Elon Musk Deletes Own, SpaceX and Tesla Facebook Pages After #deletefacebook

https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/elon-musk-deletes-own-spacex-and-tesla-facebook-pages-after-deletefacebook/

by middle1 • 8 years ago

1390 493 8 years ago

techcrunch.com

middle12• 8 years ago

Just checked myself in google. It looks he really did. No Facebook page opened

nextstep• 8 years ago

Boycotts are one of the most effective methods consumers have to enact change.

middle12• 8 years ago

I agree with you. Let's see if anything change in a few days and these pages are back. I believe Facebook will not delete them forever.

shaki-dora• 8 years ago

I can't think of a successful boycott. I believe the largest attempt I witnessed was against BP when they just sank an old oil platform, including all sorts of toxins and petrochemicals.

I think that made a single-digit dent in their revenue.

Politics and law enforcement are far better tools to get corporations to behave. They solve the coordination problem, they can far easier track changing and long chains of ownership, and they allow you to delegate the research work to someone you trust.

post_break• 8 years ago

They took down gawker by targeting their advertisers. Before the hulk thing their ad revenue was decimated.

piker• 8 years ago

Moving the NCAA Tournament out of North Carolina changed the bathroom law within a year if memory serves.

marbletiles• 8 years ago

What do you mean by successful? Usually the point is not to dent revenue, it's to cause behaviour change. And there is a long list of boycotts that have achieved that. http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/boycotts/successfulboycotts.a...

jf4• 8 years ago

Recent successful boycotts include UFW's "no uvas" and the boycotts related to apartheid.

Wikipedia also has a longer list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boycotts

vermontdevil• 8 years ago

Indiana - NCAA, GenCon etc threatening to leave over the religious freedom law. It worked. Pence was forced to amend it - weakening it.

The bus boycott in Alabama by MLK and others.

Boycotts can be an effective tool.

nabla9• 8 years ago

There has been research into the effectiveness of consumer boycotts. They can be really effective especially against brands.

Nike boycott in the 1990s was really effective. The company’s sales fell in short them, but the damage to the brand was even more significant. Nike had to work a decade to repair the 'child labor' reputation and adopt the global sustainable idea.

On the other hand consumer boycotts against products without brand or network externalities have less effect. They suffer from free rider effect. Boycot is essentially subsidizing the consumption of those who use the boycotted product.

panarky• 8 years ago

The #DeleteUber campaign was remarkably successful.

tclancy• 8 years ago

The NFL got Arizona to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by refusing to hold a Super Bowl there until they did.

desertrider12• 8 years ago

Boycotts aren't going to be effective against companies that make basic commodities, because those companies don't interact directly with their consumers. Facebook deals directly with its users and advertising clients. I think consumer-facing companies are a lot more careful to maintain good PR and avoid boycotts in the first place.

ptaffs• 8 years ago

It's hard to identify cause and effect, but the large UK/European consumer boycott of South Africa in the 1980s may have had some effect, and there are US Federal laws against boycotting Israel (BDS), so i guess someone fears it is effective in some way.

Analemma_• 8 years ago

This is precisely the opposite of true. Boycotts almost never have any effect; the impossible coordination problem they impose is why we need governments and regulation instead.

rocqua• 8 years ago

Boycotts, kind of like protests, show to the government that people care. Specifically, it shows the people care enough to actually take action that takes effort. That is a rather high level of caring.

So, it seems to me that boycots (and protests) are important for convincing regulators something is an issue.

e1ven• 8 years ago

Sadly, I can't agree with you.

While occasionally boycotts have encouraged changes, it typically only happens when other companies get involved.

Consumers "voting with their wallet" very seldom accomplishes much, except giving people a sense of having "done something".

That said, if companies and advertisers start publicly pulling support (like we see here, and the Mozilla story), it can start to raise internal flags, and (occasionally) lead to change.

While I get somewhat nervous about bureaucrats that don't understand technology writing overly broad laws, I do have to agree that legislation is often the most effective driver of change.

mattbrewsbytes• 8 years ago

In the case of Facebook, users are the product. If they lose 20% of their users, the usefulness of their product diminishes.

Social media companies would literally vanish if all the users stopped using them. What would actual users stand to lose? Event scheduling seems to be the main reason I read on here why people stay. There are soo many ways to do that - it would not be a hardship on users if they view the social gain of #deletefacebook.

quickben2• 8 years ago

I have to disagree.

Target/Sears vanished in Canada because enough of us did vote with the wallets.

Facebook is just another company, with the difference that a lot of powerfull people now wants them gone.

dragonwriter4• 8 years ago

While occasionally boycotts have encouraged changes, it typically only happens when other companies get involved.

The other companies getting involved are a result of the boycott and the attention driven by it, so that's just a mechanism of the effect of boycott's, not an indication that they lack effect.

And even if they are weak, that doesn't mean they aren't one of the most effective mechanisms consumers, as such, have to effect change: that would only be rebutted by the presence of demonstrably more effective methods available to consumers.

While I get somewhat nervous about bureaucrats that don't understand technology writing overly broad laws, I do have to agree that legislation is often the most effective driver of change.

Outside of direct democracy systems (including limited direct democracies, like representative systems where citizens retain the power of initiative), legislation isn't a power of the people generally, but a power that the people can indirectly influence by other means. And citizen influence campaigns against government (especially when there are entrenched interests opposed) are not notably more efficacious than boycotts against businesses. (Indeed, boycotts against businesses are often resorted to -- and sometimes successful in producing legislative changes -- after conventional citizen activism directed at legislative change without boycotts fails.)

adrianratnapala• 8 years ago

Consumers "voting with their wallet" very seldom accomplishes much,

Boycotts might not acheive much, but there is a much broader class of consuemers voting with their wallet and we usually just call it market forces.

jellicle• 8 years ago

I would write that as "Boycotts are one of the least effective methods consumers have to enact change."

RivieraKid• 8 years ago

99% of people don't care. This changes absolutely nothing.

PeterStuer• 8 years ago

Only in cases where the benefits gained and the detriments caused by the consumption are more or less in proportion. In many (most) cases, the benefits are internalized by the consumer and the burdens externalized. In all those cases 'vote with your wallet' has no effect beyond personal handicapping and feel good. Actively pursuing/supporting regulation to curb the behavior is (nearly) always the better option.

confounded2• 8 years ago

Why are the two things opposed or incompatible?

vkou• 8 years ago

Strongly disagree. Boycotts are almost never effective. What is effective is legislative changes, marching in the streets, and the occasional turned over car.

fancyfacebook3• 8 years ago

I deleted Facebook after the Beacon fiasco, but I think I'm gonna go ahead and move off google today. Mainly just gmail.

I wonder if there will be a backlash against cloud services more generally? Could we see people return to buying their own servers and hiring network engineers again? Everyone I talk to is so concerned about where their data lives now, I could see it happening.

apotatopot• 8 years ago

What email service are you switching to?

juice_bus• 8 years ago

FastMail and ProtonMail seem to be very popular recommendations on HN.

I moved off Gmail 6-7 months ago - I picked FastMail.

Fezzik• 8 years ago

For email I highly recommend FastMail. It is $30 a year and their spam filters are better than Gmail's. They also have a sleek web interface. The annual fee also includes good looking calendar and document storage features, but I have only dabbled with using those so I do not know how good they are.

Notes from a happy user with no relationship to the company.

porsager• 8 years ago

Can't recommend mailcow[1] enough! Took me a couple of hours setting up and moving 6 domains and 31 mailboxes after having to leave a shady provider quickly.

It includes everything like automatic certs, SPF, DKIM and has imapsync with a simple admin interface built in. Also comes with SOGo for webmail.

[1] https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized

tmalsburg2• 8 years ago

When I left Gmail a couple of years ago, I switched to https://posteo.de and have been extremely happy so far. They are very serious about security and privacy (you can pay anonymously by sending cash in an envelope) but they are also open about their limitations. They are for example not offering Protonmail-style "end-to-end encryption" because that is essentally security theater (since the email provider controls the code that implements e2e, they can basically do anything they want). Based in Germany.

herogreen2• 8 years ago

Not parent but I have heard really god things about https://www.openmailbox.org/. It is not free if you want to use an external mail client (but paying for services with money is what we should want).

ada1981• 8 years ago

SpaceXBook?

Elon ought to boot up a social media company.

Animats• 8 years ago

Don't get him started. He needs to focus.

