"We use participants’ pre-experiment and post-experiment Facebook valuations to quantify the extent to which factors such as projection bias might cause people to overvalue Facebook, finding that the magnitude of any such biases is likely minor relative to the large consumer surplus that Facebook generates."
What is "consumer surplus"? By this do the authors mean the total benefit to FB users?
It's an economist's term. I do wonder about the benefit to FB users. I just got this from Wikipedia:
Consumer surplus is the difference between the maximum price a consumer is willing to pay and the actual price they do pay. If a consumer would be willing to pay more than the current asking price, then they are getting more benefit from the purchased product than they initially paid.
What would consumers actually pay out of pocket for an ad-free FB?
Alternatively: imagine there was a job that required you to type in your sensitive personal information and then a business took that information, sold (or accidentally gave) it to other businesses, used it to target ads at you, and leaked it to hackers.
Imagine also that this business exposed your sensitive personal information to other people who might use it to your economic and social benefit and/or to your detriment (though you cannot predict how or to what extent).
How much should you be paid to do that job? Can it be argued that FB actually offers consumers a deficit instead of a surplus?
> What is "consumer surplus"? By this do the authors mean the total benefit to FB users?
It's a concept from welfare economics (economic benefit at an aggregate level). Consumer surplus is the excess benefit a consumer receives from purchasing a good (willingness to pay - price paid). For example, if you're willing to pay $100 annually to use Facebook, and you actually pay $0, then the consumer surplus would be $100.
Economists assume that there exists some value V that if you offered $V to someone to quit facebook, they would be indifferent to the offer. That is, if we offered V + $0.01 they would certainly take the offer and consider themselves a penny better off, and if we offered V - $0.01 they would refuse the offer.
There's also some cost to facebook. In the first world it's probably just whatever you perceive to be the impact on you from reduced privacy. In the third world, well, I seem to remember Facebook actually provides internet to people solely for the purpose of using Facebook so in such a case the cost might be tangible. In any case, call it C. Then consumer surplus is V - C, summed over all consumers.
My own anecdotal experience echos a similar result to the findings. Though I didn't remove Facebook altogether, I did unfollow and clear my timeline permanently, removed all media, and use it exclusively for receiving Event invitations and notifications. Still, I do not miss a single thing about the rest of that network.
Sadly I admit that my Twitter use has gone up as a result. It seems I've got some more work to do to kick the social media habit.
Anecdotally, the hardest part for me when I deleted FB entirely was the first two weeks. The amount of times I was itching to check an update, see what was liked or browse some new posts was shocking to me. Get through the first two weeks and you realize how much of an addiction this can be.
Replace _deleted_FB_ above with any other addiction and similarities appear.
One takeaway from the study that's often ignored on Hacker News, likely because most users here don't use Facebook or have a negative view towards the company, is that the majority of FB users place a real value on its service. Instagram and FB and Whatsapp may be useless to you, but that doesn't mean they don't contribute very real (and even positive) utility to the majority of their users.
"Our participants’ answers in free response questions and follow-up interviews make clear the diverse ways in which Facebook can improve people’s lives, whether as a source of entertainment, a means to organize a charity or an activist group, or a vital social lifeline for those who are otherwise isolated. Any discussion of social media’s downsides should not obscure the basic fact that it fulfills deep and widespread needs"
This is a point often left out of discussions on this website, unfortunately.
What are the best replacements (products, services, or just best practices) for Facebook's core utility of sharing photos and updates, and generally staying in touch with family and friends in your network? I agree with you that there's real value there, but for me it became overshadowed by the deluge of unwanted features and content.
The old fashioned way - remember their birthdays and anniversaries, call and talk to them regularly (once a month or two is fine), meet them if they come to town or you visit their city, make an effort to be with them during important events (death, birth, marriage, new job etc.) as much as possible.
It doesn't matter if they are too busy sometimes - just do this diligently.
