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Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app
- kozak 8y ago"Deleted app" is not necessarily a good metric, considering that I prefer to use Facebook on my mobile phone as a web page instead of the app, simply because I like it that way. It's simply a more consistent and less intrusive experience IMO. Facebook is nagging me with Facebook Lite ads because it thinks that I don't have resources on the phone to run the app, but that's not the case at all.
- mikestew 8y ago"Deleted app within the past year", however, is probably about as good as you're going to get. And c'mon, you know as well as I do that the percentage of people who deleted the app (especially "within the last year") simply because they prefer the web version has to be single digit percentages at best. "Yeah, but, I've got special case that I'll generalize to the population..." is not a refutation.
- SpicyLemonZest 8y agoI don't know. I've also deleted the app but continue to use the web version of Facebook. I think a lot of people just don't use Facebook in a way that's consistent with the mobile app experience. I'm also suspicious on principle of statistics which suggest but don't actually show what they're trying to measure. If nearly half of young adults have really stopped using Facebook, surely there's a more direct statistic showing it.
- jpamata 8y agoAnecdotal but same here. I've deleted the app as I didn't like how it takes too much memory (200-500MB) and syncs with the phone's photo gallery. Most of the people I know in my age group (early 20s) have also deleted the app yet still continue to use messenger and the browser version.
- evasote 8y agoI've done the same for a couple years now but it means I don't get those instant notifications, I'm not responding to anything right away. Maybe every day or two I check it for five minutes. That's not leaving the app but it's definitely not the kind of user they're looking for
- rchaud 8y agoI would say yours is the edge case. For US users, when they see an on-screen message saying "There's way more features in the app", they go ahead and download the app, and soon forget they ever even accessed it as a mobile website. FB has deliberately hobbled its mobile site in slow increments over the years to drive the maximum possible number of users to the app.
- thelasthuman 8y agoI stopped using Facebook because of their mobile site sabotage. Switched to the desktop version on my phone for a while, but at one point I stopped and thought "why am I fighting with Facebook to use it the way I want?" And just gave up.
- _Tev 8y agoSeems like a good strategy, focus on (portion of) US users and drive the business to the ground.
- dragonwriter 8y agoSelf-reporting measuring how socially popular respondents think an action is vs. their actual actions is likely a more significant issue (we know this from, e.g., comparisons of actual election results to pre- and post-retirement polls; immediately pre-existing polls tend to be very close to the actual results, post election polls of how people say they voted consistently show a much better result for the declared winner than the actual election results.) Now, we don't know how big of an effect perceived popularity has on other self-reports of past actions, but we have plenty of reason to believe it plays a significant role.
- jseliger 8y agoEven more than that: "A new survey of more..." People, the concept of "revealed preferences" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference) is highly relevant here. What people say in surveys is often garbage, for all kinds of reasons, social desirability bias among them. This article is useless compared to actual measurements of people's phone and time.
- johannes1234321 8y agoIt is a relevant metric since it reduces notifications being sent to you and reduces the information Facebook can gather (no tracking of what else is going on on the hone etc.) It also tells them that the App apparently dosn't give value to users and something has to change on their side (whatever "something" might be, might be reputation or features or overall experience or ...)
- totalZero 8y agoI use Facebook only for its login capabilities and to occasionally send messages to people whose phone numbers I don't have. I have the app currently, but usually I delete it because its notifications are irritating. I fall into the older end of that age range.
- wgerard 8y agoAnecdotal obviously, but I'm surprised at how pervasive the "Facebook listens to your conversations through the app" rumors are, even among the more technically literate. I'm curious how much of an effect that rumor had on this finding.
- holtalanm 8y agono effect for me, personally. my reasons for deleting the app and halting usage of facebook was entirely based on the plethora of toxic/useless content that just made me want to punch most of my friends in the face.
- thelasthuman 8y agoIt's hard for some people to be a portrait of themselves. It's much easier to reflect the world around you. When you're alone on Facebook it's easier to be yourself, and for some it's not a pretty picture.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoI recall someone posting on Reddit: Facebook = Friends and family pissing me off Reddit = Strangers amusing me
- artursapek 8y agoHah that's perfect. I hope reddit never lets themselves ruin that for some ad money.
- Symbiote 8y agoI wouldn't particularly discourage the rumor. The app has enough permissions that when coupled with Facebook's data analytics it amounts to a similar invasion of privacy.
- dymk 8y ago> I wouldn't particularly discourage the rumor. You might as well just admit to encouraging disinformation campaigns against things you don't personally like.
- holtalanm 8y agoi deleted the app months ago, and have only been actually _on_ facebook once since. I found that I didn't miss it in the least.
- iooi 8y agoIt doesn't matter, those same users will use the mobile web version instead. More importantly, Instagram usage has gone way up in that cohort. The title is pure clickbait.
- stephengillie 8y agoThat's the sad truth - this is just reporting the method of use. Other posters in this thread reported uninstalling the app to save phone resources, and instead use Facebook from a browser on their phone.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sct202 8y agoI still use Facebook regularly but I deleted the app and the regular Messenger app because they were using too much RAM on my phone.
- epx 8y agoSame here, but s/RAM/battery/ for me
- CydeWeys 8y agoSame. I deleted Facebook a couple years ago when it was revealed that it was reducing battery life by a double digit percentage even if you never launched the app -- its background processing was that greedy. Anecdotally my phone definitely lasted longer once I deleted it. The mobile web version works for those rare occasions when I need to check it on the go. I'm definitely never installing their app again; I simply don't trust them to prioritize my needs over theirs (even in regards to mobile resources).
- pcurve 8y ago"Pew surveyed more than 3,400 U.S. Facebook users in May and June, and found that a whopping 44 percent of those ages 18 to 29 say they've deleted the app from their phone in the last year. Some of them may have reinstalled it later. Overall, 26 percent of survey respondents say they deleted the app" I think the second sentence is more accurate, but of course, it's not as provocative as 44%.
- icsllaf 8y agoThe second sentence is only referring to the whole population though right? 26% of all participants have deleted the app but 44% of those aged 18 to 26 have deleted it which is dangerous as that is the target demographic for Facebook.
- brobdingnagians 8y agoI realized I was checking facebook a lot each day whenever I had a spare moment, but didn't have anything really interesting happening, and I wanted to engage more with those around me and have more time for down-time thinking. So I deleted the app, knowing that making the threshold higher for checking it would reduce my usage, now I might check facebook once a month on my desktop, and still nothing happening, so it is super brief. My life is better, I feel better, my relationships are better, and I don't miss it at all.
- MattBearman 8y agoThis is exactly how my leaving facebook started. After a few months without the app I logged out on desktop, and then it wasn't long until I deactivated my account. I'd like to delete it entirely but at the moment too many people still use messenger to contact me.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoAnytime I speak with someone on Messenger, I mention my cellphone # and email. Gotta prime that OOB comms pump, otherwise you'll never break free. If only there was a Messenger API to setup an autoresponder with alternate contact info...
- davchana 8y agoAre not there some messenger bot which could do this?
- alexchantavy 8y agoSounds like it's time for Trillian to have a reboot just like Winamp did recently :-)
- sdegutis 8y agoOh man that brings back fond memories of creating Trillian 0.73-0.74 skins! I was just thinking the other day that I should make an app for Mac that lets you skin it via XML in the same way. Away with the conformity of Aqua and Aqua Dark, let creativity reign free!
- TACIXAT 8y agoI deleted my account and recently created a new one to try out selling a product through ads. We'll see if it can deliver commercial value to me. I know a lot of people find social value through chat on there, but it's really lacking in that department for me.
- stephengillie 8y agoThis is about uninstalling the app, not deleting your account.
- microcolonel 8y agoTurns out that few people actually wanted what Facebook has become, and they just needed a small lull in the content pipeline to realize that.
- izzydata 8y agoThe majority of the feed was what looked like irrelevant spam, ads or political arguing. It has essentially no positive value anymore so I deleted my account.
- stephengillie 8y agoThis isn't about deleting your account. It's about uninstalling the app.
- ddebernardy 8y agoI'm not the OP but methinks the two are related. There was a time back in the day when FB gave me updates on what my friends were doing. And then one day - somewhere between 2008, when I stopped using it, and 2013, when I tried it again for a few months, stopped, and only came back 3 or 4 times since - it became mostly memes, cat videos, feel good stuff, what have you. I've yet to bring myself to delete the account, since I get occasional messages I care about and it's convenient to lookup someone's email you've lost. I would if that wasn't the case.
- stephengillie 8y agoThe aged anecdote doesn't cover a typical use case.
