20 ms·

"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 Fac

by 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.
    - merpnderp 5y ago
      Thanks, I did skip it on signup, but now every time I try to log in, I'm forwarded to a phone entry page, and there's no option to leave it except by signing out or hitting the help page. It appears I'm worthless to Twitter without my phone number, something I'm not willing to give them.
- debacle 5y ago
  Statistically, almost no one is on Twitter. I think the recent numbers I saw were less than 3% of people send 90% of tweets and only 8% of Twitter users tweet at all.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    I only lurk on Twitter and recently have been paying some more attention to such numbers. One thing that indeed sticks out is that if you take a particular topic and inspect the leaders in that topic, many have more than 100K tweets. That's over 270 tweets per day if you'd compress it to a year. A quick glance at these leaders' timelines shows that they tweet all day every day, you need to scroll endlessly to just catch up with a few hours of their activity. It's basically all they do. On the other end of the spectrum are indeed people that never tweet or hardly ever tweet. And there's an important in-between category. People that do use it frequently, mostly commenting on those extreme leaders, yet for some mysterious reason, they can never get above the magical number of 2,000 followers themselves. They are basically the cannon fodder for the Twitter elites. It is them that like, retweet and comment, all to boost people already winning at the game even further.
    - stevage 5y ago
      Why is 2000 a magical number?
      - fleddr 5y ago
        I don't know, just a pattern I spotted.
  - SonicScrub 5y ago
    I remember reading something similar that studied online spaces in general and found similar trends. I wasn't able to find that article, but I found this one for Twitter [1]. It's an important to remember that when lurking any online forums. The vast majority of content is submitted by individuals who live their entire lives through online spaces. The narratives being formed by people who are by definition, not normal. Sometimes that can be beneficial, like when one person submits over 76k SQL answers on Stack Overflow [2], and sometimes it can be destructive, like when a tiny fraction of disconnected radicals can present fringe political ideas as mainstream (aided by a complicit media). Somewhat related, I encountered this curious phenomenon myself accidently when trawling through CBC news articles in the lead up to the latest Canadian election. I casually scrolled through the comments for some guilty pleasure entertainment, and found the same few commenters posting on every single article. I took a peak at the profiles of two commenters who were flighting over their political view points and found they each had over 100k comments.... On CBC news articles.... [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28642326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28642326
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
Also, it's cheap to buy cool. Facebook has built a machine to monetize cool social apps. There will always be new apps for them to buy and monetize.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Sure. But what worked with WhatsApp might not work with the next cool social app. Snapchat IPOed, and why would the typical founder of a hockeystick growing social network sell to facebook if there is a realistic chance of becoming the next facebook? Not that we would be off any better, so.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Because they won't wait until there's a 25% chance of becoming the next facebook to buy something, they'll do it when there's a 5% chance. There's at least 5 years between that 5% and 25% chance; to have that 5% chance means you probably have 50 million users. And after this company turns down that first offer, and after facebook releases the clone, they'll take the second. I don't think anyone has had a realistic chance of becoming facebook since facebook became facebook. Google didn't have a realistic chance of becoming facebook, and they partially wrecked a lot of their other properties in the attempt.
enumjorge 5y ago
I had an entirely different interpretation of the article. It seems to me that it's mostly centered around evidence: the WSJ articles based on Facebook's leaked research. The author isn't saying FB is in trouble because kids think its uncool. He's saying FB itself thinks they are in trouble as evidenced by their own data--"internal researchers predicted that daily use would decline 45 percent by 2023"--and by the desperate attempts to remain relevant like trying to target the pre-teen audience. I think the point of the article is that while FB might look strong to outsiders, if you look at internal communications and efforts, they sound pretty worried about becoming irrelevant. What stronger evidence could you want than that?
- fleddr 5y ago
  Of course they are internally worried. Every business is internally worried, otherwise they wouldn't be doing their jobs. The point is proportionality. A single signal, the slow decline of teen activity, which has been known for some 2-3 years, is used to lead to an existential conclusion. A service with 2.7 billion users that has kept growing despite years of criticism is called "weak" for it. I consider that a baseless dramatization. Seeking next growth areas (such as pre-teens) isn't "desperate", it's just Facebook trying to keep growing the user base, which is obviously a hard thing to do at this size.