Communitivity2• 8 years ago

Elon Musk is already using #Mastodon. I suspect he has possibly supported it in other ways as well, through public praise and/or contributions.

https://mastodon.social/users/elonmusk/followers

terraforming2• 8 years ago

Can you check when he created the account? He hasn't made any "toot" yet, so he might've just created the account so no one would pretend to be him?

pleasecalllater• 8 years ago

Deletes the profile, Facebook keeps the data :)

nothis• 8 years ago

They’re forced to delete the data as well aren’t they? Or is that just in the EU?

athenot• 8 years ago

Just the EU. If I'm not mistaken, being a US company they are not even forced until GDPR takes effect.

dglass2• 8 years ago

I just downloaded all the data that FB has on me. It's quite surprising to see every single message and wall post I have made and others have made to me.

One thing I realized is that even if I delete my account, facebook will still store my communication with other people in case they request to download their information too. So I'm not sure if it would ever get deleted unless both parties delete their accounts? For my info to truly get deleted, all of my contacts would have to delete their accounts too.

IdontRememberIt• 8 years ago

In EU, are they not obliged to keep some data? Imagine the case: commit a crime using FB, delete your profile. I cannot imagine the judge/police would not get some exploitable data...

rndmind2• 8 years ago

But this does not justify keeping a profile and continuing to use it in the future.

I was lucky enough to see this coming a mile away, I deleted mine 5+ years ago.

Faceobook has my pictures/contact list/private messages/thoughts from when I was in highschool and some college, but it isn't accurate any more.

lucb1e• 8 years ago

I was lucky enough to see this coming a mile away, I deleted mine 5+ years ago.

Assuming average speed, this means it came at 0.0000228m/h!

_blz22• 8 years ago

I don't think keeping public data about Musk/Tesla/SpaceX, probably managed by multiple people, gives FB any sort of important information to Facebook.

pawelk• 8 years ago

I think the theory is FB gets to keep data on who liked/followed/interacted with the page/content, which is still valuable data to mine for profiling the users. A true removal of an account should result in all interactions with the account and its content being removed as well, which I really doubt is the case.

wonder_bread• 8 years ago

Can anybody who lives in the valley speak to whether people really hate Zuckerberg enough over there to the point where this seems like a rational thing to do? I live out in Mass and while the 'scandal' has definitely been front page news, for a company to do this (especially with a well-known entrepreneur) would be decidedly odd.

immad• 8 years ago

Elon lives in LA I believe.

I haven't seen many people here (in the valley) delete FB recently.

make32• 8 years ago

I don't have the privileged information to know if it is true, but this feels more like a gut reaction then a cost benefit analysis action. Musk is known to be pretty polarized in his tech ethics opinions.

Fjolsvith2• 8 years ago

Cambridge Analytica isn't the first incidence where Facebook was used for political purposes. Obama Campaign Manager Jim Messina explains their use of it in 2013:

https://youtu.be/mZmcyHpG31A

jf4• 8 years ago

I live in the valley, have several friends at Facebook, etc. I don't know anybody who hates Zuckerberg. I don't hate him. But I am very upset with Facebook-the-company and Facebook-the-system. What bothers me most is that, to the best that I can tell, Facebook-the-company and especially Facebook-the-system just _do not care_ about me or you as individuals.

I have a thread on Twitter that goes into more detail here: https://twitter.com/jf/status/976250584213803008

netsharc• 8 years ago

Talking about Facebook on Twitter seems to be the height of irony...

(I hate Twitter, although if you ask me to substantiate why, I would probably come up with the oft-repeated talking points of echo chamber, Russian bots, rage mobs, etc, etc.)

r00fus2• 8 years ago

First it used to be excitement, then "love to hate" with increased utility but ads, but then your parents and other family started joining and it became a chore and "meh".

The dilution of your newsfeed and privacy issues highlighted meant you got more for your money from Instagram/Snapchat/Whatsapp and you got better responses from tweeting your issues with @company. Most folks I knew at this point either claimed they didn't use FB regularly (ie, they probably still did but maybe only by habit) or just for FB messenger.

All the while the slow drip drip of privacy issues eroded trust.

So we're at the point where if you haven't dropped, the utility can be elsewhere and there's no love lost if you drop FB. FB is in Uber-territory here, some don't mind - but you no longer get weird looks when you tell someone you shut down your FB account. In fact, it's often a good conversation starter.

stcredzero• 8 years ago

then "love to hate" with increased utility but ads

This is the best one-phrase summary of the decay and toxicity of Facebook I have ever seen!

Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

wmeredith• 8 years ago

Elon and SpaceX have enough existing 'juice' or brand cachet or whatever to get away with a move like this and maybe even get a PR boost from it. My local Girl Scouts chapter, Jeep club, etc... not so much. They're married to Facebook as infrastructure.

beaconstudios• 8 years ago

would it not be better for the #deletefacebook movement to delete all data and post a single protest message instead? Future users clicking through to the SpaceX or Tesla pages from links on the net won't know why they did this.

taytus4• 8 years ago

I read his tweets and I thought he was just joking. New level of respect for Elon.

justicezyx2• 8 years ago

New level of marketing probably more accurate

d23• 8 years ago

Facebook pages are in and of themselves avenues for marketing. Stop being so damn cynical about every single thing people do. It is possible, believe it or not, for people to have personal values and beliefs that extend beyond the ceaseless desire for money.

kakarot2• 8 years ago

That’s a quick turnaround, since Musk seems only to have found out these pages existed about 20 minutes prior to his taking them all offline.

From the article. Guess you missed that part. I don't think our boy hatched an evil master marketing plan in 20 minutes. Sounds more like a reaction based on principles.

coding123• 8 years ago

I'm not quite sure how this action will increase the number of Teslas or rocketships sold...?

Daycrawler• 8 years ago

Uh... I'm pretty sure SpaceX and Tesla marketing teams are kinda sad right now.

blocked_again2• 8 years ago

That makes sense if Tesla & SpaceX was an indie hacker startup nobody has heard of. Do you really think Governments will start ordering SpaceX rockets because of this news? Why will someone buy a Tesla because the company deleted their FB page? For what is worth they will lose some Tesla customers they would have reached through Facebook. There is a reason why all the major companies in the world spend tons of money on their FB page. FB page helps companies land more customers.

dawnerd3• 8 years ago

I've learned to never assume Elon is joking.

Sileni• 8 years ago

Or, that he is, and is following through just to spite you.

I really can't tell anymore, but I'm certainly entertained.

hanspeter6• 8 years ago

New level of respect for Elon.

Also for me. Though in the opposite direction than I assume for you. Unless he also trows away his iPhone and changes his start page from Google to Duck Duck Go, it's a pretty irrational move that I'm surprised to see from Musk.

rhizome4• 8 years ago

What's irrational is to expect people to share your principles of extricating themselves from all logging.

danielh96• 8 years ago

Facebook has been shown to be completely careless with securing your data - this wasn't even a data breach, the functionality to get all the data was a part of their API. Apple on the other hand has been very publically proactive about protecting your data.

I feel like this is more a reaction to the complete lack of responsibility Facebook had for keeping your data secure rather than the collection of data in the first place.

mixmastamyk2• 8 years ago

Interesting considering I've not been happy about the lack of privacy regarding driving/location metrics by Tesla automobiles. Has that improved any?

cryptoz• 8 years ago

There is a very big difference in the privacy problems posed by Facebook compared to Tesla. Equating the two is a clear false equivalence.

Edit: I'm no longer allowed to post on HN. I guess my posts are considered low-quality and not welcome here. Here is my response to the comment below, regardless. Thanks for continually banning me, downvoters.

Why does that bother you?

Because you exclusively use logical fallacies in these posts to make points that make no logical sense.

whether Tesla will start caring about privacy as well

This implies Tesla does not care about privacy. That simply is not true. If you have a concern, voice it in some logical manner, not in some accusatory already-made-up-your-mind tone about how so-and-so doesn't care about your privacy.

Edit 2: Does Elon really babble on Twitter about people's speeds and driving locations? I don't think so. And surely if you drive a car then you know that the people in the city/state/federal government offices and other tracking corporations also know where you go at all times anyway. Having a Tesla and driving it does not meaningfully invade your privacy in any fashion more than driving any other car does.

mixmastamyk2• 8 years ago

I didn't "equate" them, but asked a question regarding whether Tesla will start caring about privacy as well. Why does that bother you? You seem to be angry about it.

Having a Tesla and driving it does not meaningfully invade your privacy in any fashion more…

They track you by the millisecond versus a few times a day, perhaps you are not aware of the details:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/03/the-custo...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/02/19/the-big-...

Basically Tesla uses your driving metrics against you when they choose to, but will not release the information to help you. It has been a lose-lose situation for the consumer. I'd heard they might give the ability to disable it, but details are hard to find to nonexistent.

fancyfacebook3• 8 years ago

I think it's worth bringing up, one of the reasons I didn't buy a Tesla was because I didn't want the CEO immediately blabbing all over twitter about exactly how fast I was driving or how many times I left my lane if there happened to be some sort of accident.