Except that even before FB no one remembered birthdays and anniversaries of more than maybe their 10-20 immediate contacts/relations. The rest were diligently written down in a diary.
So use a diary or a digital diary with a reminder (aka most calendar apps). The point is to keep in touch at regular intervals, and talking or meeting is more meaningful than a message or a post.
Personally, I don't use FB anymore even though I still have an account. I use Messenger to keep up with my closest friends and I use Instagram for photo sharing and general life updates. I don't follow anyone who I don't actually consider a friend and my profile is on private. I further restrict my circle with Instagram's "Close Friends" feature when I want to share something on my story with only a select few.
Prior to that, though, I just made extensive use of Facebook's unfollow feature and a few key uBlock Origin filters (that block out any posts containing the words "____ was tagged in a post" or such).
Also, for what it's worth, I only follow ~200 people on Instagram so maybe I don't have enough feed content to generate any, but I have NEVER seen an advertisement on Instagram and all of the posts also appear in chronological order for me. I get the feeling that most of the people who have a bad time with FB or Instagram are the people who don't use the unfollow feature for their uncle that spends all day posting inflammatory political rants or who follow spammy Instagram accounts that are just promotion bots.
If you use FB and FB's apps and services to keep up with your friends, your real friends, I think they're pretty great.
Edit: For those interested, these are my uBlock filters for facebook.com:
If you're tired of the noise in your feed I recommend trying these out. They aren't particularly well organized, when I first started using uBlock Origin I wasn't all too familiar with the syntax, but they do a pretty good job (for me).
I'm not sure what "[having] enough feed content to generate [ads]" on Instagram even means. I suspect you must browse on desktop with some filtering? I think I follow fewer than 200 people, and 0 brands/"influencers"/"celebrities" ... and i get PLENTY of ads. maybe every 5th post. Using the app, that is.
No, 99% of my time spent on Instagram is on my phone. I have never seen an advertisement on there or on the desktop site. My hypothesis is that they have some threshold that "every N posts we insert M ads" and because my feed doesn't meet that N-post threshold I've never seen any ads. That's only a guess, though.
I notice a lot of junk from Facebook comes from "re-shares"; people sharing stuff from these crappy third-party groups that exist simply to make things viral.
I tend to block on sight, but wish there was a way to say "Automatically block shared posts containing videos/photos that don't originate from the poster or people in my Friends."
I'm sure there are people that save these meme/viral pictures on their phone and re-post it, rather than just blindly share from these stupid groups, but not very many from what I've seen.
I agree. That's why I specifically implemented the uBlock filter for any posts containing "your friend was tagged in ___" or "your friend commented on ____". 99.9% of those posts were meme posts I had no interest in. I recommend you look at my filter list and see if that one helps, if you happen to use uBlock Origin. It did wonders for my feed.
>What are the best replacements (products, services, or just best practices) for Facebook's core utility of sharing photos and updates, and generally staying in touch with family and friends in your network?
That we all think of those as Facebook's "core utility" says a lot.
I once spoke with a Facebook engineer and learned their primary development area was supporting how certain business owners in certain developing countries use Facebook: as their primary means of being paid for their services. In some places it's common to order delivery via Messenger, then as proof that payment is on the way take a picture of the money transfer receipt and share that picture via Messenger too.
That this use of Facebook had never crossed my mind served as a big reminder to me that as an a) first-worlder and b) affluent techie I probably can't fathom 90% of the use that the rest of the world gets out of services that seem to me to be worthless.
>> What are the best replacements (products, services, or just best practices)
The best replacement is tons of time, mental-energy, and the regimen of actually keeping in touch. Before Facebook, this honestly never happened for me. This is why I'm disappointed Facebook is where it is -- because they provided a service that made keeping in touch automatic and I think they have messed it up, possibly permanently.
