18 ms·

Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew

180 points by vo2maxer 5y ago

datavirtue 5y ago
I'm 43 and I avoid Facebook because of the old people. Literally. The people around my age are posting the familiar tripe around COVID and whatever political topic dejour...often followed by a post announcing the death of their life partner from complications brought on by COVID-19. I used to participate in groups and marketplace but the negative aspects of the platform readily spill over into those corners as well. Icky time-suck.
meerita 5y ago
I've quit Facebook on Jan 2017. Since then, I returned FB using an old dummy account for development and testing, and while I was doing that I was checking most of my relatives, friends pages, all almost dead, no postings since 2018 most of them. It's like all the activity switched to Instagram.
- Freskis 5y ago
  Facebook and Instagram. Duff Beer and Duff Lite.
- yardie 5y ago
  If they're on Instagram they are on Facebook. Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories are 1 and the same now.
  - meerita 5y ago
    I agree that they have made a change of neighborhood, not country. I just pointed out the FB app is like a cementery of profiles.
AccountToUse 5y ago
Facebook has lost the moral battle. It can never regain that highground. With it, tech as a whole has lost it's darling status among media, politicians, and the general public. Maybe the first step was "The Social Network" by David Fincher in 2010.
gpapilion 5y ago
The thing that convinces me there are issues at facebook is the general low quality of ads I'm seeing in my feed. This is a troubling sign for any company dependent on ad revenue when you're short on brand style advertising, and it seems like only remanent inventory.
blacktriangle 5y ago
Facebook is no stronger than Myspace, Friendster, Orkut, or any other social network. Everybody looks unassailable at first, but when social networks collapse, it happens overnight and you never see it coming.
- PoaMk 5y ago
  Oh its happening. I have friends in FB who are sick of the daily scandals.
  - jraby3 5y ago
    But they probably still use insta, messenger or WhatsApp.
  - timmytokyo 5y ago
    The stigma associated with having Facebook on your resume is definitely increasing.
- dagw 5y ago
  That's why Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp. Everybody I know who's 'quit Facebook' uses at least one of those two. Young people who shun Facebook as "for old people", happily sign up for Instagram. Once Instagram starts to collapse, they'll already have built/bought 3 other social networks to catch those people leaving
- fullshark 5y ago
  Didn't those collapse due to users flocking to FB? Is TikTok going to be an actual social network to compete with FB/Instagram or just a dopamine rush agent? Other competitors (Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat) seem to have merely carved out niches.
nabla9 5y ago
The only anti-trust action needed is to prevent Facebook from buying out the competition. Without Instagram, WhatsApp acquisitions, Facebook would have already withered down. Facebook has by far the worst corporate governance among big tech companies. Everyone is just competing for Zuckerberg's attention and approval (Microsoft has the best).
- caminante 5y ago
  It's remarkable that "Facebook owns the four most downloaded apps of [2010-19]" [0] 1. Facebook 2. Messenger 3. WhatsApp 4. Instagram The rest of the T10 have "one owner": Snapchat, Skype, TikTok, UC Browser (Alibaba), Youtube, and Twitter. [0]https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50838013 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50838013
  - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    I'm convinced that WhatsApp is Facebook's most valuable property, not Facebook itself. It's ubiquitous in the developing world, whereas I think (overoptimistically?) that Facebook itself is dying. > The rest of the T10 have "one owner": Snapchat, Skype, TikTok, UC Browser (Alibaba), Youtube, and Twitter. I think you mean that each of those apps has a different owner? Or do you actually mean that there is a single entity that owns all of them, e.g. a common investor?
  - smt88 5y ago
    It's a lot worse than it seems. The top 4 apps are 100% controlled by one person, Mark Zuckerberg. There is no board or committee that can overrule him. If rumors are true, he cut a deal with the previous White House to avoid regulation, so even government (until recently) couldn't stop him. There is one, semi-educated, ruthless, unscrupulous person running an unprecedented experiment on billions of under-informed people. He has access to a substantial percentage of all messages sent between people every day. No one person (even an elected person) should have that much power.
    - wutbrodo 5y ago
coldcode 5y ago
I only use FB to connect to distant friends and relatives, everything else is turned off or blocked. I am not profitable to FB as best I can do. FB has peaked as a business for sure, unless they become the government somehow.
- smt88 5y ago
  It's possible to have a Messenger account without an activated Facebook account. Perhaps you could move to Messenger group chats and keep up with relatives there, so Facebook doesn't even get to add you to their MAUs.
  - GNOMES 5y ago
    How is this done? I am not seeing instructions for this anywhere. I use messenger.com or the app regularly as it's how large group of friends talk (sigh). I haven't personally viewed main FB UI in a few years now.
    - officeplant 5y ago
      The last time I tried you could start fresh with just a phone number on messenger. That was 6 or 7 years ago so I'm not sure what has changed since then. Messenger always seemed very open to letting nonFB users in since they have a chance to be converted to full time users.
  - mathieuh 5y ago
    I knew this was possible but I still completely deleted my account. Didn't want to have anything to do with Facebook at all. Friends and family know my number/email if it's something that matters. Plus, deactivating an account still leaves you the option of reactivating, and I didn't want to do that in a moment of information-starved weakness, so they must still have your data. Of course, you then have to trust that they actually do delete your data when you delete your account.
    - timmytokyo 5y ago
antiSingularity 5y ago
Everyone now knows upper management of FB (the company) are awful human beings. FB as a website / app is dead. Instagram is becoming much more widely known as a source of terrible online addiction problems for young people. It's really annoying how deeply ingrained Whatsapp has become into life (especially where I live), but they will have to squeeze a lot of money from it to make up from the decline of the first two platforms. Yes, I think the article is completely correct.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dr-detroit 5y ago
  Its well publicized that Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids use iPad because the project is engineered to manipulate your brain and/or harm your brain. Anyone who uses facebook or an iWatch or any of this garbage has all the information they need. They choose to be a victim. Its a cultural problem not a Zuckerburg problem.
  - AndrewBissell 5y ago
    > They choose to be a victim. Did they choose to have decades of behavioral and psychological research weaponized against them in order to lash them to these systems? Did they all choose for their friends and family and huge swaths of their social life and day-to-day communications to be subsumed?
