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Why You Should Buy Facebook While It's In Crisis (archive)
In spite of the headlines, the hearings, and the hashtags, it does not look like many users are leaving Facebook. A survey conducted by Deutsche Bank concluded that "just 1% of respondents were deactivating or deleting their accounts." If the survey is representative of Facebook's 2 billion users, then 20 million users might leave. This may seem like a big loss, but it means 99% of users are staying.
Doug Clinton, the managing partner of Loup Ventures, estimates that each active user generates about $21 in profits for Facebook each year. The loss of 20 million users would therefore reduce Facebook's earnings by roughly $420 million. Facebook's pretax income last year was $20.5 billion. Does a 2% drop in pretax income justify a 9% loss of market value? I don't think so.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by legont on Monday April 16 2018, @09:56AM (7 children)
Under 1% of the population makes most salt kosher. When overall user base does not care much, a tiny dedicated minority can easily change the outcome.
Kill facebook.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 16 2018, @01:59PM (2 children)
The delta from non kosher to kosher salt is very small, easily accommodated with negligible impact to profits.
The delta from the current to a non reprehensible Facebook would destroy the majority of value in the company, the bulk of the value is directly derived from the reprehensible practices - and the value is so high because those reprehensible practices were mostly not possible/practical before platforms like Facebook existed.
Picture a door-to-door Facebook: Somebody rings the bell, and you sit down together and first look at copies of a bunch of personal stuff from people you may or may not know (copies that you get to keep,) then you make a page with your personal information, photographs, etc. That person then walks out the door with your personal stuff and with a wink and a nod implies a promise to not share it except with the people you want to share it with. It's all free, they make the copies for you.
Nobody I knew in 1976 would have signed up for something like that (unless they were willfully foolish and/or desperate) - too good to be true, they must be screwing you somehow.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @10:36PM (1 child)
I think this is a good point, but I think a major difference is that if a non-computer-assisted human is walking around doing that people understand much better what is actually going on. The fact that opening up the Signal app [wikipedia.org], selecting a friend to send message to, typing some text, and tapping the send button is a completely different interaction than doing the exact same thing but in the Facebook Messenger app instead is very difficult for non-technical users to grasp or even be aware of. Both seem like they should be similar to the physical world activity of putting a letter in an envelope and handing it off to the postal service, an activity where privacy is not only assumed but strongly guaranteed by law (at least in the US). And an activity that I gather people in 1976 engaged in regularly.
The software marketed at normal users is aggressively designed to make it easy to give away private information while making it very unclear who that information will actually be accessible to.
(Score: 3, Informative) by legont on Tuesday April 17 2018, @03:22AM
In fact at the office I have a required semiannual training dedicated to how to protect the reputation of the company while using social media. It boils down to "if you write anything without an explicit permission of our attorneys your will be fired".
Why a private citizen shall behave differently? Is her reputation somehow less valuable to her?
BTW, could anybody leak facebook's code of conduct? I mean what can facebook employees write on their facebook pages. This would be a perfect training material for any facebook user.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by lentilla on Monday April 16 2018, @09:53PM (2 children)
Nitpick alert!
"Kosher Salt" is named as such because it can be used in the process of kashering meat (in simplistic terms: removing the blood). The salt itself isn't special. So just like you might head down to the local Indian grocery if you want to buy reasonably-priced turmeric, you'd head down to the local Jewish grocery if you wanted reasonably-priced coarse-grained salt. Hence it achieved it's moniker of "kosher salt".
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday April 17 2018, @03:27AM (1 child)
Kosher salt as any kosher food has a sign - U in a circle - which usually means that a Rabi gave a permission. Most brands of common salt have it.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by lentilla on Tuesday April 17 2018, @07:02AM
I am concerned that an invalid conclusion may have been reached through an application of false equivalence. I state (as above) that: 1) "kosher salt" has come about its name due to its use in kashering; 2) "kosher salt" is refers to a coarse salt, and those names are used interchangeably in cookbooks; 3) "kosher salt" may (or may not) have a kosher certification, but; 4) salt itself is parve ("neutral") according to kashrut (Jewish dietary law).
Basically, you have to do something pretty wacky to salt that it becomes non-kosher. Oyster-flavoured salt would do it, for example. But salt; just plain salt; is parve.
So to wrap it up without boring everyone further: "kosher salt" describes a type of salt (the grain size); and salt (fine table salt, a block of salt, whatever) may; additionally; hold a kosher certification.
(Score: 1, Troll) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday April 17 2018, @07:15PM
Nitpicker above aside, which has a point but misses yours utterly....
A tiny dedicated minority can easily change an outcome when it is in the outcome maker's interest to do so. Kosher certification of a product.... if it can justify more in sales than it costs to obtain the certification, that's sound business sense. A minority is getting something because it costs them less to do so (or profits them more.) A company might do so anyway, but there is usually a motivation (or you'd see a lot more kosher-certifications than you currently do).
The only way Facebook will be persuaded is by legislation or taking pre-emptive measures to forestall legislation that would hurt their pocketbook more than the costs of non-compliance. If Facebook weren't afraid of more draconian regulation they most likely would have shrugged this off with lip service. They still may, if Zuckerberg did his job correctly with Congress.... looks like he's in a prime position to execute some regulatory capture.
This sig for rent.