Facebook Users Quotes & Sayings

Sharing with just your friends doesn't protect your privacy. I know the people at Facebook will disagree and argue that users can control what is shared with whom. But this is simply an illusion that makes us feel better about all the sharing we have done and are about to do. — Ben Parr

We Facebook users have been building a treasure lode of big data that government and corporate researchers have been mining to predict and influence what we buy and for whom we vote. We have been handing over to them vast quantities of information about ourselves and our friends, loved ones and acquaintances. — Douglas Rushkoff

The bigger the network, the harder it is to leave. Many users find it too daunting to start afresh on a new site, so they quietly consent to Facebook's privacy bullying. — Evgeny Morozov

For users, Facebook Connect offers what could turn into a universal Internet log-in. Over 80,000 websites use it in some fashion, as of February 2010, and 60 million Facebook members are actively employing it. — David Kirkpatrick

With over a 10th of the users from the country, India is one of the biggest markets for WhatsApp, he said, adding connecting billions of people in markets like India and Brazil is the aim of the company. Arora, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi and ISB Hyderabad, said WhatsApp will continue to hold a distinct identity even after the takeover by Facebook and will not get merged with the social networking giant. He said WhatsApp, which has only 80 employees, will benefit through learnings from the social networking giant. Arora, who first heard of WhatsApp as a business development executive for the Internet search firm Google Inc. and later joined as its business head, said it took two years to stitch the $19 billion deal announced this April. — Anonymous

The polling of Internet users shows that friends recommendations are the most reliable driver behind purchasing decisions. Right now that market is largely untapped. Facebook and other social networks can allow that to happen. — Yuri Milner

On engagement, we're already seeing that mobile users are more likely to be daily active users than desktop users. They're more likely to use Facebook six or seven days of the week. — Mark Zuckerberg

We certainly hope that Facebook allows users to connect with their friends on Path and with any other partner applications in the future. — Dave Morin

Nobody is forcing anybody who is uncomfortable with the terms of service to use Facebook. Executives point out that Internet users have choices on the Web. — Rebecca MacKinnon

It's my fond hope that social networks such as Facebook will help users broaden their perspectives by listening to a different set of people than they encounter in their daily life. But I fear services such as Facebook may be turning us into imaginary cosmopolitans. — Ethan Zuckerman

The true end users of Facebook are the marketers who want to reach and influence us. They are Facebook's paying customers; we are the product. And we are its workers. The countless hours that we - and the young, particularly - spend on our profiles are the unpaid labor on which Facebook justifies its stock valuation. — Douglas Rushkoff

Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are all 'User First, Brands Second' services. The brands are all over these services now. But for the most part, these services didn't do much to bring them. The engaged users did. — Fred Wilson

The hours Facebook users put into their profiles and lists and updates is the labor that Facebook then sells to the market researchers and advertisers it serves. — Douglas Rushkoff

Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Tumblr, YouTube, Reddit, WordPress, and Facebook aren't responsible for the copyright infringement of each of their millions of users, so long as they take down specific posts, videos, or images when notified by copyright holders. But copyright holders thought that wasn't good enough. — Marvin Ammori

After launching the first version of Facebook for a few thousand users, we would discuss how this should be built for the world. It wasn't even a thought that maybe it could be us. We always thought it would be someone else doing it. — Mark Zuckerberg

Whether it's Facebook or Google or the other companies, that basic principle that users should be able to see and control information about them that they themselves have revealed to the companies is not baked into how the companies work. But it's bigger than privacy. Privacy is about what you're willing to reveal about yourself. — Eli Pariser

We saw a blatant example of this abuse in mid-2014 when a study published by researchers at Facebook and Cornell University revealed that social networks can manipulate the emotions of their users simply by algorithmically altering what they see in the news feed. In a study published by the National Academy of Sciences, Facebook changed the update feeds of 700,000 of its users to show them either more sad or more happy news. The result? Users seeing more negative news felt worse and posted more negative things, the converse being true for those seeing the more happy news. The study's conclusion: "Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. — Marc Goodman

In reality, quitting Facebook is much more problematic than the company's executives suggest, if only because users cannot extract all the intangible social capital they have generated on the site and export it elsewhere. — Evgeny Morozov

I think Facebook's biggest problem is the glut of information that Facebook's power users are overwhelmed with. — Sean Parker

Google+ will never have a user base to rival Facebook's. It just won't. Not even if you include the 'users' who create accounts so that they can use other Google services. — Shawn Amos

Facebook provides numerous examples of variable social rewards. Logging-in reveals an endless stream of content friends have shared, comments from others, and running tallies of how many people have "liked" something (figure 21). The uncertainty of what users will find each time they visit the site creates the intrigue needed to pull them back again. While variable content gets users to keep searching for interesting tidbits in their Newsfeeds, a click of the "Like" button provides a variable reward for the content's creators. "Likes" and comments offer tribal validation for those who shared the content, and provide variable rewards that motivate them to continue posting. — Nir Eyal