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Frankly... yes. That has been the gambit with Apple products for decades: it's not a computer, it's consumer technology. Steve Jobs owned up to this outright, championing this idea that the computer needs to disappear altogether. Everything Apple has done over the past 20 years is about abstracting detailed, rich information away from a user, which indeed leaves a lot of developers scratching their head. If you've ever seen "how the sausage" is made, you're probably twice as skeptical. Putting that much faith in any company of that size is a good way to get all of data compromised. So yes, I'd argue that they did choose that. Their complacency is their consent.
elzbardico 5y ago
It is kind of ironic that a 11 years old told researchers “Facebook is for old people” when mark zuckerberg is or at least was, a notorious ageist. Karma is a bitch
- smt88 5y ago
  Facebook bought Instagram and had the last laugh for a while. I'm sure they would have bought TikTok for an insane price if they thought regulators would approve the sale.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    >TikTok Well they would have bought musical.ly, which is where the non-Chinese TikTok came from.
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    I think that facebook bought instagram because it saw an existential threat on it.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  They really changed their demographics at warp speed from college kids to octogenarians.
cushychicken 5y ago
https://twitter.com/StartupLJackson/status/329835724906041344 https://twitter.com/StartupLJackson/status/32983572490604134...
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.md/svWC6 https://archive.md/svWC6
o10449366 5y ago
Notoriously anti-FB publication keeps writing doomsday articles in hopes of them becoming true. Technology users who don't make up core users self-assured that their noble refrainment reflects broader sentiment.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- leafygreene 5y ago
  Is that you, Andrew Bosworth, you almost-CTO, you Borg?
nus07 5y ago
Nothing new here . Both Facebook and Google’s business model thrives on addiction and almost all their revenue comes from ads. However much as the NYT and WSJ try to berate them these modern day tobacco companies are here to stay. Their revenue and profits are more than those of the next 10 companies combined . And no one is turning down a big paycheck and money .
- aikinai 5y ago
  Addiction to finding answers online?
  - relyks 5y ago
    He’s probably referring to YouTube, as I also don’t see searching for information as being addictive. I do find searching throughout the day to be totally necessary though.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  It drives me nuts that NYT podcasts run Facebook ads about how Facebook “wants common sense regulation” or some nonsense. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t renew my subscription.
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  How do you figure that web search relies on addiction? This is quite a novel take to me.
dd36 5y ago
I would’ve quit FB long ago but need it for community groups.
- navbaker 5y ago
  I'm in the same boat, but have found that a lot of the groups I depended on FB for (local tabletop gaming groups) have been slowly migrating to Discord. Each local game store that spins up their own Discord is one less group I need to engage with on FB.
kosasbest 5y ago
> It’s far too early to declare Facebook dead. The company’s stock price has risen nearly 30 percent in the past year, lifted by strong advertising revenue and a spike in use of some products during the pandemic Stock price is not an indicator of aliveness. Facebook is morally dead. It is the new smoking. Slowly but surely people will ween themselves off it, and a great diaspora will begin. To where? Who knows, but I imagine people will have a choice of multiple services instead of one or two big behemoths (i.e Facebook & Twitter).
- Yetino 5y ago
  Possibly one business will come into being: quit-Facebook coaching. Probably won't be as big an industry as smoke-quitting or Alcoholics Anonymous but might still be profitable.
- api 5y ago
  Any other service will become like Facebook or worse unless people start paying directly for social media and privacy regulations get passed. The trend I've seen is the emergence of services that exclusively cater to an echo chamber (usually far right or far left) and will probably monetize by selling that audience out to interests who want to reach that demographic. That I'm afraid is even worse than Facebook since it puts people into permanent filter bubbles from which they will not escape unless they leave the network. Facebook is like smoking in some ways, but there is one huge difference: the dynamics of the market forced Facebook to be like that or die. Since everything has to be "free" but nothing actually is, things can only be monetized in sleazy underhanded ways. "Free" is really the central pillar of surveillance capitalism just like it was for classic wall-to-wall advertisements television.
  - jraby3 5y ago
    Not necessarily. Just changing the newsfeed to show most recent first instead of their algorithm that is designed to make you angry and/or sad in order to get more clicks would be a huge step in the right direction. The next FB could be smart enough (or regulated enough) to require this change.
aynyc 5y ago
I have no love for Facebook, but it's not as weak as media thinks it is. While its user base might be older now, that age group has ton of money. 1. My favorite local events/groups/restaurants/shops are doing all on FB now. 2. Facebook market place has replaced craigslist for me in the last year or so. 3. WhatsApp is as pervasive as it gets. Oh, FB is also holding something like $64B in cash.
- romanhn 5y ago
  It's not that the media thinks Facebook is weak, but rather they're actively working on weakening it. FB was traditional media's darling until they realized they're losing advertisers and subscribers to social media, at which point the doom-and-gloom narratives started.
- officeplant 5y ago
  Craigslist is the biggest loss for me. It's such a nice simple website that doesn't require much of me to get things listed. I refuse to get back on facebook just for the market place, but damn if it doesn't make selling off old equipment/stuff much easier.
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    Yeah, FB market is infuriating to use. I have no senes for whether my search is giving me "real" results or filtered results that FB wants me to see. I assume the latter. It doesn't easily allow nationwide searches. Its auto search is a hacked together steaming pile. Craigslist is/was so much easier to use, particularly with some of the aggregator sites allowing nationwide searches.
    - datavirtue 5y ago