They seem to take the same attitude as Facebook, mainly: we own all your data and you have zero rights to anything in the car.

sergiotapia2• 8 years ago

Out of the loop here, are people mad at Facebook for third-party apps that use their oauth data sharing API?

Ajedi32• 8 years ago

As far as I can tell, yes that's exactly what's happening.

The HN crowd has, of course, hated Facebook for a long time now for a variety of reasons completely unrelated to that, but that was the incident that seems to have triggered all this.

sergiotapia2• 8 years ago

In that case, people are just looking for anything to rabble about. Facebook did nothing wrong here.

mxschumacher• 8 years ago

Interesting, especially considering that Facebook is/was a customer of SpaceX: https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacex-rocket-test-hit-by-explo...

greglindahl2• 8 years ago

No, Facebook was planning on being a customer of Spacecom, the satellite owner. Spacecom is SpaceX's customer.

BadassFractal• 8 years ago

Things I like about Facebook:

* seeing what events in the area my friends are going to, helps me know what's happening around me and going there

* facebook groups for some friends / professional organizations

* following bands / band tours so I can get updates about them

Don't really care about anything else on there. Can I keep just the good parts somehow?

notananthem• 8 years ago

The problem here is just adding anonymized (so international traveling bands aren't stopped at customs) tour schedules to something like bandcamp won't do. Music is generally served on some type of forum, that's how it grows and permeates. For me, the ever-aging metal/punk/hardcore scenes are fairly present on facebook- the older crowd stays because they have jobs to worry about and are technophobic/terrible at computers (mostly). The younger crowd is the innovative one, and tries new things. Currently a bunch of friends are all leaving facebook and I'm a crotchity old 30-something being like "well ralph where the fuck am I going to find your tour schedule?"

There's been every sort of private forum for these things city by city and the problem is basically the drama that comes with it, that's why people like facebook because the architecture of conversations is so spread out you can avoid something that would otherwise get someone trolling.

I guess its something to really respect about the service is its ability to have so many people with such public opinions online and friends with each other. That's what you need for stuff like music related tours/bands/etc, professional circles where all sorts of people come together, school programs (me.. night school MBA), etc.

foobaw• 8 years ago

Considering that Elon and Mark constantly disagreed on subjects like AI, this isn't surprising.

Also notable is that typical Tesla customers probably don't rely on Facebook anyway so this should not have consequences.

em3rgent0rdr7• 8 years ago

Facebook can be an essential promotional tool for many. If you're rich or an already successful company, then you can handle the loss by not being on Facebook. But if you're poor or just starting up a new venture, then it is harder to afford not being on Facebook.

taytus4• 8 years ago

I'm poor and starting a new venture. I don't have FB. If my success depends on me/my company having FB presence, then my business sucks. How this idea of FB being the "place to be" got so much traction is beyond me.

toufka2• 8 years ago

Yep. LinkedIn as well. Still without one, and starting strong. Very much realize I must put my data where my mouth is.

Similarly, I'll be far less likely to hire one who has Facebook on their resume.

EpicEng• 8 years ago

If my success depends on me/my company having FB presence, then my business sucks.

And then...

How this idea of FB being the "place to be" got so much traction is beyond me.

If FB is "the place to be" as you say it is, then it is a valuable marketing resource and your first comment doesn't follow. I don't see how it's any different than advertising on TV in the early days. All of a sudden a new medium for reaching an even larger number of people popped onto the scene, so people used it heavily.

You may not like FB, but you can't dispute the fact that you are able to reach a lot of people for little to no cost using it. You can't then go on to say that a business "sucks" because it relies on FB for marketing.

r00fus2• 8 years ago

This, in an nutshell.

FB is yet another (large) marketing/engagement channel. Do you get more/better customers from FB? Perhaps/perhaps not.

product50• 8 years ago

Do you even know what you are talking about? Here, let me give you an example to open up your mind.

Imagine, you are a kids jacket retailer and have a Shopify store. Yes, these exists and are popular. How do you get users to your store? Yes, you use Facebook. Do you know how you Facebook here? You create a group with VIP members and offer them an exclusive discount over new jackets. This builds loyalty and provides word of mouth marketing. Next you create a page and try to post different images/videos of kids in your exclusive jackets and build followers who will like/share your post and thus get you free organic distribution. Next, you use fb ads and target your specific demographics (say women 25-40 yrs old who are interested in kids) to get users in.

This is a real thing. One of my best friends has a multimillion dollar business a yr on kids jackets and all she uses for marketing is facebook and she swears by it.

unethical_ban2• 8 years ago

Depends on the business. Entertainment venue? Live music/special events/etc? Almost every spot in my town seems to use Facebook to advertise these events, and NOTHING ELSE.

I don't like it... but it's what people do. It's the only reason I have a facebook.

Bartweiss3• 8 years ago

If you're rich or an already successful company

Also easier if you've got a non-consumer or big-ticket product. If I'm selling a new brand of bath soap, I obviously want a Facebook page. If I'm selling rockets, or cars, or laser eye surgery, hopefully it's a less important pathway.

(The Solar City page is gone too, which seems like a bit more of a sacrifice - someone might actually look them up on FB.)

dasm• 8 years ago

This is key; Facebook is incredibly important for a small business.

I started a firearms business, and being unable to use Facebook had a huge effect on how I was able to grow my business - making the same decision for political reasons is simply not an option for many small businesses who are just barely getting by.

tabletiptop• 8 years ago

Are you referring to Facebook like pages? They've been essentially pointless for a while now, since you only get onto your followers feeds if you "boost" a post, money that for a "poor" or "just starting up" new venture is better spent elsewhere.

What they did was genius - encourage everyone to make their Facebook following central to their online marketing strategy, then lock them out unless they cough up.

em3rgent0rdr7• 8 years ago

since you only get onto your followers feeds if you "boost" a post,

Actually most people and new ventures on Facebook get plenty of buzz without paying a cent. This is done by relying on your friends and getting happy customers to repost stuff from your page, thereby reaching new audiences organically.

whiddershins• 8 years ago

My issue is that a huge percentage of that effort ultimately promotes Facebook.

Who is winning when the restaurant I’m sitting in has a “Zagat Rated” sticker in their window?

Who is winning when a hotel in Phuket has a “TripAdvisor recommended” sign outside in the sidewalk?

I feel like any attempt I’ve made to use Facebook to promote my endeavors ultimately just benefited Facebook.

rndmind2• 8 years ago

I'm low-middle class and starting a new business, avoiding facebook at all costs. Although I do have a linkedin.

inopinatus• 8 years ago

On the contrary, in my experience when you’re starting up a new venture you should be laser focused on real customers, not engaging the peanut gallery.

JustAnotherPat• 8 years ago

You don't need a facebook page. Throw up an HTML page and use Twitter for updates. Get instargram if you want to actively engage followers.

em3rgent0rdr7• 8 years ago

"Get instagram if you want to actively engage followers"

Just to be clear, Facebook owns instagram.

And Twitter isn't categorically different from Facebook.

avoidit2• 8 years ago

But at the same time if you relied on exactly one platform to build out your business, you are taking a huge risk. The issue you are facing is the platform version of "What if your key employee gets run over by a bus?". On the other hand, if you wouldn't be thrown out of business by the metaphorical bus running over FB, then you have only made your business stronger, so best to start planning now.

terraforming2• 8 years ago

I never had the impression that Musk cared much about privacy but I seem to be wrong. Or perhaps it has more to do with the current POTUS and his impact in the environment. Either way, I am happy for his decision.

majestik• 8 years ago

FYI here’s a link to delete your Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account

Earlier I had “deactivated” my account thinking it would get deleted, but then I learned I have to visit this page to actually delete it.

samthecoy• 8 years ago

Does doing this also delete Messenger? I'm aware there's been a little bit of decoupling of the two services in recent times.

Bajeezus• 8 years ago

Deactivating your account does nothing to Messenger, not sure about deleting.

ktta3• 8 years ago

Yes, unfortunately.

marvin• 8 years ago

...and does it actually delete your data from Facebook's servers? I.e. all their records of your messaging history, all your photos, their ability to make a future third party face-recognize you on the street, their knowledge of who you find attractive, what party you are likely to vote for, what crimes you are likely to commit, what you like to spend money on and so on and so forth?

potench• 8 years ago

What happens to your Spotify account if you delete/deactivate your facebook account? I made the mistake of linking the 2 when I first joined Spotify in my haste to listen to music.

peterwwillis• 8 years ago

The problem is, how do you find out how many sites you currently use Facebook Connect for, and get non-FB Connect logins for?

