While it's true that the Pew Center found that most US Facebook users don't understand how they're being tracked and targeted, the more important fact is that the number of Americans who do understand this, hate it and are deleting their Facebook accounts because of it is growing fast.
It's all about the direction of travel: we've gone from a place where virtually no Facebook users knew or cared about this to a mass movement that is growing like crazy. We're past the moment of peak indifference, and the number of people who resent and fear Facebook and want to see it destroyed only goes up from here, as new partisans self-radicalize after they, or people they love, are destroyed by Facebook's business-model.
Remember, back in September, Pew also found that "44 percent of those ages 18 to 29 say they’ve deleted the app from their phone in the last year" and "26 percent of survey respondents say they deleted the app, while 42 percent have 'taken a break' for several weeks or more, and 54 percent have adjusted their privacy settings."
As Casey Newton writes on The Verge: "the group of people who are both informed about how Facebook works and uncomfortable with it, while smaller than you might expect, is more than large enough to make a difference in Facebook’s future. Those 55.6 million Americans already represent a healthy constituency — one that, judging from declining Facebook usage, already appears to be voting."
Don’t underestimate Americans’ knowledge of Facebook’s business model
[Casey Newton/The Verge]
(Image:
Robert Couse-Baker, CC-BY)
