Also note there is fake news or a lame April fool's joke going around saying that Zuckerberg quit.
paxys 8y ago
Other SV companies (Apple, Salesforce etc.) and former Facebook executives, but no one that actually compete with them in social networking/advertising. The lone Google statement is a personal one from an engineer, not a company stance.

ror6ax 8y ago

YOLO, people from IBM and Apple chiming in to preach about business decency. Now I've seen everything.

paxys 8y ago

> Part of the silence, people in the industry say, comes from a desire to avoid the business equivalent of bad karma — knowing that they, too, may one day face the buzz saw of public censure. This is pretty much it. Rule 1 of PR is not to criticize competitors for problems you have as well.

bookofjoe 8y ago

“Never try to kill a man who’s trying to commit suicide.”—anonymous