There are a core of ~10 family members I stay in touch with always, regardless of tools. Same for about ~10 friends. Beyond that, life got in the way. Facebook made it easy to up those numbers to ~30, and ~200. There are people I like, enjoy interacting with, but just aren't so important that i'd be able to schedule a bi-monthly call to catch up with them, or email them, etc.
In programmer speak, Facebook is like subscribing to a bunch of topics on a message bus. Could you poll and do message exchange?...yes, you could...but it is too hard and that is why you use async and subscriptions.
I think that there is a dark model here in regards to sharing that people don't think about very often: you share with everyone in your friends list rather than specific people really often. An argumentatively older model for the same thing were emails: a key part of sending that email is selecting the people that you send it to. Emails that I receive are listed in the order that they are received, and I choose how to manage them when I receive them.
I think that these few modifications have introduced a number of dark patterns of how we interact with each other, and it differs from person to person based on their personality and perceived social needs. I don't know that it's positive for anyone other than those interested in marketing themselves. Otherwise, the 'feed' is a totally useless piece of advertising - either the people I know throwing that stuff at the wall, or companies trying to get me to buy more trash. These dark patterns are so pervasive that I think it's difficult to see these negative effects, and many people like the various responses that they feel when they see things on facebook, and assume that the dopamine hit is something useful, rather than an addiction. Studies have regularly pointed out the negative effects that these have.
Personally, I think that the solution is just going back a step. We don't all need to be marketing ourselves to our friends and the world. The way to get back is to just return to email, IMO, or interest based forums.
As people on this page have said, those who dislike/criticize FB fail to consider/imagine all the ways it's being used. For example -
I use FB for chatting with my friends around the world, i.e. most of my closest friends. I don't look at the news feed. Never see ads on FB. I chat with the people I want to, look at their recent pics when I want to, usually while chatting with them, so I can ask questions. The last few years, I don't share/post pics on FB, I just send in the chat to people when I want to.
So your criticism doesn't hit me, indeed my use of FB sounds like your solution. And yet people assume FB can't be used like that, for some reason.
p.s. Hacker News is infinitely more addictive..I'm not sure why! Maybe because muh internet points.
> likely because most users here don't use Facebook or have a negative view towards the company
I'd wager a majority of users here also have FB accounts and likely use FB at least weekly. There's a strong positive correlation between the people who did legitimately boycott or quit FB and the likelihood that they'll tell you about when the topic comes up.
Hmm. The way they measured this value is interesting. They tried to figure out how much money they would have to pay people for them to agree to stop using Facebook for a period of time. The numbers were a bit startling to me at first: in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Suppose I said to you that there was a thing I used regularly, that I knew was bad for my health, but I felt compelled to keep using it. And the thought of abstaining from it was so difficult that I would give up hundreds or thousands of dollars to keep using it.
What does that sound like?
You could describe a drug addiction with exactly the same words.
I'm not saying Facebook provides no value whatsoever. But I think the measurement in dollars is not purely a measure of value; it's part value and part compulsion.
I deleted my personal account and created an anonymous one purely for FB Groups.
The first 3 days took a lot of getting used to - like quitting smoking. I realized I had a hand-fixation of pulling out my phone, hitting the home button and going to the app. With no social connections, it became only for reading new posts in the Groups I'm attached to now (retro computing) which are not nearly as frequent nor as acidic.
It's sort of the new version of Forums, really. And since they are moderated, the conversation is very interesting/helpful and on point.
I'll never hook up the personal social graph again.
And yeah, after about 2-3 weeks of being unplugged I wasn't twitchy about it anymore. I thought I'd have a giant gaping hole after using it for 10 years. I was wrong.
I went through and unfollowed every person (except for a few close family members) and disabled notifications on almost all pages. Now when I accept a new friend request, I immediately unfollow that person. I have almost no notifications and very little reason to browse Facebook, but I can still use it to contact people and respond to event invitations. I find this to be a good compromise.