      If you want to level-up your frustration try selling on Facebook marketplace. No one reads your ad text and they just use the vile automated one-click replies. I used to give away very nice items, assuming there are many people in need in my community, but it has become very abusive. The amount of time I have to waste is too much to justify. The only thing I would sell on there anymore is a high dollar item like a car. Even then, I don't suggest that. The last car I sold resulted in getting nagged to death by the person who couldn't figure out how to transfer the title. The convenience features of the platform are the opposite of convenient. It's cancer. Most of the people who reply to marketplace are older women who see a promoted post and just click "Is this still available?" button and never talk to you again or talk for a day or two and then ghost you after "my husband took me on a surprise trip and I won't be home until Monday, you can give it to someone else if you want." Happens too much to make it worth the trouble. I had to start selling things I wanted to give away because the price reduces 20% of the pain but anymore it's just too much effort. Craig's list, aside from potentially getting murdered, is a much better experience.
bko 5y ago
These journalists are delusional. If you look at monthly active users, you'll see a line that goes straight and up. For instance, in Q1 2021 to Q2 2022, the monthly active users went from 2.853 billion to 2.895 billion or 1.45% quarter to quarter growth or just under 6% growth annually. And that growth is sustaining with nearly a third of the world population as a monthly active user. If you look at their other stats you'll see they're similarly indicating consistent growth. https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...
- ramesh31 5y ago
  >If you look at monthly active users, you'll see a line that goes straight and up. It's a question of quality though, not quantity. Facebook's MAU growth is almost entirely international users from the developing world at this point, who are orders of magnitude less profitable than US users. They will remain an advertising juggernaut forever, but their cultural relevance has passed.
  - hogFeast 5y ago
    This has been true for quite a while, the stock price keeps going up but it can take quite a while for the break to actually come. Also, I think what people heavily underestimate with FB and GOOGL is that the majority of their growth is coming from volume, which they are 100% in control of over the short-term. All they need to do is add another ad to the page, and their revenue goes up. The problem is that, over the long-term, this results in less and less product. With the targeting changes, with the valuable US/young userbase shrinking rapidly (amongst young people, Facebook isn't even in the top five social networks), it is very clear that management are turning all the dials they can now but this can only end one way (I also suspect a lot of the "international growth" is not real).
  - bko 5y ago
    It's true that they have less US user growth, but its incredible to consider that they still have US user growth. > Facebook will experience its slowest (US) growth ever in 2021 at just 0.8%. [0] That's with a ~61% penetration in US internet users. Instagram still has pretty impressive US user growth > This statistic shows the projected Instagram user growth in the United States from 2018 to 2023. In 2020, the social network's user figures grew by 6.2 percent compared to the previous year. In 2021, the development is estimated to slow to a 3.7 percent annual growth rate. [1] The fact that revenue per user is much higher in the US and Canada ($53.56 per user) than Europe ($16.87) and much less in Asia ($4.05) [2] is an opportunity. They can get aim to bring these numbers up and continue revenue growth. They did exactly that. For instance revenue per user in Europe went from 10.64 to 16.87 from Q1 2020 to Q4 2020. I couldn't find a single statistic that would even suggest that Facebook's growth is in trouble in the foreseeable future. This points to a bigger issue with modern journalism. Their goal is to feed subscribers what they want to read. And their subscriber base is skeptical of facebook and wants to read about how their downfall is just around the corner. They've been doing this for years. But they don't bother to do basic sanity checks on their claims. You can hate Facebook all you want, but don't delude yourself in the process. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-will-experience-its-slowest-growth-ever-in-2021-2021-6?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-will-experience-its... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/426533/instagram-us-user-growth/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/426533/instagram-us-user... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...
bla3 5y ago
I don't like Facebook, but these "Facebook is declining" pieces have been appearing for 5 years now. FB (and Google) have made traditional news much less relevant, which is one possible explanation for why these articles keep appearing -- part wishful thinking, part hatchet job. Both parts mostly ineffectual so far.
gdsdfe 5y ago
Remove section 230 !!! If you're in the US, call your representative!
- officeplant 5y ago
  The death of 230 would bring chaos and destruction. As much as I like chaos I'm not sure blowing up the internet as we know it is worth it at this time.
  - gdsdfe 5y ago
    How accountability is chaos ?
    - officeplant 5y ago
      As far as the US is concerned the web we know exists due to 230. The death of 230 is the death of every online gathering place that can't afford the levels of moderation no 230 would bring. I'm not sure it would fix anything. I'll let Mike explain it better than I ever could.[1] [1]https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
      - gdsdfe 5y ago
        use this one next time : https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/fact-checking-critiques-section-230-what-are-real-problems https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/fact-checking-criti...
gwbas1c 5y ago
I'm not sure what was the last straw for me: Either seeing anti-vax posts in my feed, or my fear of seeing "Trump really won" posts. Yes. When Trump started claiming he won the 2020 election, I was too afraid to open Facebook.
theknocker 5y ago
This is the dumbest thing I've read in a while.
jhallenworld 5y ago
I've been finding value in Facebook Marketplace recently. It's kind of a step up from craigslist- basically people on it are more willing to ship things to you and Facebook acts as a financial middleman. Facebook has been enforcing quality standards on the sellers- at least they will not pay the seller until a tracking number has been provided for shipped items. For buyers, the prices tends to be better than on eBay. Anyway, they could give eBay some real competition and could be a future revenue source if it keeps expanding.
- Freskis 5y ago
  Agree that Facebook Marketplace is good at the moment. I think this is because of the small number of people using it. If it becomes mainstream then it will have the same problems as all other marketplace websites.
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    It is mainstream and it is painful as hell. Use it more, you will experience it soon enough.
jwogrady 5y ago
If Facebook is dying because it is becoming irrelevant why are we all talking about?
ToddWBurgess 5y ago
