What would happen if Facebook were turned off?

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/02/14/what-would-happen-if-facebook-were-turned-off

by jkuria • 7 years ago

47 52 7 years ago

economist.com

toddm• 7 years ago

I would be a happier and more productive person.

dorkusmagnus2• 7 years ago

So why not quit already? I mean if you really think that...

enneff• 7 years ago

Indeed. You literally have nothing to lose.

ttsda• 7 years ago

People would rejoice, as they moved deep inside the next trap.

burlesona• 7 years ago

From the article, referencing a study where researchers got a bunch of people to quit Facebook and then studied what happened:

“They consumed much less news, and were thus less aware of events but also less polarised in their views about them than those still on the network. Leaving Facebook boosted self-reported happiness and reduced feelings of depression and anxiety.”

^^ this is why I’d like to see it broken up or shut down. There’s so much vitriol in everyone’s faces every day, it greatly contributes to the general unreasonableness of politics today.

rando444• 7 years ago

This isn't so much a problem with Facebook, but just gated communities in general.

Heavy moderation by participants push out opposing view points until all that's left are echo chambers.

The downside of this trend is the vast majority of people don't tend to realize they are in an echo chamber and take what they are interneting as gospel because people tend to trust the wisdom of the masses.. they just don't realize the masses are carefully culled.

IMHO problem is worse on Reddit, but likely affects more people via Facebook.

asdfasgasdgasdg3• 7 years ago

We shouldn't be the pot calling the kettle black. This place is an echo chamber on a variety of topics to the same extent or worse than I've ever seen on FB or Reddit.

barry-cotter• 7 years ago

Heavy moderation is why people don’t hate each other even more. When I started using Twitter I followed loads of people who disagreed with me politically who I thought were intelligent. Lots of them are, and thoughtful but it just made it really obvious that there’s still plenty of support for people and views I consider odious. Non-filtered news consumption leads to a more accurate picture of reality in which huge portions of the population hate each other and there’s an excellent chance of widespread violence at the level of the US in the 1960’s again.

https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/

> “People have completely forgotten that in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States.” — Max Noel, FBI (ret.)
Recently, I had my head torn off by a book: Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage, about the 1970s underground. It’s the most important book I’ve read in a year. So I did a series of running tweetstorms about it, and Clark asked me if he could collect them for posterity. I’ve edited them slightly for editorial coherence.
Days of Rage is important, because this stuff is forgotten and it shouldn’t be. The 1970s underground wasn’t small. It was hundreds of people becoming urban guerrillas. Bombing buildings: the Pentagon, the Capitol, courthouses, restaurants, corporations. Robbing banks. Assassinating police. People really thought that revolution was imminent, and thought violence would bring it about.

BurningFrog• 7 years ago

FB is just the messenger (NPI).

If it's shut down, something else will quickly fill its place.

8bitsrule• 7 years ago

I was just going to say, today's internet will route around the damage.

it• 7 years ago

If you think about Facebook as an empire, it's worth considering that people who have lived under empires don't generally go back to living as they did before the empires showed up. They typically want a better empire to live under.

quietthrow2• 7 years ago

If you think it’s an empire.

Also nobody needs a empire except for the emperor

jtms• 7 years ago

I effectively quit... I still have an account, but I have not checked it in any way in several months. Life is much improved - i am definitely happier. I also read and interact here and other non toxic places more which I think is an improved way to spend idle time

cm20123• 7 years ago

It would be much harder to promote new products and businesses through ads.

AznHisoka• 7 years ago

The same would be true for everyone else.

cm20123• 7 years ago

Yeah, but FB has irreplaceable targeting in the short term. Want to provide software to teachers or plumbers at scale? FB is really the only place online you can do this.

shereadsthenews3• 7 years ago

Would it, or would it just be cheaper and more effective? Internet is still not a majority of advertiser spending, Facebook does not have a majority of Internet advertising, either.

phishfi2• 7 years ago

I think it'd be cheaper and less effective. The benefit for advertisers on Facebook is that the rate of click throughs is significantly higher than the more shotgun-style advertising that was in use before Facebook and Google started managing so many ads across the web.

ardy42• 7 years ago

It would be much harder to promote new products and businesses through ads.

I've been lead to believe that the economy and all of human civilization would collapse if that happened. /s

perseusprime11• 7 years ago

Progress for Humanity will happen

sandworm101• 7 years ago

Party like it's 1999?