Until recently I thought Lyft made Facebook login mandatory, I'm not sure if that's still the case.

mcherm• 8 years ago

I use Lyft, and I have never used Facebook to log into ANYTHING. So I don't know if they support dropping an existing Facebook login, but they certainly support other authentication methods. (Mine is username-password.)

sykh• 8 years ago

I don’t have a Facebook account and use Lyft.

snowwrestler• 8 years ago

I think if you look under "Apps" in your Facebook account settings, you can see a list of websites where you're logged in with Facebook.

mieseratte• 8 years ago

Earlier I had “deactivated” my account thinking it would get deleted, but then I learned I have to visit this page to actually delete it.

Thank you for pointing this out. I, too, was under the impression that "Deactivate" was the delete option, especially considering they place a "Delete" segment right above it but make it sound as if that is about handling your account after death. Some definite dark patterns in the UI right there.

abritinthebay2• 8 years ago

It's both a dark pattern and a connivence - there are a bunch of people who will deactivate their account and then start it up again. Having the data there to just... rehydrate the account makes that re-onboarding much more seamless.

But yeah, there's a sneaking dark side to how they use that feature.

marknadal• 8 years ago

Deleting Facebook now, without good alternatives, might cause more problems than good.

Instead, we should first model what the future of social networking should look like:

https://hackernoon.com/a-new-kind-of-social-network-emotiona...

Then I am curious to hear people's thoughts on:

- Mastodon

- Secure Scuttlebutt

- Steemit

etc.

glibgil• 8 years ago

Deleting Facebook now, without good alternatives, might cause more problems than good

It's safe to do it now. I got you covered:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

http://www.spacex.com/

https://www.tesla.com/

abritinthebay2• 8 years ago

I am curious to hear people's thoughts on: Mastodon, Secure Scuttlebutt, Steemit

None of them are very good...?

2474• 8 years ago

I #deletedFacebook a decade ago. I've been more than fine, as will everyone.

reitanqild6• 8 years ago

Many of us use Telegram.

Others use Signal.

Signal advantages: tptacek thinks the crypto is good.

Signal disadvantage: It wont work with limited permissions on your phone according to some people on HN.

Telegram advantage: somewhat more userfriendly. Larger userbase. Works even if you limit its permissions.

Telegram disadvantage: every cryptographer seems to think their crypto is bad. Uncertainty wrt their relations with Russian government. (I think they are enemies but some think they are very good friends or blackmailed into cooperation.)

telesilla• 8 years ago

Secure Scuttlebutt is pretty amazing. I've seen a few demos of people who run a private social network app, Patchwork. Definitely something to look out for.

bogomipz• 8 years ago

Note, if your account is already deactivated when you try to delete it you will again be asked for your password despite being already logged in. You will also be asked to complete a CAPTCHA. This will invariably result in the error message:

"Incorrect email/password combination"[1]

This is despite being logged in to FB with the same password.

The fix is to change your password, log out and log back in with the changed password. You will then be able to delete your account without issue.

Maybe the author could add this information to their post?

People have been asking on the FB help forum for years about how to resolve this error. FB refuses to answer anyone asking for help with this error. I'm guessing their failure to mention this or address this is quite intentional.

Oh and the audio versions of the CAPTCHAs are all completely unintelligible gibberish. I'm guessing this is intentional as well.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=4018056...

Method-X• 8 years ago

Dark UX

underwires• 8 years ago

I had disabled my account a week ago, not realizing there was a separate delete option, then deleted it a couple days ago. I didn't run into this issue; I signed into my "disabled" account first, then went to the delete link and it worked.

ghfbjdhhv2• 8 years ago

Interesting... completely unrelated to the recent issues, a few months ago, I wanted to log in to Facebook from a mobile browser so I could follow a link without installing the app.

I also ran into a challenging captcha and a page saying my account had been “locked”, but I was still able to log in. After logging in, I received a phone call from Palo Alto. When I let the call go to voicemail, it left a message consisting only of a recorded voice saying “goodbye”. Perhaps this was some poorly-implemented two-factor auth, but in context, I felt like Facebook was intentionally making the experience of using a mobile browser unpleasant to encourage use of the app.

Sounds like the delete your account page has similar “issues”.

From my experience optimizing signup funnels, it made me wonder if somebody is doing that work in reverse here. Are they getting a bonus based on what percentage of people abandon the account deletion process?

Maybe I’m just being paranoid, and optimizing those flows is simply not a high priority. But for a tech-focused company that tends to operate at a pretty high level, it felt like they are actively making things more difficult. Like this was the shittiest experience bright minds could come up with.

tsieling• 8 years ago

Oh dear, a bug! I wonder if it's a bug like the one that raided your linked contacts and wiped out people's email addresses and replaced them with a @facebook.com email. Or the multiple 'glitches' that would reset your privacy settings to more public.

scardine• 8 years ago

Bye FB, and while I'm at it, so long LinkedIn. Good riddance.

For too many years I kept a page at popular social networks even if they added negative value for me. I don't know, what if someone place a page there impersonating me? Well, I don't care anymore.

justboxing• 8 years ago

Facebook is like Hotel California.

You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave!"

spondyl• 8 years ago

For anyone staying because of Facebook Messenger, it's not obvious but you can tie Messenger to your phone number instead of having a Facebook account.

It still requires you to create a new account (that has an account key you can automically store in Google Drive) but it works.

The downsides are that messenger.com doesn't support this so you can only access messenger on your phone and that Facebook still has an idea of who you are.

thorin_2• 8 years ago

Does FB put in writing somewhere that deleting your account will result in all your data, including inferences and profiling data derived from data you and others have provided will be actually purged from their systems? Or do they just delete what little personal data you may have provided directly, but could still reconstitute virtually everything about you, whether anonymized or re-linked upon request or payment by a third party?

incompatible2• 8 years ago

Search for "deleted" in https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy. The bit you'd be worried about is: Keep in mind that information that others have shared about you is not part of your account and will not be deleted when you delete your account.

akerro• 8 years ago

Hey, Elon, why don't you build a better Facebook? Call it, "the better interplanetary Facebook".

DiabloD3• 8 years ago

We could call it.... Spacebooks. I could surf my Spacebooks feed, while eating at Spacedonalds, before heading to the Spaceradioshack to get parts for my Spaceship before heading to Spacemars.

alexnewman• 8 years ago

And I just bought some more tesla stock

Raphmedia3• 8 years ago

Context:

Elon Musk: "What’s Facebook?" -https://twitter.com/brianacton/status/976231995846963201

jessaustin6• 8 years ago

ISTM Acton's statement is more surprising than Musk's. They gave that dude a pile of money, not very long ago.

avoidit2• 8 years ago

Ha ha.. this reminds me of a politician who once said "If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women, take their money and then vote against them you've got no business being up here." Brian Acton for President!

_blz22• 8 years ago

Who would turn down that amount of money. Also, I think he didn't join facebook after the acquisition.

nsx147• 8 years ago

I always had respect for the fact that Apple just never used Facebook...except for claiming the profile it seems.

https://www.facebook.com/apple

glbrew• 8 years ago

Wow, I never knew that.

slig2• 8 years ago

They do use it https://www.facebook.com/applemusic/

totalZero• 8 years ago

  > Typically replies within an hour

Damn.

dawnerd3• 8 years ago

They have a facebook messenger bot so thats more than likely why.

bobthechef2• 8 years ago

Why would they use it? Nothing to gain.

http-teapot• 8 years ago

Probably for ads. Since ads can be rendered as regular post a profile is needed but they won't be rendered in the profile's feed.

Apple also has an account with no posts on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apple

dingdongding• 8 years ago

They use Instagram and Facebook to advertise iPhone's alot.

jayess• 8 years ago

Does anyone know if it works if you change your location to Europe and then delete your account to take advantage of the better privacy protections?

ovulator• 8 years ago

I've lived in America all my life, but since I signed up for Facebook 10 years ago my hometown/current city has always been listed as a place in Portugal. For a long time all my adds were served in Portuguese, but that changed years ago to English. My guess is they know where you really are.

Symbiote• 8 years ago

Knowing it enough to serve ads is one thing.

Knowing it enough to be sure under European privacy rules, especially the new GDPR ones, is another. I doubt one person's data is worth the risk Facebook would take by keeping it.

thanatropism• 8 years ago

Once I clicked on a slate.fr link et depuis cette occasion tout Facebook apparait en français pour moi.

kakarot2• 8 years ago

That's my boy! We need more tech leaders to take this stance.

joelrunyon• 8 years ago

Is there a way to bulk-download photos?

That's about the only FB related item I care about.

Karunamon• 8 years ago

Photos you uploaded are included in the "download your Facebook data" archive.

https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467/

iooi• 8 years ago

While I don't normally give much weight to Business Insider, they have an interesting theory [1] that this is related to Zuckerberg's nasty comments about SpaceX after the rocket carrying Facebook's 85M satellite blew up.