- dlivingston 8y agoAgreed. The gameification of FB brings forward a lot of empty content these days.
- enjo 8y agoThere are definitely some set of users that have dropped the app for technical reasons, but are still active Facebook users. I've uninstalled the app, but that's because it was a huge battery drain.
- lostgame 8y agoI feel like the Facebook timeline has just become a dumping ground for rehashed memes, vaguebooking, unchecked 'facts', unfounded opinions, and, worse, blatantly false information that causes people to lash out to their so-called 'friends' when they're presented a different perspective. Not only that, but I've actually experienced first-hand, and witnessed many of my friends experiencing depression and anxiety from the constant scrolling. The 'desire to be seen or heard' factor really plays in to an overall sense of toxicity and negativity that there have actually been a number of psychology studies on. Overall, I find, contrary to say, HN, which I still spend too much time on (but mostly when I'm bored at work, ha), there is no bar of quality on Facebook. It's a cesspool of humanity's worst sides, especially if you consider the privacy violations of the medium itself. In fact, it's actually becoming a faster and faster race to the bottom. (Can we all remember this year of 2018 started with 'Tide Pods'?) Even Reddit has some quality control.
- jason46 8y agoAbout a year ago i listed a car on facebook and craigslist at the same time, and it ended up selling on facebook. I check it a few times a day(does blogging about it count against that) and mostly use it to post pics to family, troll friends. I also started my account about a year ago.
- alex_duf 8y agoDeleted the app last year, then last September asked for all my data, then closed my account. Long gone was the interesting content in my feed, I only had indoctrinated contacts posting either poor quality content or misinformation. I think facebook lost me when they stopped the chronological feed, which is also why I closed my Instagram account.
- bracobama 8y agoWait what... Instagram's feed isn't chronological?
- oe 8y agoThey added a indicator "You’re All Caught Up" when you've seen all new posts on the feed. Of course there can be some posts below the indicator that you haven't seen. Now also Strava is making their feed sorted by some magic with no option to make it chronological :( I can't quite understand this trend.
- alex_duf 8y agoIt's a symptom of the way our industry works. Pick a metric and over optimise it. Say you pick the "time to like a post" metric, then as an employee you're incentivised to put the most click-baitee article at the top. Now if you pick the "number of ads displayed in feed without drop-out" you may have something similar too. Rince and repeat and you end up with the mess we see. Regarding Instagram, I noticed they started to retain posts from the timeline. So they encourage compulsive checking it the app. Open it once : it shows 2 new posts, close it and open it again, 2 more posts, both old by at least a few hours. They just rewarded your brain for checking the app compulsively. Once I noticed that I couldn't unsee it, and I closed my account.
- markmark 8y agoI _think_ strava is just when a user actually posted to srava, it used to be when they did the ride, but you would miss friend's rides if they only update strava the next day. I slightly preferred the old way, but it isn't too bad so far.
- lostgame 8y agoBetween the God-awful performance of the Facebook web site itself (on my 2018 15" MacBook Pro i9/32GB RAM/512 GB SSD, it still manages to make the fans spin. Loud.), and the ludicrous file size of the Facebook app, any developer worth their salt would actually have to wonder if optimization is something Facebook actively ignores. Ever since Facebook unnecessarily divided their application into two, (Facebook and Messenger), I've pretty much sworn off it. But there's one simple reason, beyond the constant privacy concerns, that no single person should consider putting this app on their iOS device. Facebook's iOS app currently sits at a staggering, literally almost unbelievable 316.7MB! Yes, 316.7MB. Almost a third of a GB. What. The. Hell. Messenger is 139.4MB! What on earth QA process do these guys have where they consider this to be even remotely okay on non-storage-expandable devices, especially in the days where we still had 8GB iPhones? On an 8GB iPhone, (which I understand are not in a lot of use at the moment, but still), which ends up having closer to 6-7GB of space, that would mean that Facebook + Messenger alone would take up 1/10th-1/14th of your space. I miss the days when there was a 50MB-100MB limit on applications being downloaded over 3G/LTE/cellular. This was fantastic. Every company I worked for demanded I was able to trim the application size down to under 100MB so that there was a fair chance for everyone to be able to download it. Many of my friends are still on 16GB iPhones and the size alone is the first reason they remove the app. The second reason being the functionality offered does not match the app size. The third reason being the general public is starting to visibly see the lack of value Facebook adds in our lives, and even the toxicity of the addiction of constantly scrolling. You can do almost everything you can do within the Facebook app simply by logging into Facebook on your browser. Protip (source: I am an iOS developer of 8+ years): If you'd like people to use and keep your application on their device that usually has extremely limited storage capacity, or at least non-expandable storage, you'd better ensure the application actually offers a significant value over that of not having the application installed. Messenger's video chat, et cetera, makes it worthwhile. But it's also three times as small as the Facebook app. So, while Facebook's application provides almost no value at more than 300MB, Messenger is able to pack infinitely more functionality into 1/3rd the size. What the hell are these guys doing wrong? Where's QA?
- lambda_lover 8y agoDon't worry: they've been slowly hobbling the mobile site to make the application more and more attractive. iirc you can't even message on the normal (non-basic) mobile site any more: it just shows a splash screen requesting that you download messenger. And of course their site uses screen dimensions and user agents to decide to force you onto mobile even if you request desktop.
- casper345 8y agoDeleted my facebook but forgot how many of my other accounts I used facebook as signing up (another eye opener) So I reactivated my facebook to start migrating my accounts just to use my email as auth. Hopefully soon I can delete my facebook
- sparkzilla 8y agoThe irony is that as Facebook tries to recapture young people by stuffing the app with Stories and other youth-oriented features, it puts off older users like me, who will never, ever use Stories, while still not being cool enough to attract the kids. I think Facebook's decline is great. For too long it has sucked all the life out of the social networking space. Perhaps now we can see some real competition and innovation.
- ummonk 8y agoHow does this compare to how many have installed the Instagram app? Is Facebook as a company net positive or net negative with Americans aged 18-29?
- casper345 8y agoI wonder what the next form of "social media" there will be
- buboard 8y agoWhy is HN so eager to document the downfall of facebook? First, realize that for a large part of its demographics, facebook is the internet, and when they quit they 'll leave the internet altogether (provided that there 's not another new platform that absorbs them). Second, other social media are having far bigger leakages (snapchat) but that doesn't seem to concern anyone.
- lostgame 8y agoBecause Facebook has a particular history of just...being evil, for lack of a better word. I heard about the SnapChat leak, but I seem to hear about privacy invasions from Facebook on a weekly, if not bi-daily basis. Also, it's not necessarily just Facebook HN likes to shit all over. From what I've seen it's Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. They all kind of get their time in HN's 'hate spotlight'. (Oh, and it's not as big of a company, but Magic Leap is up there, too. :P ) There is, if anything, a bias towards favouring Apple products, but it's not nearly as fanboy/fangirl-ish as it is on the rest of the 'net. It seems at least HN'ers, even those who favour Apple, are, for the most part, also willing to admit it's bad practices. And that's a pretty strong claim that Facebook is the internet for a lot of folks. What about YouTube? Google? Wikipedia? (Especially for students?) :/
- yesenadam 8y agothat's a pretty strong claim that Facebook is the internet for a lot of folks It's just reality. There's some deal people in a lot of less-wealthy countries get where they get free FB chat on their phones, but can't see FB pictures, don't have googling/internet etc. It's extremely common in many countries, I know about it because many of my friends around the world have that. Most of the comments on this page seem similarly to ignore/not be aware of what's happening in most of the world. Young people not caring about FB? Is that just in the US or something? I don't know, but in most of the world (Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America at least) people young and old are posting pics of themselves and their friends, commenting on each others pics, chatting, just like they ever did.
- taurath 8y agoFor me its the general sense that Facebook + most mainstream social media has been having a negative effect on society, both in terms of socialization and unethical invasions of privacy. The fact that for a large part of the world that facebook is "the internet" is a rather negative thing in my mind - its a devil's bargain that the US and the west is grappling with, while the benefits are still outweighing the costs for developing areas.
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoI did this. In the following sequence, over a few years, and am now to step 5: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally 5. Log out of Facebook on your desktop. It took me 2 years to go through from step 1 to step 5. It has made me happier and more productive. I still have a Facebook account. But the friction of grabbing my laptop and logging in forces me to consider "is this what I want to do? Or am I thoughtlessly reaching for the crack pipe?"
