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Comment by ThomPete | Hacker News Reader

I am unconvinced about that.

If it was the case that CA actually was able to do the things the media claimed they didn and affect people like that, FB would be in an even better position to affect people which means FB shares should have risen not fallen.

We do not live in the world created by the media about the capabilities of CA not even close.

But as they say. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. That irrationality is further fueld by the medias attempt to dumb down things IMO.

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I don't think it was about CA capabilities per se, but the privacy blowback which followed.

The issue became mainstream and gave rise to the "Delete Facebook" movement which regular folks as well as celebrities[1] piled onto. It's fair to discuss the faddish nature of the #delete movements, but I don't see any positive angle in it for FB.

It also forced FB to overhaul their platform, most notably applying larger restrictions[2] to the amount of data available via APIs. This wasn't grandstanding, it cut revenue streams for many advertising and data companies. I'm not sure this had a direct effect on FB's revenue, but indirectly it makes FB less attractive as a platform for hyper-targeted advertising. This can eventually lead to a lower ROI on FB ads vs. other channels and thus, lower share of a marketing budget.

[1] https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/will-ferrell-delete-fa...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/facebook-instagram-api-shu...

I don't think I agree.

This wasn't anything new for most people who knew just a little bit about how FB worked for 3rd parties.

What changed was Trump. Had this been Hillary we wouldn't been talking about it at all and I am pretty sure FB wouldn't have been called to the hearing.

So I would say it's mostly a media driven thing but of course don't have any final proof. Just pretty sure it wasn't the privacy part that was the problem but rather Trump.

I think we're talking past each other a bit.

I responded to someone drawing similarities between Cambridge Analytica and Elon Musk's joint toke, claiming both were examples of "stupid media freakouts" which caused a drop in the stock price of their respective companies.

I think those 2 media events are very different from each other and have very different consequences for their respective companies. I might be proven wrong though if Musk is brought to task in front of a senate committee for his pot-smoking ways.

I agree with you that Trump's election may have made it more likely that Cambridge Analytica became a big deal in the public eye. There's more controversy to fuel media frenzy if the person who got elected is seen to have unjustly ascended the throne.

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