> The question is - will this be just a minor blip to Facebook and then normal services will resume after the indignation wears off? Or will it the beginning of the end of the social media dominance of the platform?
I'd bet my house it is the former.
I think on HN we understandably make assumptions about the general population due to the bubble we live in. The reactions to other privacy scandals e.g. wikileaks or Snowden was actually pretty muted. John Oliver did a great piece when he met Snowden for example: literally pointing out that almost everyone he asked on the streets of New York had no idea who he was (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/4x3pvm/john-olive...). So the idea of a mass exodus from Facebook is extremely unlikely.
I suppose it all depends on how much user attrition you would say constitutes a "mass exodus." How many millions of former users would that be? Or what percentage from what high-point? By these following reports, there's been a mass exodus in terms of usage among the much-sought-after teenage demographic, and that's been happening from Facebook to Snapchat for at least two years now:
Oct 2016: Snapchat Beats Instagram and Facebook as the Top Social Platform for Teens
May 2017: AppAnnie report: "On any given day in the US, 35% of Snapchat’s daily users cannot be reached by Facebook, 46% can't be reached by Instagram and 58% can’t be reached by Messenger" the report says.
Sure, I agree that "mass exodus" is ill-defined. I have nothing to back this up, but I think we can both agree that it is extremely unlikely Cambridge Analytica really has anything to do with the teenagers preferring Snapchat to Facebook.
From what I've been able to gather, teens prefer creating "ephemeral" less-curated content in favour of throwing up "permanent" posts to Facebook (for all/too many to see) until it's past its use by date. So in a sense, they may or may not be more conscious of being seen by their parents who are mostly tech-savvy (compared to past generations anyway).
So if what I just wrote is somewhat true, the commonality between Cambridge Analytica and teens preferring Snapchat to Facebook is actually privacy or lack thereof (perceived or otherwise).
As for mass exodus - Hotmail, MySpace, Flickr, Yahoo... Where does one draw the line - is Facebook invincible?
I believe that more people care about privacy than they themselves realise. It's only a question of how much it'll take for patience to be tested. Keep in mind that easy-technology (the iPhone) has only been around for hardly more than 10 years; a lot of "non-geeky" people are still learning the ropes of how to balance their digital and physical lives.
Also don't forget that this is only one piece of bad news that Facebook has had of late. We're still wondering how useful online advertising really is, and how often it's gamed by ad click-fraud, etc. Aside from that, I can't comment on where FB's share price might be at any future point from now; not that I should even care.
Edit: With reference to big companies and which ones can eventually fail, I recommend reading Benjamin Graham's "The Intelligent Investor".
I'd bet my house it is the former.
I think on HN we understandably make assumptions about the general population due to the bubble we live in. The reactions to other privacy scandals e.g. wikileaks or Snowden was actually pretty muted. John Oliver did a great piece when he met Snowden for example: literally pointing out that almost everyone he asked on the streets of New York had no idea who he was (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/4x3pvm/john-olive...). So the idea of a mass exodus from Facebook is extremely unlikely.