- pier25 8y agoSame here. Logging out made me stop and realize that I was compulsively opening new Facebook tabs.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cauthon 8y agoI successfully did this ~2 years ago, but I'm still having trouble breaking the same habit with Reddit (and even Hacker News to a lesser extent)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jhabdas 8y agoYou know what to do
- eiaoa 8y agoOne extra step you can do (somewhere between 2 and 3) is change your profile pic and your cover photo to messages advertising your intent to disengage from Facebook. That serves two functions: 1) it lets people who want to reach you know they shouldn't use Facebook to do so, and 2) it makes the withdraw visible and social, which may encourage others to follow.
- jvagner 8y agoI don't have Facebook or Messenger on my phone... but it was pretty easy because the people I'm friends with on Facebook almost invariably never post. There's a really small group of people who "Like" my post, and sometimes I like theirs, but the actual discussions, or interactions about substantive matters, are almost dead in my crowd. So, it's quiet, and almost unnecessary, and easy enough to live with by checking in periodically. Mostly people hiking and running on weekends, or posting a thing about their kid, get a bit of social love... But really, among me and my 40somethings, almost no actual activity. And so, if the 20somethings don't use it a whole lot either, what's Facebooks future?
- chiefalchemist 8y ago> "Pew surveyed more than 3,400 U.S. Facebook users in May and June, and found that a whopping 44 percent of those ages 18 to 29 say they've deleted the app from their phone in the last year." That feels like a fairly small sample. Then from that to look at some subset (i.e., 18 to 29) feels even more suspect. Also, best I can tell, this survey was self-reported. This is worthy of at-the-bar discussion, but let's not take it too seriously otherwise; at least not until the data is better.
- thomasfromcdnjs 8y agoThis comment was hard to find... and also downvoted. It is a super small sample, they do not even allude to what percentage of those votes were in the 18 - 29 category. The provided pdf from the original Pewresearch article seems pretty bare -> http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/1/2018/09/FT_18.09.05_FacebookPrivacy_MethodologyTopline.pdf http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/1/201... I see this happen quite regularly on Hacker News, a bit strange for a rational/fact based community to behave. Tweeted the researched -> https://twitter.com/ajaxdavis/status/1057046359218388992 https://twitter.com/ajaxdavis/status/1057046359218388992
- chiefalchemist 8y agoI see the same. Maybe because it's stating the obvious? That said, when you read the comments it's as if so often the obvious has been ignored. Such is the effects of confirmation bias?
- anderspitman 8y agoIt was the notifications that were the last straw for me. If I can't figure out how to 100% disable your notifications in 5 minutes, your app is gone. I'm sure it's possible but apparently as a software engineer I'm not smart enough.
- kingnothing 8y agoYou can easily do that at the OS level.
- anderspitman 8y agoI reiterate: if it's not obvious within 5 minutes of poking around the app settings, I'm uninstalling the app. If they cared about user autonomy they would have a note in the app settings explaining how to do what you suggest at the OS level.
- lostgame 8y agoiOS: Settings -> Notifications Android: Settings -> App Notifications
- anderspitman 8y agoI'm on Android. I have no doubt something like this is possible there as well, but again if the app doesn't explain to me how to do this then it's obvious they have no respect for my agency and I'm uninstalling their crap.
- Symbiote 8y agoI think you can long-press on a notification (from any app) to open the OS settings on that app's notifications.
- samfisher83 8y agoThey are just going from FB to Instagram: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/22/teens-abandoning-facebook-still-flocking-to-instagram.html?recirc=taboolainternal https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/22/teens-abandoning-facebook-st... FB can shift its model to becoming like priceline. Just try to buy up all the social networks. For example most travel site you probably use are owned by priceline. The same way Facebook could maybe buy up other social networks.
- adtac 8y agoWouldn't that be a case of abusing their market position to anti-competitively protect their market share? The same thing Microsoft was sued for?
- roywiggins 8y agoIt's completely legal to be a monopoly by buying every competitor out fair and square.
- Rjevski 8y agoI think this shouldn't be legal.
- eiaoa 8y ago> It's completely legal to be a monopoly by buying every competitor out fair and square. Pretty sure it's not in the US, or at least can be halted by the disapproval of antitrust regulators. For example: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/staples-office-depot-merger-killed-by-antitrust-claims-again-2016-05-10 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/staples-office-depot-merge...
- smhenderson 8y agoat least can be halted by the disapproval of antitrust regulators. That's the key though, they can continue to try until someone sits up and takes notice. Depending on the regulatory climate at any given time a company will have varying degrees of success with this before they are stopped outright before buying any more competition. Either that or they suddenly start abusing their positions such that people/other companies complain enough for regulators to take notice of them.
- umvi 8y agoI deleted Facebook and got Messenger Lite, which gives me 99% of the functionality with 0% of the distraction and bloat.
- collyw 8y agoGod, I forgot about the full fat messenger. The most annoying thing I have ever had on my phone.
- arbol 8y agoAfter 13 years I recently deleted my entire account. I have more time and I have less admin. I will miss messages from old acquaintances but that's ok.
- ry_ry 8y agoIs an interesting one, assuming they struggle to get new users on the main platform. FB have a lot of hope riding on Marketplaces, but it's viability is entirely down to FB being so ubiquitous. Product suggestion (graph is still their core business, obviously), and being able cross promote their products to a captive audience. They basically can't pivot because everything they want to do relies on finding ways to leverage the data they generate. Can't figure out where they're heading in the longer term tbh. Would fully expect IG Marketplaces to follow in the next couple of years.
- Raphmedia 8y agoDeleted the app but still using the browser to view my feed. Nobody likes the aggressive notifications and bad battery usage that comes with the app.
- LeonM 8y agoThis is the exact reason I deleted the app about 3 years ago, haven't looked back since. When they made their super aggressive push for the messenger app and disabled message support on the regular FB app, there was no reason to keep the FB app around. I never installed the FB messenger app though, it required access to just about everything on my phone so I never dared installing it. Then they disabled the messenger feature on the mobile version of their website, and everybody stopped using FB messenger altogether. Problem solved.
- cma 8y agoThey don't give any real control of notifications (you can do some broad stuff, but they try to spam you with irrelevant notifications at every opportunity), and they burn up battery. I switched to just checking it via the browser for those reasons.
- cm2012 8y agoThat's why Facebook's quarterly number of daily users has dropped precipitously from 181 million daily users to ... 181 million daily users. Facebook's daily user numbers havn't dropped at all. So either they're moving to IG, or people say a lot of things in surveys. EDIT: Meant to specify, the numbers in this comment are US only.
- rtkwe 8y agoNote this is among American users. With Facebook moving into other markets (see East Asia where their introduction and use might have helped kick off the crisis in Myanmar) drops in the US could easily be covered up by increase elsewhere.
- cm2012 8y agoThe numbers I posted are US only, FB is still growing 30%+ in daily international users YoY.
- felipemnoa 8y ago>>181 million daily users to ... 181 million daily users. My feeling is that if(or when) things go bad for facebook it will happen rather precipitously. Like a bubble popping. i.e. Like the real estate implosion of 2008.
- robut_98765 8y agoI got rid of mine a couple months ago. It just felt like clutter that I do not need in my life.
- jonathankoren 8y agoThe real question is what this really means for their bottom line. Young people not joining / leaving Facebook was predicted a decade ago. (“Who wants to join a social network with your mom?”, was the question.) But they also own what appears to be the biggest alternative platform, Instagram. On top of this, they’re still growing in APAC and other regions where they haven’t yet reached saturation (ie NA and Europe) Sure FB is morphing, but it’s not clear that Facebook Corp hasn’t set itself up a tidy bulwark against the decline of Facebook.com in NA & Europe. They might have. If they have, then they’ll continue to make money just fine.
- hardlianotion 8y agoThis article seems like part of a self-reinforcingfeedback loop.
- Nikaoto 8y agoThere's just no way I could keep myself up to date with local events without Facebook. I live in a post-soviet country so Snapchat and Instagram are considered pretty niche here so every social event is always documented on Facebook. I also hold a monthly gamedev meetup, which would be utterly impossible without Facebook. The attendance has grown from 5 to 30 people in a few months and is now helping jump start the game development scene in the country (not because of my meetup). Despite this, I have a deep hatred towards the platform and can't stand how people around me get locked into feedback loops of endless scrolling. I uninstalled the app on my phone a year ago, kept messenger. Also, I haven't seen the news feed in more than 2 years, after installing a plugin that blocks it. The productivity gains were and still are immeasurable. I see the platform as a versatile and useful tool to help connect with others and I hope that Facebook will try to improve it and remove some of its ethically questionable features, but it's still evil. It's a necessary evil.