Must feel pretty good for Elon considering how much press this is getting.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-deletes-tesla-space...

anocendi• 8 years ago

Don't forget another instance of back and forth between MZ and EM on twitter about "Dangers of Artificial Intelligence."

9080872• 8 years ago

That was one of the few times that a rocket blowing up put a smile on my face. The last thing the world needs is Facebook satellites constantly orbiting overhead.

pocketstar2• 8 years ago

The satellite was headed to geostationary orbit over africa, 4Deg west. Unless you live in northern africa the satellite would never be overhead.

pocketstar2• 8 years ago

Facebook didnt own the satellite, msm would lead you to believe they did. Facebook had just leased all the capacity of the satellite from Spacecom. Facebook lost nothing, there was no feaud.

reaperducer2• 8 years ago

msm would lead you to believe they did

Yes, blame the media. A faceless abstraction to take your frustrations out on.

The reason people believe Facebook owned the satellite is because of Zuck's own words: "SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite."

Note he said "our," not "the bird we were going to lease time on."

Not that much different from people saying "my car" when they're still making payments to a bank.

dandelany• 8 years ago

Sounds overblown to me. Zuck's statement was: “As I’m here in Africa, I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent.”

I don't see anything nasty about that. It was SpaceX's failure.

ggg9990• 8 years ago

And #deleteFacebook is Facebook’s fault. MZ could have phrased his statement more charitably — if he had, Musk may have responded differently.

33272• 8 years ago

Basically - Musk Is the MAN!

kemiller• 8 years ago

It's passive-aggressive. A bit like deleting one's facebook profile I guess.

tomc1985• 8 years ago

It was SpaceX's failure.

In an extremely high-risk endeavor where all parties knew all possible outcomes

unethical_ban2• 8 years ago

The CEO of a huge company throwing public shade at a business partner for a scenario that was known to be a possibility.

starpilot• 8 years ago

As if this rocket blowing up was just peachy for Elon Musk? He was probably as disappointed in the launch failure as Zuckerberg was, if not moreso because it's his entire business. The satellite was a side project for Facebook.

drewmol• 8 years ago

Does anyone know if the connectivity was to be "free basics"? (provide internet but only to fb properties and select others, but not Google, or the open internet)

rsp1984• 8 years ago

Not too long ago there was also some beef on Twitter between Elon and Zuck about AI [1]. Guess that made the decision a bit easier for Elon.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/25/16024444/ai-safety-threat...

eveningcoffee• 8 years ago

Musk's negative feelings torwards Facebook may be related to a 2016 dispute where Zuckerberg implied that he blamed SpaceX for a failed launch which destroyed a Facebook satellite.

And today is a what year? I had a better opinion about Business Insider.

If that was the reason then why did he not delete the accounts on 2016? I think that the journalist is trying to mislead the public opinion.

gowld2• 8 years ago

Why? Business Insider is an SEO operation run by someone who is permanently banned from the securities industry due to fraud.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Blodget

Mahn• 8 years ago

Well you certainly get a lot more press for dissing Facebook right now than back then. It's the scapegoat of the moment, may as well take advantage and get on board if it suits you.

deevolution2• 8 years ago

So glad that facebook satelite blew up.

sah2ed2• 8 years ago

I think Occam's razor applies.

Several days ago, Musk posted about his brand new "media empire" called Thud! [0] — "That’s the name of my new intergalactic media empire, exclamation point optional" [1].

Not implying that he is building a FB competitor but I'd rather we wait and see, rather than speculate as to his motives for deleting those accounts/pages.

EDIT: Thinking about it a little more, he hasn't deleted his Instagram yet although he acknowledges "FB influence is slowly creeping in".

I think the influence he is referring to is the unintended consequences of the AI powering "The Algorithm" used by Facebook, which no one seems to fully understand. IOW his fears about an all encompassing AI may have something to do with his decision. He has publicly criticized Zuck for being naive [2] about the risks that careless application of AI portends to everyone.

“AI is a rare case where we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive because if we’re reactive in AI regulation it’s too late,”

[0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/973857445683462145

[11 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/973972643190792193

[2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/889743782387761152

tambourine_man• 8 years ago

And yet, still a heavy Instagram user.

As long we keep guessing which companies are “bad” and which aren't, we are not solving the problem. We need open, decentralized standards and protocols. We can then choose the fashionable front end client du jour.

deviationblue• 8 years ago

I don't think #deletefacebook is a backlash against the results of the 2016 elections. To me it seems that it's more about it now being socially acceptable to dislike Facebook and social media in general. Some may have always innately disliked it, but never had the follow through with any desire to get rid of it, or had to keep it for business/appearances.

mdip• 8 years ago

I tend to agree with you there. It's difficult for me to believe that the single Cambridge Analytics thing is it personally. And it sounds like as far back as 2012, an Obama campaign person mentioned they were getting similar information. The reality, for me, is I don't/didn't care -- I left Facebook a few years ago[0].

Up until this point, I was pretty sure Facebook wouldn't end up going the direction of MySpace -- partly because there's not a perfect/better alternative (as Facebook was to MySpace) and partly because Facebook has subscribers that I never saw with MySpace[1], and there are increasing numbers non-Facebook things of things tightly coupled with Facebook[2]. At this point, however, the needle has moved quite a bit. There's clearly a massive market for this; and unfortunately, Facebook has everyone on it, which is the product to most people. Starting up a similar social network -- even with amazing features that Facebook lacks (I can't think of any) won't bring people in if the rest of their family, friends, the HS crush they want to stalk, etc aren't there.

Personally speaking, since leaving Facebook, I don't feel like I lost anything. Of the large friend list that I had, there were a small handful that I knew in real life; the rest were acquaintances or people from my past that were it not for Facebook I wouldn't have been terribly interested in having conversations with. Of the small handful, they were there before Facebook and are there after Facebook. It wasn't lost on me that of that friends list, nobody on the "I used to know you/barely know you" ever became a good friend and outside of my volunteer team, very few of the "people I knew in HS/previous jobs/otherwise used to associate with" ended up being people I saw in person.

I did feel like I gained a lot by leaving, though. No more inane posts from people thinking their 40 word status update is going to make me say "Oh, my goodness! All of my political beliefs are wrong. Thank GOD I read your incredible rant about (some dumb politician)" (and other forms of political masturbation), or stupidity like "dial 46 instead of 911 on your cell phone" and other urban legends posted by elderly friends along with their immediate replies linking to Snopes. All sorts of wasted time was reclaimed.

Unfortunately, this would probably have been the perfect* time for Google to launch Google+ and aggressively mine gmail users to create a friends list. I don't think dusting that off at this point would help, especially since a lot of the folks I know who are sour on Facebook feel the same way about Google these days, but it's a tough spot for anyone outside of them to fill adequately.

[0] I was never terribly happy about the privacy thing, but if you value privacy there's a whole lot of the internet you won't use. I left after receiving an angry phone call from a family member because I failed to "like" a picture ... once I became socially obligated to use Facebook in a specific manner, I decided it wasn't worth it. Between that and a somewhat recent announcement -- at the time -- that they'd begin linking stories you read around the web to your account despite you being logged out, I'd had it.

[1] My parents, aunts and uncles had barely heard of MySpace outside of scare-pieces that landed on the local news, let alone considered getting accounts. They're all on Facebook. The volunteer team I led for 5 years which consisted mostly of retired individuals all had Facebook accounts. Ask them about Twitter, Instagram, etc and it feels like I'm talking about MySpace again.

[2] There are services I can't sign up for and groups which have nothing to do with the Internet that I will not show up on their members list and have to rely on my wife to get updates from because that's the only place they provide information.

oneweekwonder• 8 years ago

socially acceptable to dislike Facebook and social media in general.

I then find it ironic that it is using #hashtag in the movements name then.

reitanqild6• 8 years ago

Hashtags has been popular before Facebook and in a number of other media.

MikusR• 8 years ago

Probably Tesla workers were using it to talk about unionization.

slig2• 8 years ago

He deleted his company's Fan Pages, which are basically used to do marketing ("Check out our new car", "Coming soon on 2019", etc). It's not a discussion group or a forum.

sattoshi• 8 years ago

Their facebook page? what are you talking about?

9080872• 8 years ago

Is he still on Instagram? If he is, he's still supporting Facebook.

danso• 8 years ago

People quitting FB but staying on Instagram is still going to hurt FB. Part of FB’s strength is the massive network effects.

kolbe• 8 years ago

That is cool. I wonder if he can kick his Instagram addiction, though.

malloreon2• 8 years ago

hopefully people deleting facebook don't flee to instagram and think their somehow safe from facebook.

malloreon2• 8 years ago

I am ashamed that I missed seeing my obvious error in 'their/they're' usage long enough that I cannot edit the parent of this post.

codebook• 8 years ago

I will not use any service that requires to specify my personal info such as real name, address, phones anymore unless it is tightly coupled to my offline life (financial, hiring). Even email can link many scattered info into one and guess who I am, but at least it gives a lot more complexity than one single source has my info.

shady-lady2• 8 years ago

An unbelievable amount of bots on that twitter thread responding to a fake Ethereum giveaway by not 1, but 2 * fake Brian Action a/c's:

https://imgur.com/a/yv1Hm

very nearly believed it was legit too..

