Most people cannot leave Facebook

It’s time to spell out something which everybody already knows: The majority of the 2 billion Facebook users are unable to leave Facebook, no matter how much they would want to.

A mix of different factors makes it literally impossible for most people to delete their Facebook account. Those are:

• The need to supplant emotional labor with Facebook (read Sarah Jeong’s essay on how she tried to stay away from Facebook and really felt bad about it. For many, not having Facebook means an extremely weakened social support network)
• The need to use Facebook to get required information (such as parties, events, gossip, personalized news).
• The need to use Facebook to run a business/make a living (Read: Emerging Markets Can’t Quit Facebook)
• The need to use Facebook for work-related tasks.
• The need to use Facebook to maintain and reach a personal audience (particularly relevant for influencers and people from the fields of media, marketing and communication, politicians etc.)
• The need to login to 3rd party sites with Facebook credentials

Let’s pretend this list is complete (though it probably is not): Every person would weight the relevancy of these factors and the perceived lock-in for each of them differently. But every person who has been an active Facebook user for a while would find that at least a few of these factors do apply to them. To some, possibly all of them.

Taken together, these various lock-in factors allow for a drastic conclusion: Facebook is almost immune against a user backlash. Campaigns to delete Facebook will never catch on with the masses, because the perceived personal cost of giving up Facebook all together is too high for most people. I consider myself half-way out of there since about a year ago, but even for me, going all the way would be a sacrifice which I am hesitant to make (although I am pondering it).

This means that Facebook can carry on as usual, and it has enough wiggle room for more missteps, data leaks and unethical initiatives and experiments.

The majority of people need Facebook too much. Thus right now, the only risk for Facebook comes either from internal issues that would lead to significant strategic mistakes, or from regulation. But considering people’s reliance on Facebook, who do you think users would side with if regulation threatens to cut them off from whatever Facebook provides them with (see above)?

Facebook is the most powerful organization in the world at this moment, and it has eliminated people’s freedom of choice while technically being able to insist that people can leave if they want. In principle and regardless of how benevolent its leadership might be — this is a scary status quo.

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