Instead of quitting social media I used the approach of use it a lot less. I seriously scaled back by Facebook usage and when I did, my mood improved considerably. I chalk it up to not getting all the daily anger and outrage Facebook tries to feed us. Now that it looks like the worst of the pandemic is behind us (hopefully???), and people start getting out more and seeing people in real life, I think Facebook usage will decline accordingly. Facebook got a serious bump due to the pandemic and now that things are subsiding I expect so will Facebook usage. As has been pointed out, I think we will see Facebook usage decline in the first world as the existing user base ages out and young people migrate to other platforms. Facebook's growth and popularity will rest with the developing world.
LuisMondragon 5y ago
> But Facebook’s research tells a clear story, and it’s not a happy one. Its younger users are flocking to Snapchat and TikTok, and its older users are posting anti-vaccine memes and arguing about politics.
mettamage 5y ago
I think this article has some good points. I also think that the author of this article seems to forget about products like Oculus. I also think WhatsApp could potentially not fall into this decline. It's an edge-case, which means Facebook has enough ways to spin it.
anovikov 5y ago
I wonder why it's so difficult for many people to quit. I quit 5 years ago (too many of my contacts turned disgustingly conservative and i had no interest in reading the MAGA bullshit in my feed anymore, so just deleted myself). Never looked back or had any issue with it. I just know that whatever i ever used to write there only turned into a toxic shitstorm with minimal informational or positive emotional output, it was a waste of time and energy all along.
- robomartin 5y ago
  > turned into a toxic shitstorm with minimal informational or positive emotional output, it was a waste of time and energy all along This is true of just-about every political conversation on FB and other social media. And, no, it isn't limited to engaging with conservatives. The extremes are present on all sides. It's absolutely horrific to watch. We have watched family members and friends turn on each other and end-up on diametrically opposite ends of the political spectrum, locked into inescapable toxic resonant chambers. The process is insidious. In other words, it tends to happen gradually, slowly, over time. The algorithms optimize and keep shoving people deeper and deeper into mono-culture echo chambers. I have personally seen people go from nice-as-can-be to merchants of hatred, again, on both the right and the left. This is no different from the kind of indoctrination that produces such things as terrorists. The difference is that it can happen much faster and it is happening to adults. They are in the grips of a machine learning algorithm with a fitness function that optimizes for nothing that is healthy for the user at all. Like I said, it is horrific to watch. About a year ago I removed all of my FB connections and only kept about a dozen direct family members, just to exchange pictures, videos and keep in touch. The rest is something I do not care to ever be exposed to again. I lost decades-long real-life friends over the effects of the FB algorithm. Truly sad stuff.
  - anovikov 5y ago
    That's right, it's not just the MAGA crowd who's obnoxious, toxic and crazy. Liberals can get this way too in so many situations.
    - 5y ago
fleddr 5y ago
"Godzilla eventually died, and as the Facebook Files make clear, so will Facebook." A speculative piece with zero substance. It focuses too much on whether Facebook is still cool (it isn't) and that it is heavily criticized at societal level (it is). That does not automatically translate to weakness, decline or a full termination of the service. All of this may happen, but not a single meaningful or impactful piece of evidence is delivered to substantiate it. A quote like "Facebook is for old people" could have been made 7 years ago. It has been true for a long time, but all meaningful metrics since then are way up, not down. Plus, you know, there's quite a few "old" people in the world, and they have political and purchasing power. The US-centric take on Facebook is also limiting. In quite a lot of (developing) countries, Facebook is the ruler. It's used for everything, all day. And unlike the West, many cultures do not think its "uncool" to mingle with parents. They don't have a dismissive or hateful relationship with the elderly. Only 1 in 9 FB users is from the US, yet the entire basis for most of these type of articles is to just forget about the other 89%.
- everdrive 5y ago
  This is something you see with Twitter, as well. A lot of the extremism on Twitter drives a lot of journalists and politicians. But most Americans are not on Twitter.
  - merpnderp 5y ago
    There's a cool dev I'd like to follow on Twitter, but they require my phone number. So I'm still not on Twitter. Their suckiness is just not worth it.
    - Cycl0ps 5y ago
      You can skip submitting a phone number. They don't make it obvious but an option to skip is there at sign up. Though from personal experience it may make the moderation system more aggressive towards your account.
      - 5y ago
resters 5y ago
This is part of Facebook's antitrust defense strategy. People under estimate the extent to which Microsoft's experience clued companies in to the importance of grand strategy in this area.
chang1 5y ago
For those that deleted their account, how do you navigate a world where more communities exclusively use Facebook? I deleted my account almost 10 years ago. I've had no regrets. However, I'm finding lately that more communities have no option but Facebook to communicate with others. I live in a somewhat large metropolitan city in the US but it's nearly impossible to find anything on Craigslist anymore — Facebook Marketplace has displaced it. Even local enthusiast groups or my children's school's parent groups communicate only through Facebook. I feel like a luddite when I ask organizers if there is a email mailing list or suggest to start one. Lately I've had urges to create an account again solely for these sorts of groups, but knowing myself, it's a slippery slope.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Same here, about 10 years clean. I simply won't participate in a community that insists all communication go through Facebook-owned channels. I have found that most hobbies and groups I participate in do send out their important info over E-mail as well as whatever they post to Facebook. I've never been embarrassed to go E-mail only. And if they really insist on FB, I just do without. It's not worth it. Be part of the solution, and all that.
- corpdronejuly 5y ago
  This is basically why I'm back on FB despite my many account deletions. Ultimately to participate in civil society in my community I have to be in particular FB groups. I'd much rather meet people at local events, but the past 2 years basically I can either be isolated or on FB
dannykwells 5y ago
BuT tHe MeTaVeRsE
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kin 5y ago
Yes, Facebook has issues that they need to address and strategize around, but there's still a lot of positive that Facebook brings to the table that I wouldn't overlook. There are many Facebook Groups with thriving communities of good people helping one another. These communities are Facebook exclusive and stronger than ever. Facebook Marketplace is also the safest place for me to buy second hand goods. I never turn to Craigslist anymore. Messenger and WhatsApp are still reliable ways to group message. Let's not forget Facebook includes IG which while TikTok is taking its marketshare of engagement, many users still have both and IG is not just "for old people". It's still heavily used by our youth.