*fake twitter handle of brianhacton (h) & brianpacton (p)

jessaustin6• 8 years ago

Thanks for pointing out the "h" and "p"! This is so lame; it's kind of like the fake IRS agents who called basically everyone in my family over the last month.

shady-lady2• 8 years ago

not surprising that there are even more of these fake look-a-like a/cs:

brianlacton (l) brianmacton (m) brianzacton (z)

Is it really that hard for Twitter to detect a fake look-a-like a/c given that:

a) the display name is the same for all fakes

b) they all have limited posts, all posting the same link

c) the bad actors do seem to be making ever so slight changes to (full square) profile pics in an avoidance attempt- ref https://imgur.com/a/QruDm ??

I've personally clicked report scam on the initial a/cs I listed along with all the fake a/c's that liked/replied duplicitously.

alcover3• 8 years ago

This will deeply count in facebook's demise I think.

Tech people act as prescribers to the rest. When they use something new, it then propagates to the population. Abandoning is the same.

Now Elon Musk is mystically revered by tech people. Then transitively, his example will accelerate tech peoples' condamnation of facebook, then everyone listening to techies advice.

Kajayacht2• 8 years ago

Google+

alcover3• 8 years ago

Exactly. But Google+ was a side-game for Google..

If FB turns to the new G+ we might soon profit from discount hardware!

seanwilson3• 8 years ago

Tech people act as prescribers to the rest

Any good examples of this? I don't find this at all. Hackernews for example is always very against Facebook, ads and tracking user behaviour. As far as I can see, none of my less technical friends want to know more details about any of this or care in the slightest.

Most of the time if my non-technical friends are asking for technology advice, it's advice to help them follow the crowd e.g. my friends wouldn't ask me what social network to use, they'd ask me how to install Facebook on their phone. If I started ranting about privacy stuff for something all their friends used, they'd just dismiss it as me being overly concerned.

alcover3• 8 years ago

  Any good examples of this?

Not really I must admit. It's more that when the tide turns, people ask techies why and what to do.

In FB case they'll ask you what is so bad about it and you'll come up with a solid answer. They'll repeat your word around and the tide will gain momentum ?

Linux. My parents got a laptop with Windows 8. We couldn't make sense of it. I pitched Ubuntu, installed it and they never turned back.

When their friends evoke problems with their computers, they will hear about Ubuntu from my folks.

nugi• 8 years ago

Elon, whatever your reasons, I applaud this.

Now delete insragram.

abalone• 8 years ago

sidyapa3• 8 years ago

Like apple, facebook has very successfully created an ecosystem which makes it very very hard for you to escape and remain sane. I used 4 products from facebook - the website(deleted), instagram, messenger(deleted), whatsapp because all of my contacts are on either of them. I do not have an alternative currently where I can be assured of finding any of my contact to connect and share stuff with.

tfha• 8 years ago

I lost a lot of friends quitting Facebook. All of the events we coordinated were over Facebook. I was no longer able to invite people to my events, and they no longer were notifying me of their events. I was off the radar.

Took me more than two years to build up a new set of friends who could coordinate apart from Facebook after that.

Not fun, but Facebook was definitely unhealthy.

superquest• 8 years ago

That's the only reason I won't delete. So many friends from traveling that would be lost ...

slantyyz2• 8 years ago

> facebook has very successfully created an ecosystem which makes it very very hard for you to escape and remain sane.

Really? Ok granted, I'm probably "old" for an HN user, but to me Facebook is a system that creates an artificial sense of connectedness. I don't consider that an essential service.

Do we all need to be connected to everyone and know what they're doing at all times? I've drifted away from friends I had 20, 30, 40 years ago, and that's perfectly OK. If people are important to you, you will find a way to stay connected. It's not the end of the world if you lose touch. It was a perfectly normal phenomena before social media, and it will be after social media as well.

As I've gotten older, I've noticed that I prefer fewer, deeper relationships than having a large number of shallow relationships. That's why I tend to use email/instant messaging with only my close friends/family. I have a Facebook presence, but it's only there to maintain weaker connections to people outside of my core social circle.

sidyapa3• 8 years ago

There is something greater than a social circle, the economic circle. It might not be for you but lot my contacts have transactional relationships with me, i.e., they have my details because they know I can offer something they have availed in the past and might someday need in the future, they trust me. And same goes for me, if someday I need my friend Tushaar's video and audio skills for some project I should be able to look him up instantly and message him rather than asking around helplessly within my social circle for his contact.

gkya4• 8 years ago

They have bought instagram and whatsapp, neither of which require you to have a facebook account.

sidyapa3• 8 years ago

But I am pretty sure they have their data extraction and storage machinery hooked up to instagram and whatsapp (I see related ads on instagram)

cobbzilla• 8 years ago

This is excellent. We need more high-profile people to do this. It's not so hard!

After years off all personal/social media, I recently joined the mastodon fediverse; it's really a breath of fresh air, I'm enjoying it.

gnicholas• 8 years ago

While it might seem a big deal to give up a platform with millions of followers (2.6M, apparently), it's much less of a sacrifice for a company that has a large presence on Instagram (which the article notes Musk has said is "borderline", and he's not deleting) and Twitter. Also, they're in the news all the time, both for their victories and failures.

So this is a great way for Musk to brand Tesla, SpaceX, and himself, without actually giving up much in terms of his social media reach.

jliptzin4• 8 years ago

For Facebook to truly die someone needs to come up with a bare bones social network that has all the basics - friends lists, photos, address book, messaging, groups. Charge $1 a month. No sleazy tracking you everywhere on the internet, no ads, no newsfeed filled with garbage clickbait ads and conspiracy theories. This would be insanely profitable assuming it reaches some critical mass.

d4l3k• 8 years ago

Except it probably won't ever happen. Charging anything turns off the vast majority of users.

jliptzin4• 8 years ago

There may be enough people out there now who wouldn’t mind paying for a social network with the assurance that their personal data isn’t going to be mined and sold to the highest bidder. Definitely wouldn’t happen 15 years ago though, but a lot has changed. These people are probably more valuable to advertisers and if they disappear from Facebook it might cause advertising revenue to seriously dry up.

steaknsteak3• 8 years ago

Definitely. People are reluctant to buy $1 or $2 mobile apps that would be really useful, even though they would never notice the money was gone. Just because most apps are free. Also, most people lose more than they gain by deleting their facebook or anything else. Tech people tend to care about privacy because of all of the terrible implications and possibilities that come with all your personal info being freely bought and sold, but the vast majority of people will never (at least consciously) suffer any ill effects of government tracking or targeted ads.

jliptzin4• 8 years ago

Could set it up as a foundation, like Wikipedia. Might be able to run on donations only.

bootlooped• 8 years ago

It may be possible to get users to use it by doing what WhatsApp did: make a very long free period, then charge them a low yearly rate.

I agree for the most part though. Some uses just flat out refuse to pay money for apps, even $1.

tibu• 8 years ago

Let's do this in a distributed way. No company should host our life events/photos/thoughts.

brandall10• 8 years ago

This already exists, it was a big story back in the day (for the time a highly backed Kickstarter campaign):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)

Klover2• 8 years ago

The idea is that everyone is on it, that's what makes it a viable platform. An all encompassing social network requires an all encompassing social network.

Your idea would be similar to healthy meals that take 4 minutes to prepare to combat fast food chains: a big reason why McDonald's is as large as it is, is because of the speed of it.

And of course to the last point: anything would be insanely profitable if a billion people pay a dollar per month for it.

galdosdi6• 8 years ago

Big friggin whoop. Systems that already meet the "everyone is on it" requirement better than Facebook include:

Plain old phone calls

SMS

lcnmrn• 8 years ago

Well, there's Sublevel owned and developed from scratch by me. But it doesn't have all those features for privacy reasons.

fyfy18• 8 years ago

I’m hopeful that this will push more interest into decentralised and open services. Sure not everybody will want to host their own data, but for those who have the know how, why should I trust someone else to hold on to my data?

slantyyz2• 8 years ago

> friends lists, photos, address book, messaging, groups.

What you're listing sounds very similar to... email or one of the many instant messaging platforms.

jliptzin4• 8 years ago

True

dredmorbius• 8 years ago

Email lacks an inherent Follow dynamic. Blog + RSS / Atom will give that.