- Zelphyr 8y agoIt is evil but it's really not as necessary as you think. I'm known to ALL of my friends and ALL of my family as someone who will not ever be on Facebook. You know what they do? They call me. Or text me. Or email me. And I never miss out on events. Even people I rarely interact with know how to, and do reach me outside of Facebook. People make such a big deal out of how impossible their social lives would be without Facebook but never actually try it. I honestly don't get it.
- lostgame 8y agoI think groups/meetups/business owners/musicians, et cetera have a very different use case than yourself.
- Aelius 8y agoSame, however in my experience people like us will be left out of the loop when there are last minute changes to the event. Just last week I nearly missed a weekly public activity: the venue changed last minute and they only posted about that on Facebook. If a friend hadn't told me, I'd have gone to the usual place. I have an amusing anecdote about being the one friend without Facebook. Someone told me about a birthday party- they told me where it was and what time to be there. They did not tell me that our group was not actually invited and our arrival would be a surprise. The rest of the group was half an hour late. I was not. They all wanted to arrive together and were delayed, but no one filled me in on the new time. And that's the story about how I awkwardly attended a party for 30min where I knew no one but the birthday woman and it was obvious to everyone that I was not actually invited. All was well once my friends arrived. Still, what a nightmare that was.
- negamax 8y agoI am only using it for messenger and events. There’s still a strong pull towards Facebook if you have friends on it
- jonthepirate 8y agoI would like to wholesale get it off my phone but I find that other apps require fb login and so I have to reinstall it... I really do not want it on my phone and I also reject their recruiter inquiries every other month too. Every once in a while I get an alert about a birthday for someone I met once when I was in college 20 years ago... one day I'll figure out how to shut all of that off it's really annoying.
- jhabdas 8y agoAnd not a moment too soon.
- quadcore 8y agoA new survey of more than 3,400 U.S. Facebook users finds that 44 percent of users ages 18 to 29 have deleted the app from their phones in the past year. Overall, 26 percent have deleted the app, while 42 percent have taken a break of several weeks or more. Something's off. I don't know. How many people are we talking about? 80 millions? In the US alone? Really? We need more source here.
- dlivingston 8y agoThis also, by no means, spells 'the end' of FB. They allude to as much in the article, but personally I've deleted / reinstalled FB multiple times this year (along with Snap and Insta), as an effort to decouple myself from the digital dopamine IVF. 'A new survey finds XX% of users aged _ to _ have rode their bike to work instead of driving this past year' does not mean that people are giving up their car.
- universenz 8y agoI deleted the app over a year ago as well. Best move ever. I replaced it with a shortcut on the home screen to the mobile version of the Facebook website in Safari. I use the AdGuard plugin on iOS to remove the primary reason I was getting sick of the Facebook iOS app - the FORCED "Stories" banner at the top of the news feed. Not only is the newsfeed much lighter and cleaner on mobile.. but ads are blocked, notifications are "opt-in" (the shortcut on the home screen doesn't show notifications), analytics are probably less detailed, and I don't have to deal with that shitty stories bar taking up the first quarter of my screen every time I open the Newsfeed.
- YPCrumble 8y agoDeleting Facebook for me was identical to Snapchat except the timer was set to ten years rather than ten seconds.
- zby 8y agoI would but I cannot delete it from my phone :( I still use it on my desktop.
- 0xCMP 8y agoThere are too many apps causing too many dopamine hits. How is anyone supposed to do the meaningful work or gain the appropriate skills in the supposedly AI/ML dominated future without doing deep work away from these things? Everyone deletes these apps and turns their phones to gray scale so they can focus. Speaking of focus, one thing I want to focus less on is the continual security/privacy nightmare of using Facebook to post content. Either I want to know 100% it's public (Twitter/Instagram/Blogs) or it's essentially[0] 100% private and hopefully short lived (private insta, snapchat). [0]: Obviously not PGP private and etc. But from a practical perspective. On Facebook you can do graph searches to identify someone based on a few pieces of data. On snapchat you have to already know their username and be added to see anything on their story or in messages to you. etc.
- soared 8y agoWhat? Are saying the existence of apps makes it impossible to study/do work? This makes no sense. You could make the same (flawed) claim about tv, books, newspapers, sports, friends, etc.
- 0xCMP 8y agoIf you can't concentrate because of these apps you can't do work. Yes, it happens to me and I've seen it happen to others. The fact is that the internet and other tech has likely made everyone, but particularly those who grew up with technology, more susceptible to ADD/ADHD like symptoms. The key with things like Facebook, which makes them different, is not that it takes you away as much as they are designed to trigger dopamine levels in ways TV, books, etc that you mentioned never could. Constantly and at a very high rate. You can't be thanked 100x times by friends... unless you have a super popular post with comments and reactions and now you can. You can't read 10-20 sensational articles back to back on a newspaper like you can on an endlessly scrolling page or even watching videos on Facebook ( I have ended up losing hours on this before). There are fundamental differences which let them do what previous mediums or activities could do but in a way which our brains are simply not equipped to deal with without intervention. It's similar to refined sugar or highly refined anything works. By itself it isn't bad except it's addictive and often leads you astray from your self-set goals. So, in fact, it makes total sense that people would realize this and increasingly control or remove it from their lives. And more importantly that they'd focus on using only a few of them not every single app there is. Which means two things: 1) people are wary of being sucked in like this and 2) they are likely not willing to leave an app/network where they already spend their time.
- burtonator 8y agoWhat we need are VIABLE solutions to social platforms... While people are deleting Facebook they're NOT deleting Instagram. Additionally, we're still vulnerable to a lot of the same attacks that impacted us in the 2016 election. These networks still hold your private connection graph, know what you're reading, can target you precisely with ads, etc. I'm building an app named Polar which is an offline-first document management system for people that read large numbers of PDFs and technical documentation. https://getpolarized.io/ https://getpolarized.io/ I want to integrate social support and while I will probably support posting to Twitter + Facebook for people who want to I also want to work on building out some sort of distributed IPFS and / or filecoin style storage and collaboration. Unfortunately, I think the space is still a big early for this. Another approach could be to just build a security protocol using group encryption. You could see your public data by others and anything that was shared socially but NO ONE ELSE could see your social data. Right now the problem is that Facebook can see ALL your private and semi-private data and that's INSANELY dangerous.
- gibsonf1 8y agoYou could make your app Solid compliant - I would love a good social network UI on top of Solid, especially if it could import all the FB data into your Solid repository. https://solid.mit.edu/ https://solid.mit.edu/
- celkam 8y agoI've been thinking about this a bit, and my main concern about SOLID powering a social network is that it would thrash Pods from users with thousands of friends requesting thousands of documents on the same pod every x seconds, which might work for commercial servers but end up being a DDOS on smaller Pods. I guess I'm worried about the power need to do this at scale, and that we'll end up with something analogous to bitcoin mining pools where there's few practical options for the average user.
- gibsonf1 8y agoIt's a good point, simply solved by people with a bunch of friends needing a reliable POD. I think the point of Solid is that you pay for service, even if it's a small fee. So if you have huge social needs, you might have to pay a bit more for a reliable POD.
- partiallypro 8y agoI use Facebook way less than I used to...but I use Instagram way way more than I used to. So, I'm not sure it's all doom and gloom for Facebook as a company.
- jamesrcole 8y agoYou obviously didn't read the article. "The survey measures only the core Facebook app, not Facebook-owned Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, all of which remain popular and offer a lot of room for revenue growth."
- partiallypro 8y agoI obviously was not commenting on the article's content directly but on the doom and gloom scenario that others have, regarding the fall of Facebook (as a company.) Hence I said "as a company" in my original post.
- surfmike 8y agoI know the study didn't cover it but would be interesting to measure the change in Instagram usage at same time. Anecdotally a lot of people I know have become active on Instagram and stopped posting to FB.
- bepotts 8y agoAnother reason why all the talk of antitrust against Facebook is ridiculous. Instagram will be in a similar position a couple years from now too.
- anticensor 8y agoFacebook is half-open (Twitter and G+ are similar) aka fenced yard. Instagram is fully walled garden. You cannot compete a fully closed network, because each of them are incomparable. You could compare fenced yards by telescoping them.