180 points by vo2maxer 5y ago

I'm 43 and I avoid Facebook because of the old people. Literally. The people around my age are posting the familiar tripe around COVID and whatever political topic dejour...often followed by a post announcing the death of their life partner from complications brought on by COVID-19. I used to participate in groups and marketplace but the negative aspects of the platform readily spill over into those corners as well. Icky time-suck.

meerita 5y ago

I've quit Facebook on Jan 2017. Since then, I returned FB using an old dummy account for development and testing, and while I was doing that I was checking most of my relatives, friends pages, all almost dead, no postings since 2018 most of them. It's like all the activity switched to Instagram.

Freskis 5y ago
Facebook and Instagram. Duff Beer and Duff Lite.
yardie 5y ago
If they're on Instagram they are on Facebook. Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories are 1 and the same now.
- meerita 5y ago
  I agree that they have made a change of neighborhood, not country. I just pointed out the FB app is like a cementery of profiles.

AccountToUse 5y ago

Facebook has lost the moral battle. It can never regain that highground. With it, tech as a whole has lost it's darling status among media, politicians, and the general public. Maybe the first step was "The Social Network" by David Fincher in 2010.

gpapilion 5y ago

The thing that convinces me there are issues at facebook is the general low quality of ads I'm seeing in my feed. This is a troubling sign for any company dependent on ad revenue when you're short on brand style advertising, and it seems like only remanent inventory.

blacktriangle 5y ago

Facebook is no stronger than Myspace, Friendster, Orkut, or any other social network. Everybody looks unassailable at first, but when social networks collapse, it happens overnight and you never see it coming.

PoaMk 5y ago
Oh its happening. I have friends in FB who are sick of the daily scandals.
- jraby3 5y ago
  But they probably still use insta, messenger or WhatsApp.
- timmytokyo 5y ago
  The stigma associated with having Facebook on your resume is definitely increasing.
dagw 5y ago
That's why Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp. Everybody I know who's 'quit Facebook' uses at least one of those two. Young people who shun Facebook as "for old people", happily sign up for Instagram. Once Instagram starts to collapse, they'll already have built/bought 3 other social networks to catch those people leaving
fullshark 5y ago
Didn't those collapse due to users flocking to FB? Is TikTok going to be an actual social network to compete with FB/Instagram or just a dopamine rush agent? Other competitors (Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat) seem to have merely carved out niches.

nabla9 5y ago

The only anti-trust action needed is to prevent Facebook from buying out the competition. Without Instagram, WhatsApp acquisitions, Facebook would have already withered down. Facebook has by far the worst corporate governance among big tech companies. Everyone is just competing for Zuckerberg's attention and approval (Microsoft has the best).

caminante 5y ago
It's remarkable that "Facebook owns the four most downloaded apps of [2010-19]" [0] 1. Facebook 2. Messenger 3. WhatsApp 4. Instagram The rest of the T10 have "one owner": Snapchat, Skype, TikTok, UC Browser (Alibaba), Youtube, and Twitter. [0]https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50838013 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50838013
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  I'm convinced that WhatsApp is Facebook's most valuable property, not Facebook itself. It's ubiquitous in the developing world, whereas I think (overoptimistically?) that Facebook itself is dying. > The rest of the T10 have "one owner": Snapchat, Skype, TikTok, UC Browser (Alibaba), Youtube, and Twitter. I think you mean that each of those apps has a different owner? Or do you actually mean that there is a single entity that owns all of them, e.g. a common investor?
- smt88 5y ago
  It's a lot worse than it seems. The top 4 apps are 100% controlled by one person, Mark Zuckerberg. There is no board or committee that can overrule him. If rumors are true, he cut a deal with the previous White House to avoid regulation, so even government (until recently) couldn't stop him. There is one, semi-educated, ruthless, unscrupulous person running an unprecedented experiment on billions of under-informed people. He has access to a substantial percentage of all messages sent between people every day. No one person (even an elected person) should have that much power.
  - wutbrodo 5y ago

coldcode 5y ago

I only use FB to connect to distant friends and relatives, everything else is turned off or blocked. I am not profitable to FB as best I can do. FB has peaked as a business for sure, unless they become the government somehow.

smt88 5y ago
It's possible to have a Messenger account without an activated Facebook account. Perhaps you could move to Messenger group chats and keep up with relatives there, so Facebook doesn't even get to add you to their MAUs.
- GNOMES 5y ago
  How is this done? I am not seeing instructions for this anywhere. I use messenger.com or the app regularly as it's how large group of friends talk (sigh). I haven't personally viewed main FB UI in a few years now.
  - officeplant 5y ago
    The last time I tried you could start fresh with just a phone number on messenger. That was 6 or 7 years ago so I'm not sure what has changed since then. Messenger always seemed very open to letting nonFB users in since they have a chance to be converted to full time users.
- mathieuh 5y ago
  I knew this was possible but I still completely deleted my account. Didn't want to have anything to do with Facebook at all. Friends and family know my number/email if it's something that matters. Plus, deactivating an account still leaves you the option of reactivating, and I didn't want to do that in a moment of information-starved weakness, so they must still have your data. Of course, you then have to trust that they actually do delete your data when you delete your account.
  - timmytokyo 5y ago

antiSingularity 5y ago

Everyone now knows upper management of FB (the company) are awful human beings. FB as a website / app is dead. Instagram is becoming much more widely known as a source of terrible online addiction problems for young people. It's really annoying how deeply ingrained Whatsapp has become into life (especially where I live), but they will have to squeeze a lot of money from it to make up from the decline of the first two platforms. Yes, I think the article is completely correct.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dr-detroit 5y ago
Its well publicized that Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids use iPad because the project is engineered to manipulate your brain and/or harm your brain. Anyone who uses facebook or an iWatch or any of this garbage has all the information they need. They choose to be a victim. Its a cultural problem not a Zuckerburg problem.
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  > They choose to be a victim. Did they choose to have decades of behavioral and psychological research weaponized against them in order to lash them to these systems? Did they all choose for their friends and family and huge swaths of their social life and day-to-day communications to be subsumed?
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Frankly... yes. That has been the gambit with Apple products for decades: it's not a computer, it's consumer technology. Steve Jobs owned up to this outright, championing this idea that the computer needs to disappear altogether. Everything Apple has done over the past 20 years is about abstracting detailed, rich information away from a user, which indeed leaves a lot of developers scratching their head. If you've ever seen "how the sausage" is made, you're probably twice as skeptical. Putting that much faith in any company of that size is a good way to get all of data compromised. So yes, I'd argue that they did choose that. Their complacency is their consent.