You can use mailing lists, though those impose a bit of additional friction in several dynamics.

There's also the matter of format conventions and client rendering, which can be quite significant particularly across various schools / application models: Usenet / Unix style top quoting, ccmail, LotusMail, or Exchange quote & reply styles.

shpx• 8 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net

austincheney• 8 years ago

friends lists, photos, address book, messaging, groups.

Sound astonishingly similar to my phone.

harigov• 8 years ago

As I keep saying, your phone's notification center is what eventually kills Facebook News Feed and potentially Facebook itself.

igornadj2• 8 years ago

Messaging over SMS is outdated, it's just not possible for a lot of cases, including international messaging. Unless Android and iOS solve this, you will need a separate app or social network to accomplish this.

wwarner• 8 years ago

Screen shot from my twitter feed https://twitter.com/warnerw/status/976431809889210368

nunez• 8 years ago

I don't think that this matters nearly as much as a major advertiser like Johnson and Johnson or pseudo celebrity Instagram followers pulling out.

shmerl• 8 years ago

Good! Time for Facebook refugees to switch to decentralized social networks, that respect their privacy and don't treat their profiles as a product.

overcast• 8 years ago

#deletefacebook really isn't going to go anywhere, outside of a vocal minority that don't rely on it. The train stops once the general population realizes they can no longer login to their favorite sites without it. Social Auth is a thing, and it's MASSIVE.

virtuexru• 8 years ago

Found the one Facebook oAuth engineer. /s

anonytrary• 8 years ago

I am seriously considering disallowing OAuth in my apps for a few reasons:

  1. It would be impossible for the user to voluntarily give up rights to information they may not understand.

  2. It would be impossible for the app to act on behalf of a user.

  3. True early adopters are not deterred by the lack of quick sign-in if they truly love the product.

  4. Signing up with email is easy today, and browsers make logging in an automatic and smooth process.

  5. Emails already act as zero-permission identities.

For me, emails are the root of my internet activity. Everything I do is tethered to email, not Facebook or Twitter. Going to my email to click a verification link is trivial and takes a few seconds; well designed email-verification can be seamless. It might even take me more time to read and grok all of the permissions the app is asking for.

Furthermore, I don't have to worry about having a user account system that has to be ready to deal with N different OAuth tokens. Personally, I have found OAuth to be a very inelegant technology.

Next time I build a website that has accounts, I will try and market the lack of "signing in with Facebook" as a boon to the user. OAuth is a slippery tool for collusion, something I never want my customers to be victims of. I cannot advocate for technology that is primarily used to extract information from passive people.

Making the rules so hard to read that the average person just says "yes" was unethical in 1492, and it's unethical now.

submeta3• 8 years ago

I always felt like doing this (deleting my facebook account), but fear of missing out always kept me from doing it. Whenever I seriously considered leaving the platform, I had a vague sense that I would "not belong to the herd" anymore, that I would lose the option to contact friends / family members, that I would be left outdoors.

The other day I made the step. I deleted my account. Before I did I exported all my data.

Two days past and I have a strange sense of freedom. Previously I would check my FB feed a dozen times a day. Although I deleted the app years ago, never really used Messenger, always had to use different browsers than Safari on my iPhone because FB would not let me read/use messages in Safari, instead it wanted me to install Messagner. So previously I would check my feed many times a day to kill time. I was a "lurker". Never posted anything since years, just used it as a news reader. And glanced over the things that my contacts posted. It gave me an illusionary feeling of connectedness, when in fact I could not be more disconnected from real contacts, quality contacts, and most of all: from myself by fleeing into a dull activity, by entering "the matrix", killing time.

Today I felt like in my childhood, going to appointments, not killing time on my way to my appointment, having seen my surroundings like back in those days without so many distractions. A wonderful feeling.

I hope this platform dies, rather quickly. Because it harms society and individuals more than we are aware of.

Edit: Grammar

2muchcoffeeman2• 8 years ago

I hope this platform dies, rather quickly. Because it harms society and individuals more than we are aware of.

I'm not deleting my account. I only signed up because I was using the Facebook API for something once and needed an account to test. Other than that, I occasionally post links to news, pictures (look at my food! look at this funny animal!), and I check on groups that I belong to, especially the trading ones. The groups are especially useful. I also only ever log in from a single place, my mobile.

It always amazes me how people use it. What did you think was going to happen to that data? How do you think a service as large as Facebook was paying it's bills? People don't need to stop using Facebook. They need to sit for a second and think about they are using it.

submeta3• 8 years ago

My problem is not how they use / misused the data. Thats a whole different chapter. I am accusing them of having made a platform that is designed to make you come back, as often as possible. They give you the illusion of being connected, liked when you post something and others hit the like button, but in reality many of your contacts feel miserable when you did something that they can't. And all that happens is that your attention gets distracted, whenever you login. Also, this is a machinery that allows to manipulate the psychology of the masses. Manipulate the masses in a way our societies never have seen before. Democracies are vulnerable. They always have been. But never as much as with platforms like this.

And by the way: This man is a genious. He made half the population of the world believe that privacy isn't something valueable, that we should share our most precious moments with half the world.

Edit: minor change

obmelvin• 8 years ago

What did you think was going to happen to that data?

In some sense you are right, but in this context you are missing the point. The whole point of this recent uproar is that 3rd parties got access to significant amounts of data without consent. Why should people expect that to happen?

hanklazard• 8 years ago

Today I felt like in my childhood, going to appointments, not killing time on my way to my appointment, having seen my surroundings like back in those days without so many distractions. A wonderful feeling.

Well put. For me, it’s not FB that is standing in the way ... it’s HN! ;)

That being said, this place tends to have much higher caliber comments that what I read on FB, and I learn so much from both articles and discussion. I’ll #neverdeleteHN

lphnull3• 8 years ago

In your opinion, what is your criteria for declaring that a platform is "bad for you" and "an unhealthy habit"?

Personally, I spend ALOT of my free time lurking 4chan's /g/ "technology" board, 4chan's /ck/ cooking board, and a carefully curated list of my favorite food and technology related subreddits on Reddit. I personally consider my addictions to be quite healthy because I learn and absorb a tremendous amount of information from sites that focus more on "actual content that matters" and less on worshiping the same small group of narcissistic acquaintances that congregate on platforms where "disliking" content is frowned upon.

Sure there's a lot of stupid crap on 4chan and reddit is full of corporate and government shills, but the internet has grown SO MUCH lately that the signal to noise ratio isn't as bad as it was in the early 2000s. My only problem nowadays is that I don't have enough time in a day to read/watch/comment on all the important stuff I find on the net. Compare that to the early 2000's, when useful information on the internet was so scarce, that I had to use minesweeper in my highschool computer labs to pass the time.

I for one am happy at how much content there is on the internet now. If you're smart, you can curate your own nonstop stream of "useful" content without that much effort. Problem is that you have to reject content that is curated by big businesses like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and program your own method of retrieving things that matter.

People will always complain about the exponential growth of information. Look at newspapers and the printing press. I'm sure that people reacted the same way towards pocket watches and newspapers as people nowadays are reacting to smartphones and social media. Some people just have addictive personalities in general, and will blame not being productive on whoever's in charge of "information" at any given moment.

Thriptic• 8 years ago

Not the parent, but I would say that a platform should somehow add value to your life to be "good for you". HN, Reddit (depending on where you go), other sites etc can entertain, teach, and connect you with interesting people. Social networks I've found are value detractors for me because:

A. I don't care what 95% of people I am connected with are doing, and I regularly talk to the people I care about anyway.

B. I can't have any meaningful discussions on them

C. They are dominated by high volume posters who tend to be very opinionated. Very opinionated people tend to have extreme opinions which are usually wrong and aren't particularly interesting to me.

D. The networks present a false sense of reality which lowers happiness. Everyone always posts their highlight reel which makes you feel like the whole world is killing it constantly and you aren't.

alelefant• 8 years ago

As someone who cooks a lot, I was curious what /ck/ could have to offer. I hadn't been to 4chan in years. I'm not sure how this board has tremendous amounts of useful information.

misterbowfinger• 8 years ago

Previously I would check my FB feed a dozen times a day

Wow. Is this still common these days? I rarely check FB. Honestly, I end up checking Twitter and HN way more.

grkvlt3• 8 years ago

This is, conservatively, once an hour while awake, which doesn't seem all that much. You are the outlier here, I think. Many people check Facebook much more frequently than hourly.

djcj88• 8 years ago

Pro tip: If you go to touch.facebook.com and request a desktop site, it will let you access your messages on a mobile web browser without installing messenger. :D

thisacctforreal• 8 years ago

Also mbasic.facebook.com, the JavaScript-free version of the site.

indecisive_user2• 8 years ago

Same with m.facebook.com, just request the desktop site and you can access messages.