Facebook mistreats its users. Facebook is not your friend; it is a surveillance engine. For instance, if you browse the Web and you see a 'like' button in some page or some other site that has been displayed from Facebook. Therefore, Facebook knows that your machine visited that page. — Richard Stallman

As users replace usage of the web with a mobile, app-centric ecosystem, the phone becomes the center of gravity. In this mobile world, Facebook is just one app on the phone. — Keith Teare

Facebook itself has an interest in having great content so that its users keep coming back. — George Takei

Altruism is one of the most fundamentally social impulses, and doing things for others without expecting anything in return is core to what makes us human. This is why, from the day Facebook Platform launched in 2007, Causes has been honored to be one of the most popular applications, with over 140 million users. — Joe Green

This thrilled Zuckerberg, whose primary measure of the service's success was how often users returned. — David Kirkpatrick

When I started out in Facebook, it had only 20 people. I saw it grow to a thousand employees and from five million users to over a billion users. I saw it evolve from a service that served college students to one that served the world. — Ruchi Sanghvi

I realize that Facebook today is a global success with more than 600 million users worldwide. But I also understand, maybe a bit sadly, that it is not for me. Perhaps it is because I am a bit too old? Or perhaps it is because I am more interested in exploring the epic text, which I have lived with for all my life. — Henning Mankell

Google and Facebook don't have "users" or "customers". Instead, they have participants under machine surveillance, whose activities are algorithmically combined within Big Data silos. — Bruce Sterling

Facebook is not a physical country, but with 900 million users, its 'population' comes third after China and India. It may not be able to tax or jail its inhabitants, but its executives, programmers, and engineers do exercise a form of governance over people's online activities and identities. — Rebecca MacKinnon

This is our commitment to users and the people who use our service, is that Facebook's a free service. It's free now. It will always be free. We make money through having advertisements and things like that. — Mark Zuckerberg

Today Facebook went public, just as Myspace's last user went private. — Conan O'Brien

Digital technology is both arousing and distancing. We don't look at the users on the other side as people. They aren't - they're just usernames, Facebook photos and Twitter handles. — Douglas Rushkoff

In 2011, the NASSCOM team introduced me to Aloke Bajpai, who, like others on his young team, cut his teeth working for Western technology companies but returned to India on a bet that he could start something - he just didn't know what. The result was Ixigo, a travel search service that can run on the cheapest cell phones and helps Indians book the lowest-cost fares, whether it is a farmer who wants to go by bus or train for a few rupees from Chennai to Bangalore or a millionaire who wants to go by plane to Paris. Ixigo is today the biggest travel search platform in India, with millions of users. To build it, Bajpai leveraged the supernova, using free open-source software, Skype, and cloud-based office tools such as Google Apps and social media marketing on Facebook. They "enabled us to grow so much faster with no money," he told me. It — Thomas L. Friedman

These days, tales of what Facebook did with its users during the singularity are commonly used to scare naughty children in Wales. — Cory Doctorow

Technically, web browsers can control what users see, and sites using Javascript can overwrite anything coming from the original authors. Browsers heavily utilize Javascript to create an interactive Internet; sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Gmail could be crippled without it. — Ben Shapiro

Most Web activities do not generate jobs and revenue at the rate of past technological breakthroughs. When Ford and General Motors were growing in the early part of the twentieth century, they created millions of jobs and helped build Detroit into a top-tier U.S. city. Today, Facebook creates a lot of voyeuristic pleasure, but the company doesn't employ many people and hasn't done much for Palo Alto; a lot of the "work" is performed more or less automatically by the software and the servers. You could say that the real work is done by its users, in their spare time and as a form of leisure. Web 2.0 is not filling government coffers or supporting many families, even though it's been great for users, programmers, and some information technology specialists. Everyone on the Web has heard of Twitter, but as of Fall 2010, only about three hundred people work there. — Tyler Cowen

Those people who post pictures of their dinner on Facebook, only to be disappointed by the lack of "likes" from friends, are simply trying to appeal to the wrong audience. If there were such a thing as Facebug (Facebook for microbes!), a picture of your dinner would provoke an excited response from millions of users - and shudders of disgust from millions more. The menu changes daily: useful milk digesters contained in a cheese sandwich, armies of Salmonella bacteria hiding in a delicious dish of tiramisu. — Giulia Enders

If I learned one thing working at Facebook: If users are trying to use your app in a certain way, get out of their way and let them. — Dave Morin

WhatsApp will bring Facebook another billion users. We will be a billion-user product. Whether there is a direct valuation or an indirect valuation, there is value, and Facebook understands that well. — Brian Acton

