
Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook - gnicholas
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/americans-are-changing-their-relationship-with-facebook/
======
mikeleeorg
When I first joined Facebook, I used it like a typical social network back in
the day (added as many friends, acquaintances, coworkers, etc as I could),
with very surface-level interactions (pokes, shared cows and sheep with
contacts, etc).

I would post interesting articles I read and make really lame quips about life
or what I was doing.

Later, after I got married and had kids, I consciously experimented with
posting photos of my kids. Engagement on my posts shot up. This led me to
gradually phase out article sharing and life quipping in favor of kids'
photos.

I still consumed interesting articles shared by contacts though. And the
curated news that Facebook offered, even though I realized it had a risk of
being an echo chamber.

Eventually, I started weeding out people who fell below the level of a real-
life friend, because I didn't want to share family photos with them. Facebook
became a place to share kids' photos and see kids' photos from friends and
family.

Now, I mostly read reddit for interesting articles and discussions. Some
Facebook groups are decent for that, but they never quite match the reach and
range of discussion that reddit does.

Facebook is now my family-photo-sharing service. And even then, I've begun to
slow down my usage in favor of other mechanisms for sharing kids' photos.

Some of my actions were motivated by privacy concerns. Some by conscious
experiments in engagement. And some by the utility, or lack thereof, of
Facebook in general.

I wouldn't consider myself a typical Facebook user, but anecdotally, a decent
number of friends have told me their interactions with Facebook have matched
mine.

~~~
jjrh
I really liked the /idea/ behind google plus where you could put people into
circles and selectively post to them.

\- Family photos go to everyone in the family circle. \- Articles about
politics go to people in that circle (who might also be in my family circle)
\- Articles about technical topics go to people in that circle.

We all have different interests and contexts in our lives - like I might want
everyone (close friends and acquaintances alike) to know I got married but
only my very close family to know I got the flu last weekend.

The part (well last I used google plus which was a while ago) that was missing
was sorting that the other way - so when my sister posts family photos it
shouldn't show up in the 'news' group that I also have her in.

The interface for google plus sucked, but they got the right idea.

~~~
sylens
You can do this with Friends Lists in Facebook IIRC (I deleted my Facebook
months ago), but it's not as obvious/front and center like it was on Google+

~~~
keerthiko
The issue with it not being front-and-center is that it's not the default
modus operandi for everyone on the network. It's not just about how I'd want
to share my content, but also how I want others to share theirs with me. I'm
interested in my friend's adventures building a project, doing art, or
starting a business, but _not_ interested in their dog, their exotic tourism
pics, or most of their romantic lives except for close friends. It would be
nice if everyone I got connected to on my social media filtered me out based
on what they knew of me, by default.

~~~
ISV_Damocles
Would be even better if you could filter on your end. Users just tag their
posts; "Pets," "Kids," "Politics," etc and then you can uncheck any tags from
a friend you're not interested in, but leave the rest as-is. Maybe all checked
by default but you could uncheck a tag directly on the post that bothers you.

~~~
jjoonathan
> Users just tag their posts

"Just"?

That would be a disaster. It sounds like something that AI ought to be able to
do fairly well, though, so the idea stands.

------
0x4f3759df
Maybe Americans figured out it's not that much fun to post when you have to
consider that your mom, your aunt, your employer, your future employers, law
enforcement, the TSA, the NSA and foreign governments are going to read it.
Long live pseudonyms.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
There was this old and ostensibly authoritative page that was describing
hacker culture. The author said that true hackers don't hide behind pseudonyms
because they should be proud enough of what they do that they can put their
real names behind it.

It lost me there. Not only am I not proud of my social track record through
the ages, but the idea of "privacy is dead" online identification is quaint,
naive, and/or intolerable to me. For better or worse, there's a sharp,
strategic/emotional partitioning of how I interact with or present myself to
strangers, friends, family, employers, and law enforcement, and the chilling
effect applied to my behavior from all angles is very limiting.

LONG live pseudonyms. : D

~~~
beenBoutIT
There's no shortage of ways of looking past pseudonyms and identifying
authors.

~~~
sandworm101
If that were true, a great many more people would be locked up, or
disappeared, across the world. Pseudonyms have been essential long before the
internet, long before electricity. They should not be looked down upon.

Nor should they be a privilege. It is cute when a celeb adopts a "stage name".
We don't really consider that hiding, but politicians use stage names too.
When you want to actually research a person, say to find out if they have a
criminal background, cute "stage names" become barriers to legitimate
research. If the wealthy and powerful get to use pseudonyms, everyone gets to
use pseudonyms.

~~~
noobermin
Any devoted individual with sufficient will and power can track you down. Even
with a little less power, will can do it. We rely on the fatigue of
adversaries and limits on their time and resources. Any sufficiently motivated
entity can find out who you are.

~~~
gambiting
Any sufficiently motivated entity can easily bypass any kind of lock on my
front door, no matter how much money/effort I put into securing it. Doesn't
mean I should leave my door unlocked though.

