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Facebook lost a million users in the US and Canada last quarter
- Oras 9y agoIt would be interesting to know the age group of those 1 million and why did they leave. I left Facebook 6 years ago and its a never come back! The time I used to browse Facebook was replaced by reading books, articles or even just to do nothing which is still more valuable comparing to wasting time on FB. The only thing that was interesting for me was the feed from tech companies and tech news which now I just use twitter to do so.
- th0br0 9y agoI don't think we know whether this million were genuine users or fake accounts? Original post: https://www.recode.net/2018/1/31/16957122/facebook-daily-active-user-decline-us-canda-q4-earnings-2018 https://www.recode.net/2018/1/31/16957122/facebook-daily-act...
- ogdoad 9y agoThis is awesome, I think I will give it the thumbs up and share it with all my nonconformist friends.
- nofilter 9y agoAs my overall Facebook usage had naturally gone close to "check once per week" in 2017, and do even that because of habit, I decided to delete it entirely from my life as soon as 2018 came around. The only thing that I'm not 100% happy with is that without Facebook you also don't have Messenger, which was the main thing I used to communicate with people. However, I still use Instagram to share Stories and photos and, luckily enough, it has a chat built in as well which works wonders.
- spondyl 9y agoJust so you know, Messenger can be used standalone. It tethers to your phone number, and backs up an account key to Google Drive/(iCloud for iOS?) Functionally, it's the same except you don't have a profile of course. The only missing thing is that messenger.com doesn't support this so your only point of access is mobile.
- nofilter 9y agoAh, did not know that. All tho' I do bet Facebook will do everything they can do clickbait you into making a Facebook account once you already have Messenger as well.
- sofaofthedamned 9y agoDoesn't work with Messenger Lite which requires a full fat FB account.
- nofilter 9y agoMessenger Lite which requires the bloated FB account. Ironic.
- sofaofthedamned 9y agoAgreed, it's crazy. No interest in a FB wall or whatever, just want to chat to my family. Not a chance.
- forgotmypw 9y agoI just made a new account a few months ago so that I can keep up with event listings. I use m.facebook.com with JS disabled, which is tolerable. I have about 300 friends, 98% of them being Indian spammer accounts, whose friend requests I approve indiscriminately, so I have no reason to keep up with my feed. I did not use my real name, obviously. Works great now!
- RandyRanderson 9y agoInstagram is owned by fb - so you're still on fb. Same with Whatsapp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
- nofilter 9y agoOn the company, sure. On the website, no. I didn't delete my Facebook account because I hate the company or something, I just simply didn't use it much anymore.
- mark_l_watson 9y agoI think about doing the same. I limit myself to less than 10 minutes a week on FB, and find that worthwhile to get news of people I have mostly lost contact with and see pictures posted by friends and relatives. Reevaluating time spent on FB has also made me consider time spent on HN, Reddit, and Twitter. Tech social media is fun, sometimes useful, but I try to be mindful of the time I am spending. For me a good substitute is taking classes on Course and edX, read more books, and listening to audio books.
- adventured 9y agoI've taken to checking FB a few times per week, spanning less than maybe ten minutes. It's not quite worthless, it's a notch just above that. I find I can catch up with the posts that are valuable extremely quickly. I abandoned Reddit entirely, in the lead up to the election. I was a daily reader/contributor there for years. It got so disgusting on all sides I couldn't stand to be around it. Politics seemed to invade everything. HN is the only community I still read daily. I credit the fairly strict and consistent moderation here, and the effort to stay very close to its foundational premise.
- mark_l_watson 9y agoOne thing that I like about reddit is being able to choose subreddits to appear on home page. I choose funny pictures of the day and a few tech topics, no politics.
- kumarvvr 9y agoLeft fb about 2 years ago. - Gained a few hours everyday. - Gained a solid amount of battery time on my phone. - Increased my happiness as I dont have to look at all the hyped up, over advertised, 'Look, my life is a bed of roses' posts from everyone. - Better focussed on my own life.
