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Meta has close to 4 billion people worldwide using one or more of their products. Their brand problem doesn't extend much further than the HN comment section.
by paxys 1y ago
Meta has close to 4 billion people worldwide using one or more of their products. Their brand problem doesn't extend much further than the HN comment section.
- bitmasher9 1y agoInstagram or WhatsApp are absolutely critical for daily functioning in certain circles of humanity.
- jachee 1y agoYeah, but facebook^WMeta didn’t develop those… they bought them to stifle competition.
- splatter9859 1y agoWhatsApp I can buy due to the communication factor, but Instagram you're really going to have to sell me on fitting into the category of 'critical for daily functioning'. Instagram. Critical to life. Naah.
- xeromal 1y agoI kind of agree but a lot of modern american small businesses run completely on facebook. At least in the 4wheeling community they do
- crossroadsguy 1y agoWhatsApp. Instagram not really. WhatsApp has unfortunately become "official" (not in a figure of speech) mode of communication in certain countries, one of which has more than a billion people in it.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoDepends on who you are. Quite a lot of careers require you to market yourself on social media now. You can hate Meta with a passion but acknowledge that you still have to reach customers who are on Instagram.
- crossroadsguy 1y agoWell, what you are pointing out sounds like a role “Influencers needed”. So that’s obvious.
- input_sh 1y agoInstagram as well absolutely. There's all sorts of "small business owners" whose entire existence is conducted via an Instagram account and DMs, the same way there were entire businesses that operated via Facebook pages in the past.
- Aurornis 1y agoIt’s interesting to see how out of the loop many HN commenters are on social media. Any teenager or even occasional social media using adult could confirm that Instagram is a hotbed for business operations and marketing for many business. I barely use it myself but this is plainly obvious. The number of overly confident yet entirely incorrect comments about how other people use WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook from people who obviously aren’t familiar with this platforms is interesting.
- mgh2 1y agoMark was right: https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/ https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/
- pier25 1y agoYou can use their products and still hate the brand. I use Whatsapp daily (as does everyone I know) and there's no way I'm buying anything from Meta.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoYou might not be buying anything from Meta with cash, but you are with information about yourself and your network.
- pier25 1y agoYes, but that's besides the point. My comment was in the context of "Meta has a brand issue" which is absolutely true.
- bergie 1y agoI was able to avoid WhatsApp until we started our current multi-year sailboat cruise. All the local cruiser communities are on WhatsApp. So when we got to the Canaries, I created an account. But I'm making sure WhatsApp will not be used for anything outside this context. That way I can nuke it when we're back home.
- pier25 1y agoYeah it has replaced SMS everywhere but the US and China.
- Karrot_Kream 1y ago[dead]
- motorest 1y ago> Meta has close to 4 billion people worldwide using one or more of their products. If you ask any of those 4 billion people if they know WhatsApp is related in anyway to Meta, your answers will be split between "no" and "what's a Meta?"
- mrheosuper 1y agoand do you think they will stop using Whatsapp if they know Meta is the parent ?
- leokennis 1y agoI think 99% of WhatsApp users would gladly stop using WhatsApp and switch to something like Signal, if they had verbal agreements of "everyone else" that they would also switch. Everyone is only on WhatsApp because everyone is on WhatsApp. That is why they tolerate the Meta ickiness of it.
- pjmlp 1y agoI bet there are more people knowing what Meta is than Signal or Telegram.
- mnmalst 1y agoThis sounds like a product idea to me. Make a website that shows the status of your friends that are willing to switch to signal. You send an invite to all your friends first so the list keeps up to date as soon as one of your friend made a decision. If everybody agreed you can switch as a whole. Even better if signal would implement it themself!
- mrheosuper 1y agoWell, your plan could work if all your future friends also agree to this.
- incone123 1y agoAs far as I can tell, Signal automatically tells me which of my contacts are already on the app. If someone is willing to switch, the obvious thing to do is install it.
- leokennis 1y agoActually Facebook and WhatsApp are the only products I know of where even completely non-tech people like my mom or the other parents at my soccer game have ever mentioned something along the lines of "yeah I did X on Facebook so now whatshisname Zekkerburg knows about it too..." These people probably have zero awareness about cookies, tracking, online disinformation campaigns and online security in general...yet the one "tech" thing they know is that Facebook spies on you. Everyone is aware of how Meta kills privacy in their products. The products are still useful, especially at price point "free". And they are still riding on an installed base and network effect from a time before we cared that much about the privacy infringement. But, actually paying for the privilege of being the product...that seems like an extremely hard sell from Facebook for me.
- rmonvfer 1y agoIn my (totally limited) experience, most non-tech people don’t even know what Meta is. WhatsApp is almost the only messaging platform used where I live (and pretty much everywhere outside the US). I remember doing Bug Bounty for Meta a while ago and telling some friends and family about it, and I had to repeatedly explain they _are_ Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram and many other things because they would look at me like I was talking about aliens.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- taco_emoji 1y agoThose 4 billion people are using a free product with strong network effects. That has basically zero bearing on who's going to buy useless spyware glasses.