elzbardico 5y ago

It is kind of ironic that a 11 years old told researchers “Facebook is for old people” when mark zuckerberg is or at least was, a notorious ageist. Karma is a bitch

smt88 5y ago
Facebook bought Instagram and had the last laugh for a while. I'm sure they would have bought TikTok for an insane price if they thought regulators would approve the sale.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  >TikTok Well they would have bought musical.ly, which is where the non-Chinese TikTok came from.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  I think that facebook bought instagram because it saw an existential threat on it.
lamontcg 5y ago
They really changed their demographics at warp speed from college kids to octogenarians.

cushychicken 5y ago

https://twitter.com/StartupLJackson/status/329835724906041344 https://twitter.com/StartupLJackson/status/32983572490604134...

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.md/svWC6 https://archive.md/svWC6

o10449366 5y ago

Notoriously anti-FB publication keeps writing doomsday articles in hopes of them becoming true. Technology users who don't make up core users self-assured that their noble refrainment reflects broader sentiment.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
leafygreene 5y ago
Is that you, Andrew Bosworth, you almost-CTO, you Borg?

nus07 5y ago

Nothing new here . Both Facebook and Google’s business model thrives on addiction and almost all their revenue comes from ads. However much as the NYT and WSJ try to berate them these modern day tobacco companies are here to stay. Their revenue and profits are more than those of the next 10 companies combined . And no one is turning down a big paycheck and money .

aikinai 5y ago
Addiction to finding answers online?
- relyks 5y ago
  He’s probably referring to YouTube, as I also don’t see searching for information as being addictive. I do find searching throughout the day to be totally necessary though.
elliekelly 5y ago
It drives me nuts that NYT podcasts run Facebook ads about how Facebook “wants common sense regulation” or some nonsense. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t renew my subscription.
wutbrodo 5y ago
How do you figure that web search relies on addiction? This is quite a novel take to me.

dd36 5y ago

I would’ve quit FB long ago but need it for community groups.

navbaker 5y ago
I'm in the same boat, but have found that a lot of the groups I depended on FB for (local tabletop gaming groups) have been slowly migrating to Discord. Each local game store that spins up their own Discord is one less group I need to engage with on FB.

kosasbest 5y ago

> It’s far too early to declare Facebook dead. The company’s stock price has risen nearly 30 percent in the past year, lifted by strong advertising revenue and a spike in use of some products during the pandemic Stock price is not an indicator of aliveness. Facebook is morally dead. It is the new smoking. Slowly but surely people will ween themselves off it, and a great diaspora will begin. To where? Who knows, but I imagine people will have a choice of multiple services instead of one or two big behemoths (i.e Facebook & Twitter).

Yetino 5y ago
Possibly one business will come into being: quit-Facebook coaching. Probably won't be as big an industry as smoke-quitting or Alcoholics Anonymous but might still be profitable.
api 5y ago
Any other service will become like Facebook or worse unless people start paying directly for social media and privacy regulations get passed. The trend I've seen is the emergence of services that exclusively cater to an echo chamber (usually far right or far left) and will probably monetize by selling that audience out to interests who want to reach that demographic. That I'm afraid is even worse than Facebook since it puts people into permanent filter bubbles from which they will not escape unless they leave the network. Facebook is like smoking in some ways, but there is one huge difference: the dynamics of the market forced Facebook to be like that or die. Since everything has to be "free" but nothing actually is, things can only be monetized in sleazy underhanded ways. "Free" is really the central pillar of surveillance capitalism just like it was for classic wall-to-wall advertisements television.
- jraby3 5y ago
  Not necessarily. Just changing the newsfeed to show most recent first instead of their algorithm that is designed to make you angry and/or sad in order to get more clicks would be a huge step in the right direction. The next FB could be smart enough (or regulated enough) to require this change.

aynyc 5y ago

I have no love for Facebook, but it's not as weak as media thinks it is. While its user base might be older now, that age group has ton of money. 1. My favorite local events/groups/restaurants/shops are doing all on FB now. 2. Facebook market place has replaced craigslist for me in the last year or so. 3. WhatsApp is as pervasive as it gets. Oh, FB is also holding something like $64B in cash.

romanhn 5y ago
It's not that the media thinks Facebook is weak, but rather they're actively working on weakening it. FB was traditional media's darling until they realized they're losing advertisers and subscribers to social media, at which point the doom-and-gloom narratives started.
officeplant 5y ago
Craigslist is the biggest loss for me. It's such a nice simple website that doesn't require much of me to get things listed. I refuse to get back on facebook just for the market place, but damn if it doesn't make selling off old equipment/stuff much easier.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  Yeah, FB market is infuriating to use. I have no senes for whether my search is giving me "real" results or filtered results that FB wants me to see. I assume the latter. It doesn't easily allow nationwide searches. Its auto search is a hacked together steaming pile. Craigslist is/was so much easier to use, particularly with some of the aggregator sites allowing nationwide searches.
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    If you want to level-up your frustration try selling on Facebook marketplace. No one reads your ad text and they just use the vile automated one-click replies. I used to give away very nice items, assuming there are many people in need in my community, but it has become very abusive. The amount of time I have to waste is too much to justify. The only thing I would sell on there anymore is a high dollar item like a car. Even then, I don't suggest that. The last car I sold resulted in getting nagged to death by the person who couldn't figure out how to transfer the title. The convenience features of the platform are the opposite of convenient. It's cancer. Most of the people who reply to marketplace are older women who see a promoted post and just click "Is this still available?" button and never talk to you again or talk for a day or two and then ghost you after "my husband took me on a surprise trip and I won't be home until Monday, you can give it to someone else if you want." Happens too much to make it worth the trouble. I had to start selling things I wanted to give away because the price reduces 20% of the pain but anymore it's just too much effort. Craig's list, aside from potentially getting murdered, is a much better experience.

