As Cambridge Analytica news broke through, outraging millions of people and churning #deleteFacebook campaign. Personally, there’s a lot to dislike about what happened there. But, I am not here to talk about that.
I don’t know why in our dev community people are talking about the doom of React and React Native if Facebook dies. Some are even leveraging this opportunity to say “Hey! Don’t use React native. It will die now with Facebook”.
Let’s consider that even if 1% of people even deleted their Facebook accounts, #deleteFacebook would be a huge campaign. Set that aside, check out this talk from Orta. Orta says that they will continue to support React native even if Facebook drops it. Given everything, it is highly unlikely that Facebook would go down, and behemoths of Silicon Valley like Airbnb and Dropbox would still fund/contribute towards evolution and development of React native in one way or another.
Just some thoughts on the status quo and the BS that spreads around :)
Top comments (8)
It’ll continue, as much as no one wants to admit, this story will blow over shortly, more pressing news will take over, and all those deleted accounts will rejoin the social media giant.
A bit off topic but helps build context of addition to social media:
The giant, whose very capable of manipulating our brains, we have something called dopamine in our brain - it’s what makes us addicted to things.
Dopamine can make us feel like we’re on top of the world - we smoke? Dopamine. We drink? Dopamine. We use social media? Dopamine.
Yes, dopamine is caused as well by social media - imagine you’ve just posted a photo of yourself, and you get a ton of likes instantly.... sweet dopamine! then 20 minutes later you don’t have any more likes coming in... you immediately think the negative, “am I ugly? is it my shirt? ugh my hair is so terrible in that!” - yes, dopamine gives us this high but it comes with a low. That balance causes this addiction and need to strive for more attention - so we turn to the social media giants for that dopamine.
So, all this said, we’re all going back to Facebook once we get tired of not having the dopamine produced as often as a like- yes we still get dopamine from texts, instagram - you name it - but we have an addiction and that addiction is social media. Yes, including Facebook.
Facebook screwed up, but let’s face it - all giants you trust your data and personal life’s are going to sell your information - sorry, but it’s a eat or be eaten world. Turning to decentralized platforms isn’t going to help you either when it comes to social media, you’re bindlessly trusting someone or something with your data. The only person you can trust with your data is yourself, but there are even risks in that.
All being said, even if you deleted your Facebook, they’ve still sold your data already and someone’s got a copy somewhere.
I agree. It's also a pretty diversified company at this point. Many probably don't even think of Instagram, Whatsapp etc. as all part of Facebook. Facebook's core product could whither away and they'd be fine.
I am pretty firmly anti-Facebook at this point. I dislike pretty much everything they do for the world and don't feel like they have many redeeming qualities. But even in the most devastating outcomes of bad publicity I think these libraries are safe—or as safe as anything is in a turbulent world with no guarantees.
Social media when regulated is appropriate, but self regulation that is. The libraries Facebook has produced will be maintained even if they drop them as they’re fairly popular libraries, however this is a non-issue as even though facebooks lost billions, give it a month they’ll have it all back and then some
@michael I second your opinion on this "dopamine" thing. According to a Crimson (Harvard's newspaper) article, Mark majored in Computer Science and Psychology. (He was psychology major). This also complements the fact that as we now know how successful he is in making the youth the slaves of Facebook and WhatsApp.
OP was talking about RN
I’m aware, I elaborated off topic onto other things at the same time
React and React Native are both MIT licensed (at last) and the ecosystem is massive and growing.
Even if Facebook would close shop tomorrow (science fiction :D) or stop supporting them I think the projects would be fine :-)
I froze (haven't deleted it and I still use Messenger) my Facebook account before the Cambridge Analytica news broke. Am I an early adopter :D ?
I don't think anything will happen to React native. I was at a conf last weekend, saw 3 millionaires support RN even if Fb goes down.
Neva gonna happen!