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> Their PR problems aren't rooted in SV

Silicon Valley is the last place I'm consistently hearing full-throated defenses of Facebook. It makes sense to keep one's base in order.



That might be sure. But it's still not their bigger / biggest PR problem.


> * it's still not their bigger / biggest PR problem*

It's the only one that could matter to them. Congress flopped when Zuckerberg testified. They are clearly no present threat. And we haven't seen a wave of action from states' attorneys general. We have no evidence users are decamping. And by extension, the advertisers are staying.

The only weak point is in (a) recruitment and (b) political support from the tech community. The first can be solved with money. Fortunately, Facebook has pots of that stuff. The second relies on keeping the armies of defenders, who call every Congressional office on their own accord on a strikingly-regular basis, working.

For an example of what happens when one loses their base, look at Uber. It went from teflon to pariah virtually overnight.


> We have no evidence users are decamping.

Last I saw (on HN) was teens usage is down.

As for Congress...do you trust them not to loop around again?

The fact that FB believes SV is all they have to focus on is what created this mess in the first place, yes? Nuff said.


> Last I saw (on HN) was teens usage is down.

Teen usage has been dropping for a while, though, with corresponding rises in Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Are there numbers saying teen usage reacted to these stories at all?


If not SV, then where?

I could buy "Congress" or "the European Parliament", but outside of those answers I don't see it. Average users don't appear to be rejecting Facebook to a meaningful degree, no matter how much news outlets beat the privacy drum. But the Valley is small enough that FB could get stuck paying extra for engineers or even losing domain experts.

More broadly speaking: consumer boycotts don't work (directly), but supplier boycotts sometimes do. That includes labor.




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