- segmondy 9y agoI didn't leave, I can go weeks without checking it out. I do once in a while and when I do, I spend at most 30 minutes. I rarely post anymore, just see what my friends are up to. I only use it via browser and never installed the mobile app or messenger. My free time, well, I started using twitter...
- splintercell 9y agoI disabled notifications, pretty soon I gained tremendous amount of productivity and barely even remember to check it (whereas earlier I used to check it once every 10 mins or so).
- empath75 9y agoSold my Facebook stock and stopped using it for anything but the messenger app on my phone three months ago.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoI am curious how much of this is PR. They are getting a lot of political pressure.
- lolive 9y agoSwitching from FB to Instagram. What a progress :)
- spodek 9y ago> Why are people quitting Facebook? The rise of fake news, meddling by Russian agencies, and plenty of content in your feed that you don’t remember subscribing to may all be to blame. Those reasons are nice, but I hope the reasons become things like going outside to play tennis or shoot some hoops, cooking dinners from scratch, biking to work, and active things like that. Then, instead of posting pictures about it, to continue to more active things with people you're actually in-person with.
- ravenstine 9y agoThe media seems to have a very different view of how the public used Facebook than what I think reality dictates. Even my most left leaning friends have never told me they were particularly bothered by fake news on Facebook, besides maybe some viral crap posted by their aunt. People are leaving Facebook because it's not that satisfying, and the public has become increasingly aware of this. Pretty much everyone knows that people exaggerate the hell out of their lives and that maintaining an online persona has diminishing returns. It's also just not cool anymore because Facebook is seen as a highly censored platform, and you never know when the algorithm has decided that your post won't "go viral" so many of your friends never see it. Then of course there's seeing the same ads over and over again. But no, it's because people are concerned about Russian meddling and fake news! Hahaha
- scardine 9y agoI left facebook a few years ago when HN became my favorite time-sink. :-)
- pmlnr 9y agoA lot of the HN readers come here to comment "I left FB". Well, good for you. I didn't - if I did so, due to a variety of factors, I'd have lost the option contact a few people. I'm not talking about friends, I'm talking about the option of connection, should it ever be needed, much like a rolodex. I did, however, started using the HTML only version of Facebook ( https://mbasic.facebook.com https://mbasic.facebook.com ). Since you manually have to click the pagination at the bottom, the urge to keep scrolling is extremely low if the first page doesn't offer anything valuable - which is the case most of the times. Some links and articles coming via certain groups are quite useful if you have interest in some niche topic. A decade ago these would have been on small subcult sites, but those days are gone, sadly. Anyway, what I wanted to say: it doesn't matter if you leave FB or not, your time is your time. If you spent hours on FB and the only way for you to leave that behind was to delete you FB account, that's not completely FB's fault. Don't get me wrong though, I hate FB and what it's made of, all the hoarded user data, with their one and only goals of keeping you fixated at the screen, but this doesn't change the fact that while it's simple to manipulate people, getting rid of addictions is usually only a matter of will. It's not different this case either.
- ravitation 9y agoSo, what you're saying is that you came here to comment "I didn't leave FB"?
- geebee 9y agoI use facebook to keep up with events. I follow the feeds of organizations, not individuals (I hide almost all personal feeds). I follow SFJazz, symphony and opera, various music groups, theater companies, a few outdoors/ecology organizations. There are probably other ways to get this, and I'd prefer not to use facebook at all, but facebook provides a decent roundup. This works pretty well for me. I can keep up on interesting things without being subjected to constant political sloganeering.
- konart 9y agoI still can't comprehend how can you spend "two hours everyday" there. What can you possibly do there for two hours? 0_o I have account on all major social nerworks (Fb, VK, Twitter, Reddit), but I rarely even open their pages\apps, except for reddit and some evening twitter. Two hours per week is the max I can possibly think of.