Though it's not particularly fun to use that way as touch events become quite sensitive and you end up clicking things you didn't mean to

chrischen• 8 years ago

It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

I've installed plugins to disable my newsfeed and it's been great. Can't really think of a downside to it as it previously was a waste of time and only promoting superficial forced relationships through superficial comments.

You can totally stick to using Messenger as it still promotes 1-1 intentional relationships, and messenger is relatively easy to migrate off of as you can always get your closest friends to add you on alternatives.

eksemplar• 8 years ago

I never understood these posts. I’m not a huge fan of companies that make their living by selling their users privacy data, but Facebook is just a platform.

I have an account because my social circle organizes events on there, but that’s the only thing I use it for. I log in once or twice a month and have made a total of 3 posts to my wall since 2014.

I understand that it can be a tine sink for some people, but so can 4chan, Reddit, hacker news and other social networks.

And that is the thing I don’t understand. Why is wasting your time talking to strangers on HN more valuable than talking with people you actually know on Facebook?

That being said I’m happy for you. Everyone should drop things that make them miserable, and you’ve managed to do so which I think is great.

buvanshak2• 8 years ago

I already does not use facebook and the likes. For me, I had a similar feeling after I blocked reddit/hn domains.

I hope this platform dies, rather quickly. Because it harms society and individuals more than we are aware of.

Reddit/HN are places where places that can make you feel like you are doing something or "contributing", without actually making any real impact. A feeling similar to the the illusionary feeling thing you refer in your comment. On one had, it helps individuals to grow and on the other, it restricts their actions to an isolated chamber where the real world remain safe from their thoughts/questions.

So I think, after a certain point. You should forcefully disconnect/distance yourself from these platform, and start to engage in more real world activities. For ex, write a blog, write actual newspaper articles. Send your thoughts to actual news papers for them to publish in such sections, engage in local activities and discussion Etc.

An example of this is that when we came to know about the testing of self driving vehicles happening, many of the people here might have asked "What are the tests there were done before these vehicles are put on road"? Is there any legal groundwork in place?

But those questions remained safely in the realm of the HN servers as some binary pattern in a Hard disk platter. They didn't get out it the real world. They didn't get translated into real question to real authorities.

verylittlemeat• 8 years ago

Reddit/HN are places where places that can make you feel like you are doing something or "contributing", without actually making any real impact.

Impact for its own sake is overrated. That's not to say you should navelgaze and philosophize about everything but you really do need a balance. The startup community in particular is in love with the image of hustle and whirlwind activity usually just for the sake of ingratiating a handful of egos.

Blogs and newspaper articles have been left in the dust. We can romanticize the long form journalist but really that's a step back. The pool of ideas is now open to anyone with a well worded comment. Rather than privileging a credentialed journalist to express an opinion for us there is a battle of contrasting ideas from many more (though never all) backgrounds to find consensus. To me this is the future. A handful of ivy league graduates pontificating back and forth in op-eds through limited newspaper and magazine space is the past.

You might argue that this will create an environment full of emotion and rhetoric but really that's business as usual. The well educated have just been schooled in how to dress up their opinions as though they were facts. Internet comment sections are about deciding how a problem or conversation will be framed not necessarily about solving those problems. Framing/rhetoric and analysis of virtues are a huge part of determining what "impact" will look like.

el_cid• 8 years ago

But those questions remained safely in the realm of the HN servers as some binary pattern in a Hard disk platter. They didn't get out it the real world.

If no one would bother to read them sure. But I fail to see how the fact that information is stored in a 'binary pattern in a hard disk platter' makes it less relevant than it being stored on a slice of fallen tree... Especially in our day and age I would argue for the opposite, the virtual medium has become more important - because more people are using it to get their information.

soundpuppy• 8 years ago

Facebook won't die by a movement like this, it'll die when users adopt alternatives.

booleandilemma• 8 years ago

One of the best things to come out of all this controversy surrounding FB will be that people will no longer look at me like I have two heads when I tell them I don’t have a FB account.

stunt• 8 years ago

I don’t have FB account for more than 5 years (for both privacy reasons and also cos it felt wasting my time for a platform that doesn’t add any value to my life) and today I’m very happy about that.

It is kinda funny how people are reacting just now because I am pretty sure people already knew what was happening to their data anyway. It was obvious, there was so many discussions around it. So it’s a lie if you say you didn’t know they are using your data.

But everybody chose to stay just because everyone else was there. (most)People don’t dare to move alone and that’s very sad and stupid.

grinsekatze• 8 years ago

I abandoned Facebook instead of deleting my account.

I treat Facebook like a big phone book now and left a public status on my profile with an email address that forwards mail to my real email address for people that want to get in touch with me.

The main reason I did not delete my account is that there is one other person with exactly my name and very questionable values, judging the public content of his profile. This really sucks. My name is not common and unfortunately he married a distant cousin of mine and now has my name.

Now I don’t like the idea of people looking for me accidentally getting in touch with him thinking they are contacting me. Unlikely with his current profile picture in place, but still a possibility in the future.

asdsa53253• 8 years ago

Why is this news?

mindfulplay• 8 years ago

This is great but... This is deleting FB pages not actually deleting FB ads. Facebook doesn't care about FB pages anymore now that they can track people closely for ad targetting.

downandout2• 8 years ago

My guess is that they just made the pages private and will quietly bring them back after realizing how much traffic they lose as a result, and/or after a shareholder lawsuit is filed alleging that Musk is squandering a valuable company asset on a whim, based on his own political views. Tesla is especially vulnerable to such shareholder lawsuits, given that it had millions of “fans” on the platform. Arguably Musk just took an asset worth tens of millions of dollars, that technically belongs to his shareholders, and set it on fire. That won’t fly, even amongst the most liberal investors.

dannyw• 8 years ago

If you think that the FB page is worth that much to Tesla and SpaceX, I’d like to sell you some Facebook pages...

downandout2• 8 years ago

You don’t think a fan page liked by nearly 3 million people, many of whom are customers or potential customers for a $100,000+ car, is worth at least $10M in sales to them? That’s only ~100 sales. I’d bet just about anything that the Tesla FB Page has helped drive at least that many sales. People look at comments to see what other customers feel about the car etc.

sweetp• 8 years ago

this pushed me over the edge to delete my account too.

facebook is toxic

thelittleone• 8 years ago

I want to delete my FB profile but I'm reluctant because it opens the door for someone to start a new profile with my name and pictures. Perfect for social engineering.

guiambros• 8 years ago

If you're considering doing the same but is still on the fence, here's an alternative: News Feed Eradicator [1].

It still gives you access to messages, but eliminates the news feed, so it breaks your habit of going there to "check what's new".

Go ahead and give it a try. If after 30 days you still miss the news feed, you can just disable the extension. But I bet you won't even notice...

ps: but don't forget to delete the mobile app. Conveniently FB offers you a separate app just for messages, if desired.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...

obblekk• 8 years ago

just use messenger.com ?

hollerith• 8 years ago

I don't need that (probably because I never got into a habit of checking the news feed) but I'd love to eradicate most of the things in the left and right columns, particularly, the profile photos of friends.

igornadj2• 8 years ago

You can accomplish the same thing by unfollowing everyone in your friends list. My news feed is always empty, it's great.

Jerry64545• 8 years ago

Elon and Mark were not getting along well as far as i can tell from reading past news. My guess is Mark and Bezos might be getting along well.

exodust• 8 years ago

Perhaps this will result in a re-booted demand for custom websites that replace Facebook business pages, or at least take on more responsibilities and tasks that would otherwise be left to FB.

Over the years I've seen many businesses including those I've worked for (as frontend developer) putting effort into Facebook and diminishing effort into their own websites (the kind that I make for a living).

It surprised and disappointed me over the years as I saw organisations move in and start paying Facebook to promote posts. The misguided assumption that user behaviour was better quality because of the real name policy (not true); and that "everyone was on it". There's also a mistaken perception that Facebook is good for long form or archived topics, such as factual content, but this is not correct. It's awful for anything other than recent buzz.

We seem to have lots of nice new web technology standards, but there's an absence of something approaching a "social profile" or system whereby users and businesses can create, manage, share, follow, and control 100% the data in some social context web mechanism, decoupled from a closed platform with CEO at the top. I don't pretend to have the solution on how that might be possible.

ejanus• 8 years ago

I don't work at FB and I don't have their shares either . But to me this is looking like punishment beating because it is linked to Trump victory at the polls. We all know that FB is in the business of selling data in one form or other. And we also know that FB is human and is subjected errors and mistakes. But deleting FB , leaving FB , pulling adverts from FB may not change the fundamental.

Elon Musk Deletes Own, SpaceX and Tesla Facebook Pages After #deletefacebook

Related Stories