by fleddr 5y ago

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.
  - merpnderp 5y ago
    Thanks, I did skip it on signup, but now every time I try to log in, I'm forwarded to a phone entry page, and there's no option to leave it except by signing out or hitting the help page. It appears I'm worthless to Twitter without my phone number, something I'm not willing to give them.
debacle 5y ago
Statistically, almost no one is on Twitter. I think the recent numbers I saw were less than 3% of people send 90% of tweets and only 8% of Twitter users tweet at all.
- fleddr 5y ago
  I only lurk on Twitter and recently have been paying some more attention to such numbers. One thing that indeed sticks out is that if you take a particular topic and inspect the leaders in that topic, many have more than 100K tweets. That's over 270 tweets per day if you'd compress it to a year. A quick glance at these leaders' timelines shows that they tweet all day every day, you need to scroll endlessly to just catch up with a few hours of their activity. It's basically all they do. On the other end of the spectrum are indeed people that never tweet or hardly ever tweet. And there's an important in-between category. People that do use it frequently, mostly commenting on those extreme leaders, yet for some mysterious reason, they can never get above the magical number of 2,000 followers themselves. They are basically the cannon fodder for the Twitter elites. It is them that like, retweet and comment, all to boost people already winning at the game even further.
  - stevage 5y ago
    Why is 2000 a magical number?
    - fleddr 5y ago
      I don't know, just a pattern I spotted.
- SonicScrub 5y ago
  I remember reading something similar that studied online spaces in general and found similar trends. I wasn't able to find that article, but I found this one for Twitter [1]. It's an important to remember that when lurking any online forums. The vast majority of content is submitted by individuals who live their entire lives through online spaces. The narratives being formed by people who are by definition, not normal. Sometimes that can be beneficial, like when one person submits over 76k SQL answers on Stack Overflow [2], and sometimes it can be destructive, like when a tiny fraction of disconnected radicals can present fringe political ideas as mainstream (aided by a complicit media). Somewhat related, I encountered this curious phenomenon myself accidently when trawling through CBC news articles in the lead up to the latest Canadian election. I casually scrolled through the comments for some guilty pleasure entertainment, and found the same few commenters posting on every single article. I took a peak at the profiles of two commenters who were flighting over their political view points and found they each had over 100k comments.... On CBC news articles.... [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28642326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28642326

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago

Also, it's cheap to buy cool. Facebook has built a machine to monetize cool social apps. There will always be new apps for them to buy and monetize.

hef19898 5y ago
Sure. But what worked with WhatsApp might not work with the next cool social app. Snapchat IPOed, and why would the typical founder of a hockeystick growing social network sell to facebook if there is a realistic chance of becoming the next facebook? Not that we would be off any better, so.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Because they won't wait until there's a 25% chance of becoming the next facebook to buy something, they'll do it when there's a 5% chance. There's at least 5 years between that 5% and 25% chance; to have that 5% chance means you probably have 50 million users. And after this company turns down that first offer, and after facebook releases the clone, they'll take the second. I don't think anyone has had a realistic chance of becoming facebook since facebook became facebook. Google didn't have a realistic chance of becoming facebook, and they partially wrecked a lot of their other properties in the attempt.

enumjorge 5y ago

I had an entirely different interpretation of the article. It seems to me that it's mostly centered around evidence: the WSJ articles based on Facebook's leaked research. The author isn't saying FB is in trouble because kids think its uncool. He's saying FB itself thinks they are in trouble as evidenced by their own data--"internal researchers predicted that daily use would decline 45 percent by 2023"--and by the desperate attempts to remain relevant like trying to target the pre-teen audience. I think the point of the article is that while FB might look strong to outsiders, if you look at internal communications and efforts, they sound pretty worried about becoming irrelevant. What stronger evidence could you want than that?

fleddr 5y ago
Of course they are internally worried. Every business is internally worried, otherwise they wouldn't be doing their jobs. The point is proportionality. A single signal, the slow decline of teen activity, which has been known for some 2-3 years, is used to lead to an existential conclusion. A service with 2.7 billion users that has kept growing despite years of criticism is called "weak" for it. I consider that a baseless dramatization. Seeking next growth areas (such as pre-teens) isn't "desperate", it's just Facebook trying to keep growing the user base, which is obviously a hard thing to do at this size.