- euagrus 8y agoGood job States, I wonder if you will be smart enough to go with the google. It is the sam sh*t but in a different camouflage. IT guys, do you dare (or you are vendor locked in - the votes/downvotes will prove it)? A reason I had: I will not support company that is having so much questionable practices as google has. Tasks, done in two years: - flashed android with Lineage + Microg (now it is much easyer - https://lineage.microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/ - no more google spyware on my phone - redirected all my web traffic (all devices) trough ssh tunnel to home server where http://www.squid-cache.org/ http://www.squid-cache.org/ is cleaning my web traffic from trackers, including caching cdns forever - set up my own "cloud" (https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/) to sync files, contacts and calendars - set up my own mail server (postfix, dovecot) - deleted my google account(s) - banned all known google domains using hosts files on all devices - removed google chrome from all devices - stopped using google, replaced by duckduckgo - I no longer get so many results, but they are relevant instead of paid ads. I am googless. And seeing sharp ;) The hardest thing was to stop typing google into address bar. And stopped using "I googled...". Everything else was simple.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jjuhl 8y agoGood for them. The sooner Facebook goes the way of the Dodo the better.
- kesor 8y agoThe app itself is pretty shitty, takes a ton of space on the phone and performance is meh. Also a good reason to delete the app, something which has nothing to do with being or not being a user of Facebook.
- coldtea 8y agoPolls exodus: I seriously don't believe those stats.
- resters 8y agoThese are the younger generation of Facebook's (former) users, and the main reason they have deleted the app is because of Facebook's insistence on using short-term revenue maximizing dark patterns.
- IronWolve 8y agoI stopped playing facebook games when they tried to get me to log in every hour, to water or take care of someone's farm. Sorry, I dont need another Job... Then the client started spying on me, so I switched to the web mobile version. Then they removed chat from that. Oh well, I can text people instead. I'm not playing their game, behaving like they want me too, they want mindless drones, f' them. I'm very close to deleting my account, but my daughter posts the grandkids pics, so I'm stuck for now. They want a race to the bottom, they are doing a good job with their damn authoritarian forceful methods. Already filtering what I view, its really worthless now.
- stokednz 8y agoI use the DuckDuckGo browser for Facebook messaging on the mobile site.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoThe numbers may not show up very well as people still use FB as 'single sign on' type thing. What we really need is more specificity in the data to know what's going on. Also - Instagram is exploding and they are tightly intertwined.
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoI have difficulty reconciling news like this against Facebook's stock price. Yes, they're growing in the rest of the world still, but America has the number one large scale source of highly monetizable advertising targets. The survey was carried out on the 5th of September when Facebook was at $167, it's now at $141 and that's with an avalanche of other recent issues to pile onto this. Was this already somehow priced in, or what?
- o0-0o 8y agoSocial media is named wrong. It should be called antisocial media.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rednerrus 8y agoThe same thing that makes holiday dinners a chore, having to endure all of your friends and relatives uninformed opinions, is now making Facebook a chore.
- chronid 8y agoThat was actually the reason I used it for example. There was a lot of discussion about political topics, even with uninformed people. I liked that - it was sometimes wasted effort, but it was partly done for the audience, to prevent people spreading bullshit everywhere. Then Facebook stopped showing me those posts in the feed, and my "engagement" went rapidly to 0. I suspect they found out that people seeing only opinions similar to theirs spend more time in-app...
- tlow 8y agoAre social networks inherently evil? Is it possible some sort of B-Corp or Foundation could run an ethical social networking product that put respecting and serving its users as a first principle? Could an offering out-compete today's products and gain significant user-ship? Is a post-Facebook world better?
- lostgame 8y ago>> Is a post-Facebook world better? Only when the alternative follows some of the principles you stated. Edit: Oh, also, if it means we see less zombie-scrolling.
- kopo 8y agoAll they have to do is hide the like count. And humanity can return to normal human communication without a count influencing every behaviour and thought. They can still use the counts behind the scenes to surface popular content and whatever else they do with it.
- thinelvis 8y agoNever had Facebook, never will. Have fun, all.
- izzydata 8y agoA man truly ahead of his time.
- rb808 8y agoI still use the app but lots of people that used to post have stopped so isn't as interesting any more. Its a bit sad as I have friends and relatives all over the world I never see and FB was great to keep track of them all.
- amoitnga 8y agoHaving companies that worth 1 trln isn't ideal. I don't mind tech giants breaking down into smaller, still huge though, companies. Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon... Why the hell do they need to do (own) everything? Too much power.
- irrational 8y agoI have teenagers and college-age kids and I'm not surprised in the least. They openly consider Facebook to be a platform for old people. They seem to have moved to more of a distributed social media system. That is, they don't seem to have a central place where they communicate with friends. They seem to move between texts, facetime, tumblr, instagram, phone calls (!), etc. in a fluid manner. Anything except for Facebook (which has a negative stigma these days). They don't seem to be tied down to any one platform anymore.
- izzydata 8y agoBeing "brand loyal" in this regard doesn't make a lot of sense anyway. It's just a tool. You use whatever gets the job done at the moment.
- scarface74 8y agoI’ve noticed that most young people don’t use Facebook until they graduate from college, become an adult and move away from home and want to keep in touch with people. Why use Facebook when your friendship circle is people you see every day?
- irrational 8y agoMaybe, but at least my college-age kids have friends that are all over the country (including back here in their home state) and they don't use Facebook to keep in touch with them.
- derefr 8y agoI don't think there's any sort of "stigma." There's just the fact that, since "old people" are on Facebook—and that likely includes your parents and other relatives—they all expect you to add them as a Facebook friend. At which point you won't be able to be yourself on Facebook any more, because they can observe any of your "broadcast" activity. The nice thing about the other platforms isn't that they don't have "old people" on them. It's specifically that your parents and relatives won't even think to add you on, say, Snapchat. Also note that the apps that teens mostly do interact with parents through now, consist mostly of group-chat apps like Messenger or WeChat, where there is an explicit separation of social contexts (the groups you're chatting with), such that you don't need to worry about your relatives seeing anything as long as you don't put it in your family group.
- reaperducer 8y agoPublished 12:18 PM ET Wed, 5 Sept 2018 Updated 2:45 PM ET Tue, 11 Sept 2018 This story is almost two months old. And I believe it's been on HN before.
- logfromblammo 8y agoI log on via desktop browser once every six months and always post essentially the same update: "I am still alive". Then I delete older updates and log out. When my update stops getting likes, I know I can finally leave Facebook forever.
- alkonaut 8y agoI don’t use the various pages and feeds, I only use the calendar feature. Pics of friends’ kids are better on Instagram and the feed is occupied by a tiny fraction of my friends with their crusade of choice. I just don’t read it. I suspect I’m not alone in this usage pattern - I have effectively stopped using the “traditional” Facebook but I’m still a regular visitor because of a few features such as the calendar. It can’t be good for their bottom line that I don’t see many ads or any sponsored pages.
- akeck 8y agoTo be "successful" (be visible) on "classical" social media (vs. something like HN), it seems like you have to do certain things every day - that change depending on the current algorithm ("engagement"). So classical social media (for me, FB and IG) became sort of a job. In the end, doing the social media job instead of my other "jobs" (work, family, art, etc.) isn't that interesting anymore, so I've slowed down my active use.
- Animats 8y agoWow, that's tough for Facebook. But Facebook did it to themselves. I just opened up Facebook on desktop. Above the fold, I have "People you may know" whom I've never heard of. Nothing above the fold is very relevant. Some of my horse-owning friends have posted some things, but I have to dig to find them. Two years ago, I was shown what my friends were doing. Now Facebook puts all the crap up top. Facebook's ideas of what to show me are strange. Burning Man infrastructure groups? A double-wide house trailer in Fremont? Huh? No wonder people are fed up. They're down at Myspace level now.
- jboles 8y agoBy putting the crap up top they're inducing you to start that downward scroll...
- barbecue_sauce 8y agoI have reduced my usage of facebook considerably. I keep the app on my phone, but only check it once or so a day. I can't use it on my desktop, as I have blocked all of its domains (including tracking domains) in my hosts file. As soon as I blocked tracking and reduced my usage, I noticed that I started to get push notifications about things that I wasn't directly related to, but facebook thought I would be interested in (previously I only got notifications about comments to my own posts and replies). This also corresponded with around the timing of Zuckerberg's congressional testimony, so I'm not sure if this more aggressive notification strategy has happened for everybody, or just those of us that have actively disengaged from the platform.
- Rotdhizon 8y agoFacebook really has no draw to it anymore other than the convenience of messaging people that you don't have other lines of communication with. Going through my feed, it's 95% spam consisting of friends sharing stock pictures with spiritual quotes, self motivational quotes, etc. It's difficult to filter through that for some people you want to keep tabs on because they share annoying junk from 50 different sources, requiring me to manually block every single one to keep them off my feed. I didn't use it for several years and it had very few negatives. The only thing I missed out on was not reconnecting with old friends. FB is for the older crowds now, it's lost all appeal to the younger generations. Hell, I'd rather see myspace revived than have FB be popular again. At least myspace let you get creative.
