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Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook
- PunchTornado 8y agoI exited facebook too. Unfortunately, I started using Instagram instead.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- edshiro 8y agoSame thing. At least I know that Instagram is mostly all fake and ego-inflating, and I am totally fine with that. Plus I have much stricter controls on Instagram and only allow a few people to see my photos and videos.
- tomhoward 8y agoAs this paragraph reveals, the title is predictably overblown: > "Overall, 26 percent of survey respondents say they deleted the app, while 42 percent have "taken a break" for several weeks or more, and 54 percent have adjusted their privacy settings."
- HappyRobot 8y agoThe article could be clearer, but 26% might be out of all age groups. 44% is only the people in the 18-29 age range. I would be curious to see additional breakdowns. Sure 26% deleted the app, but are they still using messenger? How many are using a web version of Facebook or have stopped using the platform entirely?
- EZ-E 8y agoImagine if Facebook didn't buy Instagram. They must have seen this coming.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- aswanson 8y agoYeah, you have to give it to Mark Z for his prescience on that one.
- yellow_postit 8y agoAnd a flag to regulators for not blocking or at least more heavily investigating that acquisition
- aswanson 8y agoI dont know if they would have had anything to be wary of. Instagram was much smaller then and even tech savvy folk like us HN folk didn't think much of it at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840
- sjg007 8y agoYep.. the instagram guys sold to early.. Well that being said maybe Facebook would have developed an instagram killer but the separate entity sure helps.
- tomhoward 8y agoI wonder how many people who have "deleted the app" do what my SO does and keep using it daily via their phone's web browser whilst still telling people "Yeah I've totally deleted Facebook from my phone".
- sparkling 8y agoI only use the mobile browser version because the app is laggy and forces you to install their shitty dedicated messenger app just to read messages. At least thats how it was 1,5yrs ago or so, haven't tried it since then again.
- pixl97 8y agoYour web browser is a lot less likely to grab your recent calls and GPS location.
- ashelmire 8y agoIt's a step that reduces privacy invasion, makes use less convenient, and keeps you from getting alerts. A step in the right direction.
- beat 8y agoWhen I deleted FB from my phone, it was a solid statement of "I will not use FB on my phone". I do still use Messenger, because it's primary contact mechanism anymore for so many people, but I don't read the feed on my phone, period.
- sparkling 8y agoAs a shareholder: not too worried about this. Instagram and WhatsApp have plenty of room for growth that can compensate for FB users leaving. A few weeks ago, WhatsApp released its official API[0] and at least here in Europe i have seen many companies starting to utilize it. For example airlines, sending WhatsApp messages keeping you updated on the status of your flight, much more convenient than installing a extra app for every airline. Lot of potential there. [0] usable via third party providers, for example Twilio
- heavenlyhash 8y agoI find this kind of amusing. I suspect the adoption of this varies by area/country based on how, ahem, well, poorly basic SMS is implemented and priced in that area. For example I notice that when in Germany, Whatsapp adoption is quite high, because SMS rates are absolutely ridiculous. Other countries... less so. I still get SMS (and email, but SMS frankly still pushes more reliably than data based systems) notifications for my airlines, and that also certainly qualifies as Not An Extra App :)
- nradov 8y agoSMS will always be more reliable than data service because SMS runs over the GSM signalling side channel.
- Rjevski 8y agoWhich is irrelevant when GSM is going away and additionally Wi-Fi being more and more common.
- heavenlyhash 8y agoSure. Aaaand last airport I flew through had a wifi signup which required your phone number. To send you an SMS. With a code for the wifi. So uh... I'll continue to take my SMS notifications (and emails, which also have nice well-known offline sync properties...) over any more modern appy things, please and thank you.
- gexla 8y agoThere could be a lot of story lines here. I go for web over apps as much as possible. Less resource hogging. More control over things like notifications. I just don't have a burning need to check my FB notifications. But I'll still check FB a couple times a day. No need for the app, but I haven't deleted my FB account either. I also prefer the stripped down web version which is "free" on mobile connections in places like the Philippines. No images, no video, just plain text in an ugly interface. Perfect.
- nradov 8y agoFor most people image sharing is the primary Facebook use case. Other social networks and messaging apps dominate plain text sharing.
- gexla 8y agoFor me, it depends not on what the masses are doing, but what group I want to keep in contact with. Family, friends, locals, hobbyists, etc might all be at different locations on different platforms. For example, one of the communities I'm most active with uses an old PHP script.
- acct1771 8y agoThere's nothing ugly about it. It's real.
- wousser 8y agoNo surprise. A 250MB app that needs updates every week, can’t show your friends most recent updates on a chronological timeline, doesn’t let you chat with tour friends, analyzes everything within the app including maybe facial emotions, and keeps sending useless notifications to make you open the app; no wonder people are fed up and delete it.
- dplgk 8y agoAlso eating battery, always wanting to do stuff in the background, showing ads that make it seems like it's listening to your conversations.
- pjmlp 8y agoYeah, and how many of those are on Instagram and WhatsApp?
