Report: 10% Of FB Users Have Deleted Their Accounts Over Privacy Scandal

The question is, will this be a ‘blip’ or a ‘trend’?

They used to say there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

That isn’t necessarily true.

Especially if these numbers turn out to be part of a larger trend.

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There are two aspects to this issue at Facebook. On one side, there are concerns that have been raised about the use and distribution of personal data. On the other is their tendancy toward censorship of ideas they disagree with.

The news media prefers to point the spotlight on Cambridge Analytica and make it into a ‘Republican’ problem. This, of course, ignores the historical celebration of Obama 2012’s ‘mastery of social media’ where his team did the same thing on a much larger scale, and with more direct participation by Facebook itself.

Does anyone remember stories like these? This was February 2012.

Obama, Facebook and the power of friendship: the 2012 data election
A unified computer database that gathers and refines information on millions of potential voters is at the forefront of campaign technology – and could be the key to an Obama win
Source: The Guardian

In response to the Senator’s questions about how many people were cutting their ties to the social media platform, The Founder was dismissive.

That may not be the whole story.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his testimony this week in Washington that there was not a “meaningful” number of people who had deleted their Facebook account following revelations that data firms were able to steal personal information from millions of users.

At the same time, the hashtag “#DeleteFacebook” has trended following the Cambridge Analytica, and you may even personally know people who zapped their Facebook account.

So Carolina Milanesi and the technology research group Techpinions decided to survey 1,000 Americans, representative of the country in age and gender, about their feelings regarding the social-networking giant.
Source: Business Insider

Now, of course, this is an American audience, and they are a global platform, so the US numbers will reflect local, not global trends. Even so, the numbers are interesting. Here are the findings:

17% of respondents said they deleted the Facebook app from their phone over privacy concerns.
35% said they were using Facebook less than they used to over the privacy issue.
9% reported deleting their Facebook account altogether.
39% said they were “very aware” of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, while 37% said they were “somewhat aware.”
Of course, there may be a gap between people who say they deleted their Facebook and those who actually did. And Americans account for only a fraction of Facebook’s user base.
Source: Business Insider

Disconnections are not the biggest problem FB might face. Of greater importance is the impact of what happens if their platform is no longer the gateway by which their current or past users access the internet.

They worked very hard to integrate FB into every aspect of their lives. Their own founders have said so, as ClashDaiy has reported in the past.

Sean Parker, 38, Facebook’s founding president spoke at an Axios event and gave some ‘behind the scenes’ information on social media platforms and human psychology.

He claims that social media exploits the reward centers of the brain using a positive reward feedback loop. He literally compared the process of consciously exploiting human psycology to the way a hacker consciously exploits the software of a computer. Not just Facebook per se, but all social media as a whole.

He’s essentially saying that we’re addicts. And more, that was the goal all along.
Full story here

How about you? Are you, like Zuck, dismissive of the privacy concerns, or have you scaled back your FB use to some degree?

If you’re one of those scaling back, tell us about it in the comments. Are you using it less? Abandoning it completely? Jumping to another platform that promises free speech? Or had you never bothered with it in the first place?

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