- RandallBrown 8y agoMy facebook feed is 95% pictures of my friends in their halloween costumes.
- tajen 8y agoFacebook, just like Youtube and all behavior-based content platforms, gets stuck in local minimums where they try to always show you things you seem to like, both for you and GP. But what we like is not “more of the same thing”, but diversity and surprises...
- pard68 8y agoI deleted my account. A comment on an HN article a few weeks ago prompted me to see if, after six months, it was really deleted. Nope still there. Waiting to see if it will delete properly this time.
- kazinator 8y agoWhere are these users going? If they are migrating to something owned by Facebook, it's a moot point.
- kposehn 8y ago> Pew surveyed more than 3,400 U.S. Facebook users in May and June, and found that a whopping 44 percent of those ages 18 to 29 say they've deleted the app from their phone in the last year. Some of them may have reinstalled it later. Yet the total user base in the US is something over 100mm - how would you possibly consider 3,400 people be indicative of an entire demographic? Edit: Yes, I'm aware of statistics and how they work ^_^ It is more that I'm skeptical of the conclusion being based of a sample truly diverse enough to be confident in
- WoodenChair 8y agoStatistically 3,400 is a large (read statistically significant) sample size. If the participants were appropriately sampled, it can be indicative of a trend.
- kposehn 8y agoIs that though for that large of a population? I guess I'm just skeptical of the sampling in that small of a population to establish a pretty sweeping conclusion.
- lovich 8y agoStatistics can be used to infer trends from a much larger population than surveyed as long as you take steps to ensure a random group of people from the main population are surveyed
- JohnJamesRambo 8y agoMy Mom and her generation are the only ones I know around me still using Facebook. They eat it up, they can't get enough of it like crack, since it is many of their first exposure to social media in their lifetime. I don't think that bodes well for Facebook, that's not the demographic anyone wants as far as I know. Like Snapchat after Kylie Jenner's tweet, this survey is the canary in the coal mine telling investors to get out.
- Mahn 8y ago> that's not the demographic anyone wants as far as I know On the contrary, that's the demographic everyone wants, older people have more money to spend. Of course, having only this demographic is not great long term, since the younger generations lead the way to adoption. But short term they'll continue to make money.
- sgtAtom 8y agoI feel like Facebook has been squeezing their users for revenue more and more over the past couple years, and the result is a terrible user experience. At this point, I'm lucky if 10% of the content I see on Facebook is content I actually care about. Young users have a lot less time and history invested in Facebook, so it's no surprise to me that they're leaving.
- MadcapJake 8y agoI deleted the app because I was sick of getting notifications somewhere along the lines of “your friend just commented on a photo” or “your friend recently liked a post”. I tried turning off all notifications that weren’t directly related to my content and Facebook still sent me these types of notifications. So I said that I would just use the website instead of getting these notifications (at least 2 a day). I want an app that provides a means to connect with old friends rather than gossip about their comments/likes. I feel like they are doubling down on being a gossip machine.
- hateful 8y agoThis. I had my account disabled for a while and only recently re-enabled it. I try to check it once a week and 95% of the notifications aren't relevant.
- swozey 8y agoThis was the straw that finally made me delete everything. For a few days/week I was getting text messages for notifications even though I had them disabled and had even deleted the app (deleted app out of the frustration you mentioned). I couldn't escape it. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/16/17022162/facebook-two-factor-authentication-sms-notifications-security-bug https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/16/17022162/facebook-two-fac...
- NeoBasilisk 8y agoOh, so it was a bug, huh? I found it so irritating that I just removed my phone number from my facebook account altogether, because I couldn't find any setting that would make them stop texting me.
- ravenstine 8y agoThis last Wednesday was the first day that I scrolled to the bottom of my feed and it said something like "There are no more posts to show." I only check once a day and never post or comment. The vast majority of posts are not from friends, especially not those my age, but of pages I once "liked". Facebook is a ghost town.
- anticensor 8y agoFacebook needs a "reset feed" and "dislike".
- egfx 8y agoI made a Social Media Facebook app https://2fb.me https://2fb.me but Iv'e never used Messenger, or Instagram outside of testing their functionality and haven't posted a Facebook update in over a year. I occasionally react to posts. Yet as far as Social Media, Twitter, the most depressing site of all still manages to suck in a lot of my time. Am I a weirdo? Man, does the internet need to change. It's all the same. VR gamerooms? Non of this will help Facebook. The network effect that made it popular is already working it's way in reverse.
- tapatio 8y agoAll they did was switch to Instagram so who cares?
- ackidacki 8y agoI never wanted to disable the app, only disable notifications. The app however, made this impossible. It kept having popups and kept redirect to settings to re-enable them. The popups were so bad it made using the app without push notifications impossible. So I just deleted it instead.
- secabeen 8y agoI refrained from installing FB on my phone at the last refresh. I don't mind FB, I even like it pretty well, but the app feels like it's constantly gathering data about myself, my friends, where I go, how long I'm there, etc., etc. The value proposition just isn't there for what I get from FB in exchange for the data they're getting. I still use the web FB, and that's fine.
- lawrenceyan 8y agoGood thing everyone uses Instagram and WhatsApp now.
- abalone 8y agoI think Facebook is juicing their DAU metrics by gaming people with "friend suggestion" notifications. My usage is way down and I barely check it, maybe once in a couple weeks, but after I check it I get a sudden uptick in notifications. Mostly "friend suggestions". There's nothing new about them. In many cases they've suggested them before. But it seems like they just want to slide into my notifications and keep that red badge lit up and just trigger me to open up the app. But not too much.. after I ignore it for awhile they die down, probably so I don't uninstall entirely. Then the cycle repeats a couple weeks later. And I could be wrong but it looks like they removed the ability to turn off friend suggestion notifications. You can turn just about everything else off but not that one. Hmmmm...
- Yhippa 8y agoThere's no better feeling than getting friend suggestions from people who've flat out unfriended me.
- inamberclad 8y agoIt didn't have anything useful for me. Just a bunch of people I vaguely knew complaining about things that diddn't affect me. Combined with the marketed crap, spyware, and adblocker circumvention it was actively detrimental to go there.
- wufufufu 8y agoWhen Facebook introduced a "News feed" and also allowed news and fake news (i.e. non-personal updates) to advertise and proliferate, it really just became "forwards from grandma" which has always been around. It's just much more extreme now.
- StreamBright 8y agoI never installed it at the first place.
- 3rdAccount 8y agoDeleted it months ago and don't miss it even slightly.
- lanevorockz 8y agoAttack conservatives and you loose half of your audience. Paying for political indoctrination
- Yhippa 8y agoThey should just rename Facebook to "Personal Data Collector 2K18". That'll make you think twice about installing it.
- samstave 8y agoThe biggest failure in FB afaiac, is the complete package of utility to truly connect people with tools. For example, they could have created workspaces for people to create teams and collaborate and build things, manage communities and projects have real facility to build create and run organizations with Facebook being the profile glue and communications channel. They have had less-than-mediocre efforts on all of these. And their system stinks of every kind of digital fraud you can imagine from inflated and fake metrics across the board, to data breaches and leaks, a UX that is labrynthian etc. With the money And resources they have, why don't we see the fruits of Vision that could be available to them. Their cell phone was a flop, their engagements feel cancerous and they are basically a new-money-elite building moats around old-boy-exclusionist thinking.
- bodas 8y agoI completely agree. They have all the users but their core product is shambolic. For example, Facebook messenger should be the best way to communicate with someone, yet it's surpassed by even one of their own subdivisions (Whatsapp).
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- abvdasker 8y agoTo my mind one of the major mistakes Facebook made was that they never made any effort to implement identity segmentation. I don't want a picture of me from college with a solo cup in each hand visible to any prospective employer and therefore would never want my Facebook profile to take the place of the one I have created for myself on LinkedIn. If I could have multiple views of my identity depending on the context that would be pretty neat and more analogous to the way people present themselves in the real world. Huge missed opportunity on Facebook's part and now it's way too late. My other hot take is that the interaction design of Facebook is just much too heavy when compared to Instagram or Tinder. If I go on Facebook it's guaranteed 15 minutes of time just to kind-of get into the flow and see a bunch of friends' statuses and maybe click on their profiles. Instagram on the other hand you can just pick up and scroll through pictures for a few minutes and then put down — the interaction feels lighter weight and less burdensome.