bko 5y ago

These journalists are delusional. If you look at monthly active users, you'll see a line that goes straight and up. For instance, in Q1 2021 to Q2 2022, the monthly active users went from 2.853 billion to 2.895 billion or 1.45% quarter to quarter growth or just under 6% growth annually. And that growth is sustaining with nearly a third of the world population as a monthly active user. If you look at their other stats you'll see they're similarly indicating consistent growth. https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...

ramesh31 5y ago
>If you look at monthly active users, you'll see a line that goes straight and up. It's a question of quality though, not quantity. Facebook's MAU growth is almost entirely international users from the developing world at this point, who are orders of magnitude less profitable than US users. They will remain an advertising juggernaut forever, but their cultural relevance has passed.
- hogFeast 5y ago
  This has been true for quite a while, the stock price keeps going up but it can take quite a while for the break to actually come. Also, I think what people heavily underestimate with FB and GOOGL is that the majority of their growth is coming from volume, which they are 100% in control of over the short-term. All they need to do is add another ad to the page, and their revenue goes up. The problem is that, over the long-term, this results in less and less product. With the targeting changes, with the valuable US/young userbase shrinking rapidly (amongst young people, Facebook isn't even in the top five social networks), it is very clear that management are turning all the dials they can now but this can only end one way (I also suspect a lot of the "international growth" is not real).
- bko 5y ago
  It's true that they have less US user growth, but its incredible to consider that they still have US user growth. > Facebook will experience its slowest (US) growth ever in 2021 at just 0.8%. [0] That's with a ~61% penetration in US internet users. Instagram still has pretty impressive US user growth > This statistic shows the projected Instagram user growth in the United States from 2018 to 2023. In 2020, the social network's user figures grew by 6.2 percent compared to the previous year. In 2021, the development is estimated to slow to a 3.7 percent annual growth rate. [1] The fact that revenue per user is much higher in the US and Canada ($53.56 per user) than Europe ($16.87) and much less in Asia ($4.05) [2] is an opportunity. They can get aim to bring these numbers up and continue revenue growth. They did exactly that. For instance revenue per user in Europe went from 10.64 to 16.87 from Q1 2020 to Q4 2020. I couldn't find a single statistic that would even suggest that Facebook's growth is in trouble in the foreseeable future. This points to a bigger issue with modern journalism. Their goal is to feed subscribers what they want to read. And their subscriber base is skeptical of facebook and wants to read about how their downfall is just around the corner. They've been doing this for years. But they don't bother to do basic sanity checks on their claims. You can hate Facebook all you want, but don't delude yourself in the process. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-will-experience-its-slowest-growth-ever-in-2021-2021-6?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-will-experience-its... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/426533/instagram-us-user-growth/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/426533/instagram-us-user... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...

bla3 5y ago

I don't like Facebook, but these "Facebook is declining" pieces have been appearing for 5 years now. FB (and Google) have made traditional news much less relevant, which is one possible explanation for why these articles keep appearing -- part wishful thinking, part hatchet job. Both parts mostly ineffectual so far.

gdsdfe 5y ago

Remove section 230 !!! If you're in the US, call your representative!

officeplant 5y ago
The death of 230 would bring chaos and destruction. As much as I like chaos I'm not sure blowing up the internet as we know it is worth it at this time.
- gdsdfe 5y ago
  How accountability is chaos ?
  - officeplant 5y ago
    As far as the US is concerned the web we know exists due to 230. The death of 230 is the death of every online gathering place that can't afford the levels of moderation no 230 would bring. I'm not sure it would fix anything. I'll let Mike explain it better than I ever could.[1] [1]https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
    - gdsdfe 5y ago
      use this one next time : https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/fact-checking-critiques-section-230-what-are-real-problems https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/fact-checking-criti...

gwbas1c 5y ago

I'm not sure what was the last straw for me: Either seeing anti-vax posts in my feed, or my fear of seeing "Trump really won" posts. Yes. When Trump started claiming he won the 2020 election, I was too afraid to open Facebook.

theknocker 5y ago

This is the dumbest thing I've read in a while.

jhallenworld 5y ago

I've been finding value in Facebook Marketplace recently. It's kind of a step up from craigslist- basically people on it are more willing to ship things to you and Facebook acts as a financial middleman. Facebook has been enforcing quality standards on the sellers- at least they will not pay the seller until a tracking number has been provided for shipped items. For buyers, the prices tends to be better than on eBay. Anyway, they could give eBay some real competition and could be a future revenue source if it keeps expanding.

Freskis 5y ago
Agree that Facebook Marketplace is good at the moment. I think this is because of the small number of people using it. If it becomes mainstream then it will have the same problems as all other marketplace websites.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  It is mainstream and it is painful as hell. Use it more, you will experience it soon enough.

jwogrady 5y ago

If Facebook is dying because it is becoming irrelevant why are we all talking about?

ToddWBurgess 5y ago

Instead of quitting social media I used the approach of use it a lot less. I seriously scaled back by Facebook usage and when I did, my mood improved considerably. I chalk it up to not getting all the daily anger and outrage Facebook tries to feed us. Now that it looks like the worst of the pandemic is behind us (hopefully???), and people start getting out more and seeing people in real life, I think Facebook usage will decline accordingly. Facebook got a serious bump due to the pandemic and now that things are subsiding I expect so will Facebook usage. As has been pointed out, I think we will see Facebook usage decline in the first world as the existing user base ages out and young people migrate to other platforms. Facebook's growth and popularity will rest with the developing world.