I feel lucky that I was over a year into university before Facebook arrived. I still remember socializing without Facebook or smartphones - that it's not only possible, but in some ways more intimate and fulfilling. It must be really tough for younger millennials to grow up with Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp and be confronted with quitting.
32 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 76.5 ms ] threadWhat is "consumer surplus"? By this do the authors mean the total benefit to FB users?
Consumer surplus is the difference between the maximum price a consumer is willing to pay and the actual price they do pay. If a consumer would be willing to pay more than the current asking price, then they are getting more benefit from the purchased product than they initially paid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_surplus#Consumer_surp...
What would consumers actually pay out of pocket for an ad-free FB?
Alternatively: imagine there was a job that required you to type in your sensitive personal information and then a business took that information, sold (or accidentally gave) it to other businesses, used it to target ads at you, and leaked it to hackers.
Imagine also that this business exposed your sensitive personal information to other people who might use it to your economic and social benefit and/or to your detriment (though you cannot predict how or to what extent).
How much should you be paid to do that job? Can it be argued that FB actually offers consumers a deficit instead of a surplus?
It's a concept from welfare economics (economic benefit at an aggregate level). Consumer surplus is the excess benefit a consumer receives from purchasing a good (willingness to pay - price paid). For example, if you're willing to pay $100 annually to use Facebook, and you actually pay $0, then the consumer surplus would be $100.
There's also some cost to facebook. In the first world it's probably just whatever you perceive to be the impact on you from reduced privacy. In the third world, well, I seem to remember Facebook actually provides internet to people solely for the purpose of using Facebook so in such a case the cost might be tangible. In any case, call it C. Then consumer surplus is V - C, summed over all consumers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6kwhF6hoqQ
Sadly I admit that my Twitter use has gone up as a result. It seems I've got some more work to do to kick the social media habit.
This latest iteration dies and i hope nothing spawns from its ashes
Replace _deleted_FB_ above with any other addiction and similarities appear.
"Our participants’ answers in free response questions and follow-up interviews make clear the diverse ways in which Facebook can improve people’s lives, whether as a source of entertainment, a means to organize a charity or an activist group, or a vital social lifeline for those who are otherwise isolated. Any discussion of social media’s downsides should not obscure the basic fact that it fulfills deep and widespread needs"
This is a point often left out of discussions on this website, unfortunately.
It doesn't matter if they are too busy sometimes - just do this diligently.
Prior to that, though, I just made extensive use of Facebook's unfollow feature and a few key uBlock Origin filters (that block out any posts containing the words "____ was tagged in a post" or such).
Also, for what it's worth, I only follow ~200 people on Instagram so maybe I don't have enough feed content to generate any, but I have NEVER seen an advertisement on Instagram and all of the posts also appear in chronological order for me. I get the feeling that most of the people who have a bad time with FB or Instagram are the people who don't use the unfollow feature for their uncle that spends all day posting inflammatory political rants or who follow spammy Instagram accounts that are just promotion bots.
If you use FB and FB's apps and services to keep up with your friends, your real friends, I think they're pretty great.
Edit: For those interested, these are my uBlock filters for facebook.com:
https://pastebin.com/GHwpM9bY
If you're tired of the noise in your feed I recommend trying these out. They aren't particularly well organized, when I first started using uBlock Origin I wasn't all too familiar with the syntax, but they do a pretty good job (for me).
I use Insta less than anyone I know. I only have 179 friends on there and barely get any posts showing up but I still see ads.
I just checked the feed now and the second "post" was an ad for "Quickbooks".
So you're either deliberately lying or can't tell the difference between an ad or a real post.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90166955/i-have-a-secret-ad-free...
I tend to block on sight, but wish there was a way to say "Automatically block shared posts containing videos/photos that don't originate from the poster or people in my Friends."
I'm sure there are people that save these meme/viral pictures on their phone and re-post it, rather than just blindly share from these stupid groups, but not very many from what I've seen.