- jwally 8y agoNote I wrote my father in law when he had gone too far down the rabbit hole and legitimately worried about the poison it spreads around his demographic: I left Facebook when I read some press release about it being designed from the outset to make you feel bad because it keeps you engaged; hoping someone agrees with something you liked or shared and the dopamine hit it releases. I don’t like feeling manipulated and manipulation is facebooks modus operandi. All to track everything I do around the internet to sell me ads for $12/person/year in revenue. I left Twitter for basically the same reason and when I’d stick on the site refreshing it all day hoping someone noticed the well thought out point I spent 3 hours putting together only to realize no one cares. Leaving both after about a week feels like when I have taken breaks from caffeine. It sucks at first but after a week, you feel refreshed and clean. I’m sure drug abstinence feels similar. My father went down the rabbit hole of Facebook and shares political crap constantly, flooding peoples news feeds. There’s a feature on Facebook that lets you silently unfollow people so they’re on mute. Everyone of my family members who are Facebook friends with my dad have done this to him and don’t see anything he posts. He’s shouting into a black hole thinking the whole world is paying attention while in reality no one is. He has said things that the man I grew up with would never have said and Facebook/ talk radio is to blame. We’re all vulnerable to it, which is why I try and stay away from it. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/dont-believe-lies-just-people-repeat/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/dont-believe-lies-just-people-...
- Endy 8y agoSo you're saying that Internet radicalization happens across all age demographics?
- duxup 8y agoI don't even know what Twitter is for except mutual high fives over the most superficial "look at me" memeish stuff. It's worse than facebook as far as the "get attention" vibe. Granted all social media is about getting attention, and I don't think there is anything wrong with it necessarily. Attention is nice, there is good reason for it, but when the message is so tailored to just that and there isn't anything else, I don't know what the point is. I recently switched careers from a long networking career to web development and thought I'd take another spin on Twitter, but rather I just get sites that paste a link to their website, and hordes of people posting programming truisms or career / resume / coding lifestyle fodder .... so little feels like that person wrote it, so much feels like what those people thing "a commercial about me" should be. --- As for your other notes about the impact on people. It is horrifying. I see some relatives posting terrible things and I wish saying "but you've never met any of those people" had the impact that it should... but it doesn't.
- mockingbirdy 8y agoI'm using Facebook every day to search for affiliate marketing websites and niche sites that I can buy. There are a ton of groups with website exchanges. It's also great to find virtual assistants and content writers. We also have a group for our city where things like cars, couches and other stuff gets posted. The same for jobs, models and other topics. I can hire a bunch of people, buy websites and trade stuff just using Facebook. I'm 20y/o, so I guess I'm part of the relevant user group. All I can say is that it's still very useful. I never comment or like anything, though. I'm basically using it for business. I don't think that I would use Instagram or Snapchat in the same way. I recently bought an Instagram account with 10k followers to get into this stuff, but I don't see the value of it (yet). It feels shallower than Facebook (which is pretty hard). edit: When I think about it - Facebook gives me easy access to a lot of people and services. Does somebody know any alternatives (hiring people, trading stuff and websites, local groups) when Facebook's user base leaves the platform? edit2: Reading through the comments - am I the only one who uses Facebook as a means to do business? I thought that more people on HN would use it for that.
- dawhizkid 8y agoNot that these things aren't replaceable/fixable, but the only two features keeping me on Facebook is 1) I have 2 active FB groups I would like to continue participating in and 2) I get most event invites from friends through FB events and would not want to be excluded/forgotten because I decided to delete my account.
- jessaustin 8y agoI never used FB very much, but comments on some sites I frequent are FB-hosted. As a result I don't comment, but in the last year whenever I look at them these comment sections are inevitably chock-filled with spam. Why does e.g. ESPN think they're getting something valuable out of that business relationship?
- Endy 8y agoI'm on an Android where the Facebook program came default. I've never logged into the site using my device, and I never will. But thanks to the way Alcatel, TracFone, and Facebook have it worked out, the best thing I can do is "Force Stop" and "Disable" the program rather than uninstall it and remove it from my device. It definitely makes me worried about logging into any website - even in "Incognito Mode", because it says to me that someone wants to know what I'm doing whether I like that or not.
- dalbasal 8y agoI'm always suspicious of stats like this. Is it cherry-picked? Does it mean what it sounds like it means? Do young users just delete-n-reinstall apps more often than older users? Is 44% higher than last year...? All that said, I expect FB (the social media network, not the company) to peak and shrink, at some point. It just seems more like something that exists for a certain period of time. Imagine a movie set in 2034. Do FB notifications ping the characters' AR lenses? If you think of long-lived tech companies, they tend to have a very deep moat (oracle, msft, intel) and/or terrific execution ability (amazon, google, foxconn, apple). Facebook hasn't shown execution ability like that yet. Their moat isn't that deep.
- liftbigweights 8y ago> All that said, I expect FB (the social media network, not the company) to peak and shrink, at some point. It just seems more like something that exists for a certain period of time. Probably true in the US. But FB is still growing overseas. > Facebook hasn't shown execution ability like that yet. Their moat isn't that deep. Their moat is pretty deep. They own 4 out of the top 6 social media platforms. https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net... All their properties are growing worldwide (even FB). And the fastest growing platform in the US for young adults is instagram. Guess who owns instagram?
- Chazprime 8y agoI deactivated my account a little over a year ago and it was a great decision...when I opened it the internet was a much friendlier place and full of promise, but it doesn’t feel that way anymore.
- sigi45 8y agoOnly using the chat I tried to have discussions but no one wants to discuss there views. People are agreeing or are extremely against it
- derefr 8y agoI want to delete the Facebook app, but apparently it's needed on iOS for other apps to "Login with Facebook." So instead, I just leave it installed but with all push-notifications, location-usage, etc. disabled, and then kill it right after I'm done using it to log into something.
- juhq 8y ago"Login with Facebook" without the app will just use the browser on your device and you can continue login into apps using your fb account without the app.
- qwerty456127 8y agoI was lucky to realize using social log-ins is a mistake early enough so I only StackExchange accounts tied to Google.
- jganz 8y agoI am 32 years old and had been a facebook user since I was in college (2004). I completely deleted all of my post history and shut down my account about 6 months ago and can say I feel really good about the decision. I realize now that I thought I was staying more connected with my friends, though I was just using it to keep an eye on what is going on in there lives. Whereas now, I find that I actually take the time to meet up with more friends and connect with them in person. It has obviously dramatically decreased the number of people that 'connect with' (watch through my news feed), but maximized the quality and depth of relationships with people I actually care about.
- patrickaljord 8y agoMost of them are on instagram and whatsapp anyway. Besides, teens stopped using email too, doesn't mean they don't start using it once they turn into adults on the workforce.
- z3t4 8y agoSocial network's are very risky to invest in. Sure they have crazy growth, but users will leave just as easily.
- filmgirlcw 8y agoWhat will be interesting to observe is if this will correlate to usage. Anecdotally, it seems like it will -- but it's also possible that mobile usage of the proper app will simply yield to Messenger and that the desktop will be used other ways. I will say that for myself, I still have Facebook on my phone but I do everything I can to use it as rarely as possible. I should also add the caveat that because of the "public" nature of my former job (and to a certain extent, my current job), I have been unable to use Facebook like a normal person since late 2007 and so my investment in it as an actual social network is far less than might be the case for others, who like me, joined in college, and then saw it as a catalyst for lots of other things.
- tammer 8y agoHow do folks find out about music/art/local events without Facebook? My account would be in the garbage otherwise.
- mark_l_watson 8y agoI will go against the grain, a bit, here: I do think there is some value in FB: once a week I go on for 5 minutes (I time myself) and try to quickly look at stuff family and friends have posted, at least what FB’s algorithms choose to show me. Also, If I release a new open source project or a new book, I like to use FB, Twitter, and G+ to announce it.
- ilaksh 8y agoPlenty of people have reasons not to use Facebook but I believe it mainly just became uncool. Mostly because parents started showing up everywhere. But when something becomes unpopular then people stop using it without actually needing a rationale. Human behavior is largely dictated by subconscious social effects and the rational brain comes up with explanations after the fact. So now younger people mainly use Instagram? Or what?
- qwerty456127 8y ago1. They probably just don't realize Instagram is Facebook and even worse. 2. Who needs the app anyway? Facebook apps had always been ridiculous - outrageously heavyweight, coming with extra surveillance built-in and hardly doing anything the website can't.
- vmarshall23 8y agoGood!
- mmgutz 8y agoBut they still own Instagram ... they're not the MySpace yet
- anonytrary 8y agoI've always felt that average people want to be anonymous. The internet is a place to remove your filters and be honest about what you think. You don't have to worry about people judging you and treating you differently based on your ideas. Facebook doesn't solve that problem at all, it exacerbates it. Facebook is a place you go to be judged by everyone you know. People fundamentally don't want that drama.