LuisMondragon 5y ago

> But Facebook’s research tells a clear story, and it’s not a happy one. Its younger users are flocking to Snapchat and TikTok, and its older users are posting anti-vaccine memes and arguing about politics.

mettamage 5y ago

I think this article has some good points. I also think that the author of this article seems to forget about products like Oculus. I also think WhatsApp could potentially not fall into this decline. It's an edge-case, which means Facebook has enough ways to spin it.

anovikov 5y ago

I wonder why it's so difficult for many people to quit. I quit 5 years ago (too many of my contacts turned disgustingly conservative and i had no interest in reading the MAGA bullshit in my feed anymore, so just deleted myself). Never looked back or had any issue with it. I just know that whatever i ever used to write there only turned into a toxic shitstorm with minimal informational or positive emotional output, it was a waste of time and energy all along.

robomartin 5y ago
> turned into a toxic shitstorm with minimal informational or positive emotional output, it was a waste of time and energy all along This is true of just-about every political conversation on FB and other social media. And, no, it isn't limited to engaging with conservatives. The extremes are present on all sides. It's absolutely horrific to watch. We have watched family members and friends turn on each other and end-up on diametrically opposite ends of the political spectrum, locked into inescapable toxic resonant chambers. The process is insidious. In other words, it tends to happen gradually, slowly, over time. The algorithms optimize and keep shoving people deeper and deeper into mono-culture echo chambers. I have personally seen people go from nice-as-can-be to merchants of hatred, again, on both the right and the left. This is no different from the kind of indoctrination that produces such things as terrorists. The difference is that it can happen much faster and it is happening to adults. They are in the grips of a machine learning algorithm with a fitness function that optimizes for nothing that is healthy for the user at all. Like I said, it is horrific to watch. About a year ago I removed all of my FB connections and only kept about a dozen direct family members, just to exchange pictures, videos and keep in touch. The rest is something I do not care to ever be exposed to again. I lost decades-long real-life friends over the effects of the FB algorithm. Truly sad stuff.
- anovikov 5y ago
  That's right, it's not just the MAGA crowd who's obnoxious, toxic and crazy. Liberals can get this way too in so many situations.
  - 5y ago

fleddr 5y ago

"Godzilla eventually died, and as the Facebook Files make clear, so will Facebook." A speculative piece with zero substance. It focuses too much on whether Facebook is still cool (it isn't) and that it is heavily criticized at societal level (it is). That does not automatically translate to weakness, decline or a full termination of the service. All of this may happen, but not a single meaningful or impactful piece of evidence is delivered to substantiate it. A quote like "Facebook is for old people" could have been made 7 years ago. It has been true for a long time, but all meaningful metrics since then are way up, not down. Plus, you know, there's quite a few "old" people in the world, and they have political and purchasing power. The US-centric take on Facebook is also limiting. In quite a lot of (developing) countries, Facebook is the ruler. It's used for everything, all day. And unlike the West, many cultures do not think its "uncool" to mingle with parents. They don't have a dismissive or hateful relationship with the elderly. Only 1 in 9 FB users is from the US, yet the entire basis for most of these type of articles is to just forget about the other 89%.

everdrive 5y ago
This is something you see with Twitter, as well. A lot of the extremism on Twitter drives a lot of journalists and politicians. But most Americans are not on Twitter.
- merpnderp 5y ago
  There's a cool dev I'd like to follow on Twitter, but they require my phone number. So I'm still not on Twitter. Their suckiness is just not worth it.
  - Cycl0ps 5y ago
    You can skip submitting a phone number. They don't make it obvious but an option to skip is there at sign up. Though from personal experience it may make the moderation system more aggressive towards your account.
    - 5y ago

resters 5y ago

This is part of Facebook's antitrust defense strategy. People under estimate the extent to which Microsoft's experience clued companies in to the importance of grand strategy in this area.

chang1 5y ago

For those that deleted their account, how do you navigate a world where more communities exclusively use Facebook? I deleted my account almost 10 years ago. I've had no regrets. However, I'm finding lately that more communities have no option but Facebook to communicate with others. I live in a somewhat large metropolitan city in the US but it's nearly impossible to find anything on Craigslist anymore — Facebook Marketplace has displaced it. Even local enthusiast groups or my children's school's parent groups communicate only through Facebook. I feel like a luddite when I ask organizers if there is a email mailing list or suggest to start one. Lately I've had urges to create an account again solely for these sorts of groups, but knowing myself, it's a slippery slope.

ryandrake 5y ago
Same here, about 10 years clean. I simply won't participate in a community that insists all communication go through Facebook-owned channels. I have found that most hobbies and groups I participate in do send out their important info over E-mail as well as whatever they post to Facebook. I've never been embarrassed to go E-mail only. And if they really insist on FB, I just do without. It's not worth it. Be part of the solution, and all that.
corpdronejuly 5y ago
This is basically why I'm back on FB despite my many account deletions. Ultimately to participate in civil society in my community I have to be in particular FB groups. I'd much rather meet people at local events, but the past 2 years basically I can either be isolated or on FB

dannykwells 5y ago

BuT tHe MeTaVeRsE

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

kin 5y ago

Yes, Facebook has issues that they need to address and strategize around, but there's still a lot of positive that Facebook brings to the table that I wouldn't overlook. There are many Facebook Groups with thriving communities of good people helping one another. These communities are Facebook exclusive and stronger than ever. Facebook Marketplace is also the safest place for me to buy second hand goods. I never turn to Craigslist anymore. Messenger and WhatsApp are still reliable ways to group message. Let's not forget Facebook includes IG which while TikTok is taking its marketshare of engagement, many users still have both and IG is not just "for old people". It's still heavily used by our youth.