An Australian study entitled 'Who Uses Facebook?' found a significant correlation between the use of Facebook and narcissism. 'Facebook users have higher levels of total narcissism, exhibitionism, and leadership than Facebook nonusers', the study reported. 'In fact, it could be argued that Facebook specifically gratifies the narcissistic individual's need to engage in self-promoting and superficial behaviour. — Tim Chester

For many girls, the pressure to be considered "hot" is felt on a nearly continual basis online. The sites with which they most commonly interact encourage them to post images of themselves, and employ the "liking" feature, with which users can judge their appearance and, in effect, rate them. When girls post their pictures on Instagram or Snapchat or Facebook, they know they will be judged for their "hotness," and in a quantifiable way, with numbers of likes. Social media, which gave us selfies, seems to encourage an undue focus on appearance for everyone, but for girls, this focus is combined with a pervasive sexualization of girls in the wider culture, an overarching trend which is already having serious consequences. — Nancy Jo Sales

Does Facebook act as though I own my online life, or as though it does? Concretely: Can I control what data it shares with other users, with advertisers, and with business partners? — Eric S. Raymond

I was one of the key people responsible for building Facebook's News Feed. When we launched it in 2006, users hated it. There were 'I Hate Facebook' groups; random people organized protests. We even hired a security team. — Ruchi Sanghvi

It's fantastic to be known as a company that responds quickly to users, shares great resources and friendly banter with them over Twitter, and forges relationships on Pinterest, Facebook, and every other social media site out there. — Kathryn Minshew

WhatsApp is both disrupting and demonetizing the entire wireless industry, and now the Facebook acquisition provides the infrastructure needed for WhatsApp to begin offering voice calls. So instead of people paying on average $80 per month, users only have to pay $0.99 per year for the same services. Wireless carriers, beware. — Peter Diamandis

We're a community of a billion-plus people, and the best-selling phones - apart from the iPhone - can sell 10, 20 million. If we did build a phone, we'd only reach 1 or 2 percent of our users. That doesn't do anything awesome for us. We wanted to turn as many phones as possible into 'Facebook phones.' That's what Facebook Home is. — Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook users have higher levels of total narcissism, exhibitionism, and leadership than Facebook nonusers," the study's authors wrote. "In fact, it could be argued that Facebook specifically gratifies the narcissistic individual's need to engage in self-promoting and superficial behavior. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

The potential for manipulation here is enormous. Here's one example. During the 2012 election, Facebook users had the opportunity to post an "I Voted" icon, much like the real stickers many of us get at polling places after voting. There is a documented bandwagon effect with respect to voting; you are more likely to vote if you believe your friends are voting, too. This manipulation had the effect of increasing voter turnout 0.4% nationwide. So far, so good. But now imagine if Facebook manipulated the visibility of the "I Voted" icon on the basis of either party affiliation or some decent proxy of it: ZIP code of residence, blogs linked to, URLs liked, and so on. It didn't, but if it had, it would have had the effect of increasing voter turnout in one direction. It would be hard to detect, and it wouldn't even be illegal. Facebook could easily tilt a close election by selectively manipulating what posts its users see. Google might do something similar with its search results. — Bruce Schneier

What defines Web 2.0 is the fact that the material on it is generated by the users (consumers) rather than the producers of the system. Thus, those who operate on Web 2.0 can be called prosumers because they simultaneously produce what they consume such as the interaction on Facebook and the entries on Wikipedia. — George Ritzer

On the Facebook side, I think it's a bit of an evolution, in that that company, which has clearly done amazing things, was, I believe, as an outsider looking in, was founded on a culture that was obsessive about the users. And they built a service that is very valuable for users, and that is to be applauded. — Jason Kilar

Google controls two-thirds of the US search market. Almost three-quarters of all Internet users have Facebook accounts. Amazon controls about 30% of the US book market, and 70% of the e-book market. Comcast owns about 25% of the US broadband market. These companies have enormous power and control over us simply because of their economic position. They all collect and use our data to increase their market dominance and profitability. When eBay first started, it was easy for buyers and sellers to communicate outside of the eBay system because people's e-mail addresses were largely public. In 2001, eBay started hiding e-mail addresses; in 2011, it banned e-mail addresses and links in listings; and in 2012, it banned them from user-to-user communications. All of these moves served to position eBay as a powerful intermediary by making it harder for buyers and sellers to take a relationship established inside of eBay and move it outside of eBay. — Bruce Schneier

Brain-like in function and speed, the internet connected over one-third of the global population. Three million searches every minute; one-hundred-trillion emails every year; more Facebook users than people in North America, all with with personal photos, videos, apps, and chats. There were dozens of dating sites, an immersive universe called 2nd Life that boasted a country-sized GDP, a slew of viruses, obnoxious advertising, more than a billion photos of naked women, and seventy-two hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. This was the environment where the friendship flourished. — Jake Vander Ark