That we all think of those as Facebook's "core utility" says a lot.
I once spoke with a Facebook engineer and learned their primary development area was supporting how certain business owners in certain developing countries use Facebook: as their primary means of being paid for their services. In some places it's common to order delivery via Messenger, then as proof that payment is on the way take a picture of the money transfer receipt and share that picture via Messenger too.
That this use of Facebook had never crossed my mind served as a big reminder to me that as an a) first-worlder and b) affluent techie I probably can't fathom 90% of the use that the rest of the world gets out of services that seem to me to be worthless.
The best replacement is tons of time, mental-energy, and the regimen of actually keeping in touch. Before Facebook, this honestly never happened for me. This is why I'm disappointed Facebook is where it is -- because they provided a service that made keeping in touch automatic and I think they have messed it up, possibly permanently.
There are a core of ~10 family members I stay in touch with always, regardless of tools. Same for about ~10 friends. Beyond that, life got in the way. Facebook made it easy to up those numbers to ~30, and ~200. There are people I like, enjoy interacting with, but just aren't so important that i'd be able to schedule a bi-monthly call to catch up with them, or email them, etc.
In programmer speak, Facebook is like subscribing to a bunch of topics on a message bus. Could you poll and do message exchange?...yes, you could...but it is too hard and that is why you use async and subscriptions.
I think that these few modifications have introduced a number of dark patterns of how we interact with each other, and it differs from person to person based on their personality and perceived social needs. I don't know that it's positive for anyone other than those interested in marketing themselves. Otherwise, the 'feed' is a totally useless piece of advertising - either the people I know throwing that stuff at the wall, or companies trying to get me to buy more trash. These dark patterns are so pervasive that I think it's difficult to see these negative effects, and many people like the various responses that they feel when they see things on facebook, and assume that the dopamine hit is something useful, rather than an addiction. Studies have regularly pointed out the negative effects that these have.
Personally, I think that the solution is just going back a step. We don't all need to be marketing ourselves to our friends and the world. The way to get back is to just return to email, IMO, or interest based forums.
Facebook users can select exactly which friends they want to share a post with. So the available functionality is the same as email in that way.
I use FB for chatting with my friends around the world, i.e. most of my closest friends. I don't look at the news feed. Never see ads on FB. I chat with the people I want to, look at their recent pics when I want to, usually while chatting with them, so I can ask questions. The last few years, I don't share/post pics on FB, I just send in the chat to people when I want to.
So your criticism doesn't hit me, indeed my use of FB sounds like your solution. And yet people assume FB can't be used like that, for some reason.
p.s. Hacker News is infinitely more addictive..I'm not sure why! Maybe because muh internet points.
I'd wager a majority of users here also have FB accounts and likely use FB at least weekly. There's a strong positive correlation between the people who did legitimately boycott or quit FB and the likelihood that they'll tell you about when the topic comes up.
Suppose I said to you that there was a thing I used regularly, that I knew was bad for my health, but I felt compelled to keep using it. And the thought of abstaining from it was so difficult that I would give up hundreds or thousands of dollars to keep using it.
What does that sound like?
You could describe a drug addiction with exactly the same words.
I'm not saying Facebook provides no value whatsoever. But I think the measurement in dollars is not purely a measure of value; it's part value and part compulsion.
The first 3 days took a lot of getting used to - like quitting smoking. I realized I had a hand-fixation of pulling out my phone, hitting the home button and going to the app. With no social connections, it became only for reading new posts in the Groups I'm attached to now (retro computing) which are not nearly as frequent nor as acidic.
It's sort of the new version of Forums, really. And since they are moderated, the conversation is very interesting/helpful and on point.
I'll never hook up the personal social graph again.
And yeah, after about 2-3 weeks of being unplugged I wasn't twitchy about it anymore. I thought I'd have a giant gaping hole after using it for 10 years. I was wrong.
Life is better without it.