- qwerty456127 8y agoWe certainly need a better Facebook. More customizable, more feature-rich yet more lightweight, not corrupted to the core with surveilance and ads. Facebook just had never been user-oriented. Even its Russian clone vk.com had always been much much better than the original (sadly nowadays it's completely owned by the russian Federal Security Bureau and is moving away from the great UX it used to have too). There seem to be many efforts in the field of "federated" social networks nowadays but I certainly don't want to host my social network account myself (as this means hardware dependance and a chance to get hacked) and the functionality they offer seems limited (i.e. I want first-class (not twitter-style post-like) editable comments, markdown support in posts, media embedding etc).
- dang 8y agoTurns out the survey this is based on already had a big discussion on HN, though not as big as this one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17919811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17919811
- qwerty456127 8y agoThere is a funny poll on the page by the link: Which do you trust the most? Google (49%), Facebook (4%), Twitter (12%), President Trump (35%). I understand trusting the president is a political opinion and many people may trust him but why the heck do so many people trust Google? Don't they realize Google intentionally owns them even more than Facebook does?
- ndnxhs 8y agoGoogle doesn't put you at war with your friends, family and the general public
- qwerty456127 8y agoI see. Well. This is what I love about Google+ (the best social network ever IMHO): it doesn't ask you who are your friends and who are not, just whose posts seem interesting to you and who would you like to share what you post with.
- bbulkow 8y agoWhat's funny about this is people could defect to g+, with it's well thought out 'group' structure to promote focus, but Google just killed it.
- k__ 8y agoThere is just nothing exciting happening on FB anymore. 6 years ago it was the place to be...now? I hang mostly on Twitter.
- tempestn 8y agoFor a while I couldn't understand this "delete facebook" trend. I've had a Facebook account forever, but have never felt the desire to waste my life endlessly reading garbage on there. I set it up to give me notifications in three cases: when someone contacts my business page, and when my wife or my mom posts something (the latter being very infrequent, usually pictures of my kids!) Otherwise I use it for a few local groups I care about (motorsports mostly) and to look up an old friend occasionally. Occasionally I'll glance through my feed when doing one of those other things—maybe once a month or so? But now that I think about it, it's obviously like any addiction. An alcoholic can't just have a beer every once in a while, and I'm sure it's just as unhealthy for a lot of people to have Facebook on their phones. So, this sounds like a healthy trend.
- Steeeve 8y agoThat's a big misleading headline. 26% of 3400 respondents to a survey in May had deleted the app from their phones at some point in the preceding year.
- nothis 8y agoI don't think it is, read closer. They're referencing this survey: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/americans-are-changing-their-relationship-with-facebook/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/americans-ar... The 26% number is adults, total. The 44% number is people 18-29.
- arooni 8y agoIn life you are either a consumer or a producer. Consumption is the silent killer that's killed more dreams than any other force in history. Relavent: https://www.davidparkinson.com/beware-consumption-the-silent-killer/ https://www.davidparkinson.com/beware-consumption-the-silent... Also relavent: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat... [I use this and swear by it... destroys your news feed when you do login to facebook]
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kendallpark 8y agoI use the "News Feed Eradicator" Chrome extension. Don't have the app on my phone, nor Messenger. Life is more sane. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...
- londons_explore 8y agoA good part of this is that their app is huge and gobbles hundreds of megabytes of space on my phone I'd far rather use for more photos or other apps. Make a minimalistic, lightweight, not gobbling RAM or storage app, and I'd probably use it again.
- sdan 8y agoI deleted Facebook because it was downright toxic. I don't need to know what everyone else is doing, I need to focus on my own and my own goals and passions. After deleting Facebook, I have published a paper on Arxiv, Beat Georgia Tech at a robotics competition, and improved my GPA. Nowadays, I spend my time on Reddit, Twitter, and HN for ML Papers/Software Updates and Launches and stuff like that.
- kerng 8y agoTomorrow their earnings report is due... this should be reflected if indeed true.
- malloreon 8y agoNothing will get better unless they delete instagram too.
- jozen 8y agoToo bad I can't remove Facebook from my Galaxy S7 edge originally; had to root to remove some ads. Who the fuck decided it would be a good idea to prevent the removal of bloatware on this shit? It's like a worse version of the Superfish adware.
- patja 8y agoI was on a bit of a Facebook diet and considering getting rid of it. Then I got a 3D printer and joined a few Facebook groups focused on owners of that printer, and it breathed new life into my Facebook experience. It can be a great information exchange and community, once you just get rid of all the friends and family stuff on it.
- manigandham 8y agoI'm extremely glad that I was of the generation that only saw iPhones after college. The instant connectivity of social media is nice in some aspects, but I can't imagine growing up in this environment. People just aren't designed for this kind of supersaturated communication, the overwhelming need to share and show-off against the whole world, the complete lack of privacy, and the fact that nothing is ever forgotten. It's definitely not healthy, and I think the worst is still to come.
- ggm 8y agoFinally closed this year. Wish I'd never joined. 57 ftw, so this isn't only "young" users.
- village-idiot 8y agoI’ve given up on most social media; HN is the only place I comment now, although I’ll read lobste.rs once a day for professional news. Honestly, at some point I realized it was making me miserable. Why would I want to keep doing something that makes me unhappy? So I stopped.
- a3n 8y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/technology/hate-on-social-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/technology/hate-on-social...
- AOsborn 8y agoMay have been mentioned elsewhere in the comments, but I haven't read through all. I think most commenters here missing the major point against Facebook for many young users: being forced to use your real identity (and only one account). As already mentioned, most young people have switched to Instagram and find Facebook embarrassing. That made sense. What I was surprised to learn was that almost everyone has more than one account - often three or more. This is actually the killer hidden feature of Instagram - easy to manage privacy. So one has a main account, possibly public, that is OK for parents and strangers to see. Then they have a private account for friends. Then possibly a third account for close friends. This is one that nudes/sexual/illegal content is posted on.
- rcheu 8y ago> Members of the American Trends Panel were recruited from several large, national landline and cellphone RDD surveys conducted in English and Spanish. At the end of each survey, respondents were invited to join the panel. Methodology is very shakey for a sample of young people. Results are also just weird—I’m a young person (24) and very few people I know have deleted FB.
- will123195 8y agoGood idea, uninstalling now!
- freen 8y agoFacebook: Graveyard of racist uncles.
- gmanontherocks 8y agoI rage quit facebook when i scrolled the the end of my news feed and it told me i needed more friends. I dont need the computer telling me i need more friends.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mbo 8y agoAre there similar studies on non-US markets? As an Australian 20-something, this seems like an absurdly high number. I'd like to see if this exodus is mainly a US thing.
- reilly3000 8y agoSo HN, many of us have worked on User Experiences, Analytics Pipelines, User Graphs and other such technologies. Many of us have seen, participated in or personally built systems that, upon reflection and among new laws and news about privacy travesties, may be a source of regret. Besides the excellent work at darkpatterns.org, I'm not aware of any real 'rules of the road' outside of privacy laws, nor if I had a serious concern how to properly report it. What is the brass tacks right way forward for us to create or embrace a system to define ethical behavior on the web, and to expose unethical behavior. What about enforcement? How can this be done in a way that ensures freedom? Or is it impossible to police the web? I see a few ways forward: - Status quo, private companies making individual actions internally, driven with a fiduciary responsibility for profit. - A benefit corp offering some auditing, credibility, and feedback layer on the web as a paid/freely available service. - Public firewall-as-a-service sort of wiki + LD API that gives users the ability to control their own subscriptions to information filters, flags, and warnings. - Global internet police authority. Full Disclosure: that last one was bait.
- peter_retief 8y agoI am neither young (57) or US based (Cape Town) and decided to delete my facebook account mainly because it made people I know behave badly and myself as well. I really dont miss it at all
- senthilnayagam 8y agoI have 2 daughters one teen other pre-teen, both don't login into Facebook anymore, though they are active in Instagram and WhatsApp to some extent.
- throwaway487548 8y agoBecause of promoted spam. Teens hate to be spammed with irrelevant bullshit.
- stewfortier 8y agoFacebook's woes with young people always remind me of this TechLoaf joke... https://www.techloaf.io/2018/07/25/mark-zuckerberg-offers-six-pack-of-natural-light-to-any-teenager-who-reactivates-facebook-account/ https://www.techloaf.io/2018/07/25/mark-zuckerberg-offers-si...
- sjg007 8y agoMy extended family uses WhatsApp basically as a social feed. All of the younger adults I know left FB for Snap and the left Snap for instagram. Even many of my friends have limited FB now and mainly use instagram.