I am every day glad i finished my undergrad before facebook was a thing.

dorkusmagnus2• 7 years ago

What's facebook?

osrec• 7 years ago

I think nothing would happen. I mean, the stock market would dip a little, possibly, but people would simply adjust their lives with no real problems.

Thankfully Facebook remains a tool of whimsy for most people, not one of necessity. There are plenty of other "distractions" in life that will occupy our time.

quietthrow2• 7 years ago

The world would rejoice that a service that does less good than it does harm is gone. We would be less polarized. We would be less narcissistic. We would be less depressed. We would also we able to pickup our phone and call any body we truly wished to stay connected to. And we would not have an avg of 1500 friends

It would be a cause for celebration.

danlugo92• 7 years ago

After games started popping up I left facebook only as a photo storage where my family can see my/our/their photos. I also use FB messenger to talk to a total grand of 1 person that doesn't use any other messaging service.

Johnny555• 7 years ago

Those booted off enjoyed an additional hour of free time on average

What to people who spend an hour or more a day on Facebook actually do there? I log in once or twice a week to look for pictures from my family and maybe wish someone a happy birthday (which is a pretty shallow interaction since I only do it when Facebook tells me to).

But what do people do when they spend much more time there? Read and respond to posts?

wtmt• 7 years ago

They scroll endlessly watching photos and videos on the feed, many of which are shared by others or come through page subscriptions. They may also hit like or tap on some reaction. Actual comments are a lot lesser in magnitude.

One hour a day on Facebook is too short a duration for most of these people.

brucemoose• 7 years ago

I deleted my facebook account maybe a year ago. It was like ripping off a band-aid.

It felt bad for a short period of time due fear of missing out on family/friends and whatnot. But shortly after I realized that I'm feeling less distracted and not falling into the scroll-hole as often.

And as a small bonus, on my last birthday I received actual texts and calls from actual friends instead of "me too" comments on a fb post.

porpoisely• 7 years ago

The news industry would collapse because they would have nothing else to write about? The news industry would collapse because one of the biggest news distribution platforms would cease to exist?

I would be happy since I won't have to hear about facebook on HN again.

skilled• 7 years ago

Hmm... I think the bigger issue would be the loss of Messenger. In my opinion, Facebook as a platform is dead. A lot of people in my friends list have stopped posting altogether. Myself, I post once or twice a month for things that I thing my friends would like to watch/see.

ThJ• 7 years ago

It's funny to read such articles hypothesising about Facebook being gone. I left Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn about 1 year ago. I was hardly getting any use out of it anyway; not even Messenger. I did a similar thing to Reddit. Quit it cold turkey. These days, I hang out on Mastodon and HN. As it turns out, I don't give a shit about what my extended family and old classmates are up to, and they don't really give a shit about my hobbies and political views. Staying in touch with fellow nerds is far more enriching.

JeanMarcS• 7 years ago

If only bands I like add RSS flux to their website, I’ll follow you in a minute !

Perhaps it’s because I’m a bit old (47) but I never geeked the urge of adding « friends » for having a big number of friends, so I am mainly interacting with 3 or 4 people on FB, as everybody’s gone now.

But I get news from the band I follow, gig dates and stuff.

I once missed Porcupine Tree having a gig in my town (a lot of work at that time) in 2004 and that’s the main reason I subscribed to FB (many years later but still) to never miss a gig of anyone again

blueboo• 7 years ago

And I dare say staying out of touch with news as Facebook and reddit presents it is ... how to put this, not enriching, but rather more like emotionally detoxing.

overcast• 7 years ago

Welp. Certainly the zillions of sites relying on Facebook authentication would be a serious issue. Clearly there would have to be some type of winding down period, as a cold turkey cut off would be massive on scale.

koonsolo• 7 years ago

Kids nowadays don't use Facebook. So I guess it will die together with its generation of users anyway.

singularity2001• 7 years ago

I could reduce my /etc/hosts by 1000 lines, that's about it.

jd22• 7 years ago

I quit for the third and final time a few months ago. My kids text pics, etc. We have a group family text thread. I don't like being tracked and my data being sold. Facebook is a very negative social force and a conduit for misinformation. So many fools that believe the "news" they read on FB.

jd22• 7 years ago

The real problem with FB is addiction. People especially kids get a shot of dopamine for every "like" on social media. It is also an escape from reality and it is possible to carry on a fantasy life. This experience isn't going to end well.

What would happen if Facebook were turned off?

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