- pkilgore 8y agoStrangely, the front page is linking a better summary than the single item view: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/facebook-exodus-44-percent-of-americans-age-18-29-have-deleted-app.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/facebook-exodus-44-percent-o... Especially insofar as it includes this topline note: > The survey does not measure usage of Facebook's Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, all of which remain popular overseas, and does not measure Facebook's continuing growth overseas.
- josefresco 8y ago"The new survey finds that around one-in-ten Facebook users (9%) have downloaded the personal data about them available on Facebook. But despite their relatively small size as a share of the Facebook population, these users are highly privacy-conscious." 9% of a huge number is... a huge number.
- ashelmire 8y agoOver 2B user base means 200 million have downloaded their data. That's a large nation's worth of concerned people.
- raffael-vogler 8y agoMaybe that includes Cambridge Analytica's requests for personal data ... would explain why the number is so high.
- larrik 8y agoAnd yet, my wife and I downloaded our personal data from Facebook for reasons very different than privacy (legal evidence stuff), so that's a broad brush.
- kaffeemitsahne 8y agoI and several others I know just downloaded it for fun.
- phonebucket 8y agoWhat is the reinstall rate? Are historicals higher or lower? What are typical app delete rates for other apps? So many bits of missing information that prevent these stats from actually providing meaningful insight.
- snarfy 8y agoI was noticing this morning that their "I don't want to see this" feature seems to be stored client side. For a second while the page is loading I'll see an article that immediately poofs away because the client side js reads the setting and hides the article. Every single time this morning that I refreshed the page, I saw a few articles poof away. They really want me to see the tabloid crap I marked as don't want to see.
- quaristice 8y agoI often have this same experience. I find the experience of having the article "taken away" to be very irritating.
- rbinv 8y agoI think it's doubtful that Facebook wouldn't store that information server-side (you know, to achieve even better ad targeting). Maybe it's both, though.
- ardy42 8y agoI think the Facebook "I don't want to see this" data is stored server-side, but the code that actually hides posts runs as client-side javascript. That would explain why the client spins so much loading/hiding posts you've hidden, and why the hidden-ness is persistent across browsers. I've gotten the impression from several accounts that, despite their prestige, Facebook's application code is often unbelievably janky, and this just confirms that.
- gabriel34 8y agomore likely the JS that hides the content or the JSON containing the hide filter are loaded/run/processed after the content Facebook could be processing this client side instead of serving the content already filtered so you could un-hide content almost instantly. Either that or ease of development.
- josefresco 8y ago"Deleting the app" from your mobile is like an overweight person hiding the cookies or a cigarette smoker hiding their cigarettes - it's at least a conscious decision to make better choices, however everyone knows it won't work until you actually stop the behavior.
- ardy42 8y ago> "Deleting the app" from your mobile is like an overweight person hiding the cookies or a cigarette smoker hiding their cigarettes - it's at least a conscious decision to make better choices, however everyone knows it won't work until you actually stop the behavior. I disagree. A cookie jar doesn't encourage you to make bad choices by nagging you to eat another cookie if you haven't had one in while. Facebook will try to grab your attention any way it can to get you to make the bad choice to open up their app another time. A practical and effective way to escape those attempts is to delete their software from your devices.
- josefresco 8y agoA practical and effective way to escape those attempts is to delete <strike>their software from your devices</strike> your account. There's also an argument to be made, that cookie makers want you to keep eating cookies, just like Facebook wants you to keep "sharing". Facebook has an advantage (living on a device you obsess over), however those cookies you hid on top of your refrigerator ... are they whispering to me?
- ardy42 8y ago> A practical and effective way to escape those attempts is to delete <strike>their software from your devices</strike> your account. That is another way to do it, but it might not fit many people's lifestyles as well intermediate measures like deleting the app. Facebook is a communication channel, just like email and the telephone, and totally deleting your account has definite costs that vary from person to person. I think it's totally fine for people to manage how they make their own tradeoffs, and I know for a fact that the most extreme action is often more than is really required to get resuts. Take myself, for example. I'm quite anti-facebook and hardly ever use their software. But I haven't deleted my account because I have friends and acquaintances who still use it for event planning, and I don't want to be either left out or be a prima donna demands special treatment. I get an email notification when I get an invite, and I only log in to RSVP and check the event info.
- seba_dos1 8y agoI don't think it's about leaving Facebook - it's just that their app is ridiculously bad. Some people I know eagerly switched to FaceSlim after I showed it to them, which is just a Facebook's web interface wrapped in a lightweight app with added notification features.
- ConceptJunkie 8y agoI use Facebook pretty regularly, but have never installed the app on my phone or tablet because of all the horrible things I've heard about it.
- dang 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17919811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17919811
- throwawaymanbot 8y agoYou can download your data.. but what use is it to you? They still keep a copy of everything. This is like someone giving you a copy of the surveillance tape that facebook still keeps on you.
- BrandoElFollito 8y agoI cannot remove it on my Samsung S9+ phone, just "disable"