Facebook: #DeleteFacebook are monopolies afraid of boycott?

Those of you in tech will have heard of the #DeleteFacebook campaign. But how many of you will follow the tag? How many of Facebook’s roughly 2 billion users will boycott the platform? CEO Mark Zuckerberg told yesterday that he hasn’t seen many account deletions.
In the wake of the ongoing Cambridge Analytica, many technocrats and users are reconsidering the idea of ​​leaving Facebook, one of the most widespread advertising companies in the world.
But the decision to delete accounts raises two questions:
1. Has Facebook lost the necessary trust in managing our personal data?
And 2. Is our involvement with the platform online and offline too great to delete our accounts?
The answer to the first question is probably yes, but the answer to the second is not to everyone's liking:
for most of us in 2018, Facebook has become almost indispensable.
No other company in history, except perhaps Google, has had so many users. Unlike Google, Facebook has no legitimate competition for the basic services it provides.
In fact, Facebook is a monopoly: it owns vast amounts of online data, to the point where even Zuckerberg agreed that it might be time for the federal government to step in.
That means the company will likely have to make tough decisions to repair its image, appease its critics, and stop those calling for a boycott, although a monopoly is very difficult to break.
Why?
Facebook is free. Facebook doesn't sell any services to its users, but it does sell its pages to serve ads.
Without any meaningful monetary exchange for the vast majority of Facebook users, the company is able to maintain the illusion that everything is free while billions flow into the company’s coffers.
This makes the boycott’s effect less impressive, as many are not interested in privacy and don’t care about being commodified.
Resistance to the #DeleteFacebook initiative is rooted in a combination of user indifference and apathy, but also a genuine concern that leaving the Facebook ecosystem would deprive them of one of the most valuable services on the internet: social connections with friends and family.
About 68 percent of U.S. adults use Facebook, and more than two-thirds of that number check the Facebook website or mobile app every day.
So when we’re discussing a potential Facebook exit, we need to weigh the pros and cons. While there are many studies that have shown that using Facebook leads to unhappiness, the #DeleteFacebook campaign is largely based on an ideology.
If you quit Facebook, you will rest easier knowing that you do not have to follow your friends' posts and that you will not be the recipient of aggressive ads or experiments on the platform. You will stop filling the service's coffers by granting access to valuable information that exists on Instagram and Messenger.
Let's recall that a year ago there was a boycott of Uber. Uber technician Susan Fowler reported the company's CEO Travis Kalanick for sexual harassment.
#DeleteUber led to the deletion of more than 200,000 accounts, sending a clear message that Uber's arrogance and indifference would not be tolerated. A year later, Kalanick left the company, and the composition of Uber’s business strategy changed dramatically.
But Facebook is not Uber. Uber had a competitor, Lyft, an almost identical product with fewer problematic executives. For those who didn’t take their bike, finding a taxi or public transportation solved the problem.
But for Facebook “sick people,” there is no substitute: for many users, boycotting would require substantial changes in their social and cultural behavior on a daily basis.
From all of the above, it is clear that #DeleteFacebook will fail. But if you are one of the “crazy” ones whose ideology is stronger than addiction and you want to delete your account, do it right.

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