~~~
noobermin
Of course not. I don't think it need be stated on HN but just in case,
security is all about probability, and part of that guess is how motivated
your adversary is. If you do a good job of making it too much of a hassle to
target you, you can get away with not worrying about being successfully
attacked.

If you are a high value target, then you need to step up your game, but people
always make mistakes and don't appreciate unusual attack vectors.

------
redefineminimal
Facebook offers the promise of socializing and having easier access to your
friends and gatherings.

The reality is that socializing on Facebook consists of posting memes and
arguments. No one is closer together for it. Facebook doesn't meet it's
promise (to the user, advertisers expectations I'm sure are met).

~~~
notacoward
Bingo. My impression is that only a few leave Facebook because of principle. A
hundred times more leave because it's not _fun_ any more. I could argue that
how much fun you have has a lot to do with how you curate your feed - mine's
good for lots of laughs and only rarely much aggravation - but most people
would rather just leave than make the effort to improve their own experience.
Same as it is everywhere else, and has been since the dawn of time.

~~~
feocco
Value of the content is what drove me away.

I tried with much effort to weed out memes and garbage content via the share
feature. I'm interested in personal photos and status updates(not twitter-
esque complaints). But I had little to no success.

Give me a "disable memes & politics" button and I'd probably be back that day.

~~~
iamdave
Sounds like you should "just get new friends".

Who else is tired of hearing _that_ worthless piece of advice? I don't dislike
these people. Most of them I even strongly agree with-morally and ethically
for the most part. Some I even disagree with. But they also wouldn't be on my
"friends list" if I didn't value them enough to see their life shares and
posts (Oh man Johnny took some amazing pictures of his new house, his new job
must really be going well, good for him.)

But holy cow how disposable do you view people to just up and remove them out
of your life because of a disagreement (cue someone replying to this post with
a morally furious statement about some nebulously defined out-group they
personally despise and why disposing of friends is okay because $group is
bad)? Never thought I'd see the day where I actually _miss_ pictures of
babies, cats and food.

And no, this isn't an appeal to my friends to be apolitical and just stop
having beliefs. I'm just fatigued with being bombarded with other people's
vociferation at something $group did.

 _Give me a "disable memes & politics" button and I'd probably be back that
day_

Co-signing this statement.

~~~
notacoward
> how disposable do you view people to just up and remove them out of your
> life

I think that's a bit of a false dichotomy. "Just get new friends" is
definitely callow, but muting someone for a while on Facebook isn't the same
as shutting them out of your whole life forever. I have a cousin I follow
about half the time. He's usually positive and funny and I love to see what
he's up to, but sometimes he gets on a really bitchy tangent about his job so
I unfollow for a week or two while he and his flight-attendant friends talk
about what inferior beings we passengers are. I'd never unfriend him, because
I value the connection FB helps us maintain. Sometimes a bit of distance is
part of maintaining the health of that relationship. Similarly, my "new
friends" are often just humor/meme pages that help me get through my own
difficult times. _Curating my feed works._ Telling people that it might work
for them isn't at all the same as telling them to get new friends.

How disposable do you view people to just up and remove a connection to _all_
of them because you don't want to take responsibility for your own experience
on a site?

~~~
redefineminimal
> How disposable do you view people to just up and remove a connection to all
> of them because you don't want to take responsibility for your own
> experience on a site?

Because I know a site isn't the only way to connect with those individuals. I
didn't really interact with them much on the site to begin with. Said site has
other exterior issues attached to it such as tracking and potential employers
invading my private life. Ultimately the site has little to nothing to offer
for me.

It's not about viewing humans as disposable. It's viewing and understanding
that a website is a thing and in itself it is disposable after it no longer
fulfills a purpose.

~~~
notacoward
> Because I know a site isn't the only way to connect with those individuals.

Thank you for helping me illustrate the false dichotomy. The great-grandparent
didn't seem to be allowing any space between full engagement and full
disconnection. In reality, there are levels of connection. At my age I have
family and friends scattered all over the world, some of them still moving to
new cities every other year. I have friends from a ski club and a family camp
who I will not see in person except during those respective seasons. Many
others have similar networks. In terms of interactions per year with the
entire set, "get new friends" and "leave Facebook" are in the exactly the same
category. They're both ways of telling others to socialize less, to fit the
speaker's own notions of right ways and wrong ways based on their own unique
experience. I think that's presumptuous. Rather, I think we should help each
other work with the tools we have to find something that works for our own
individual circumstances. It's too bad other people are too doctrinaire to
accept that.

------
spaceflunky
Lots of people are moving to Instagram because it's new and quicker/easier to
digest.

But I see Instagram going the same way as Facebook. Eventually it will not be
"fun to share when mom, your aunt, your employer, your future employers, law
enforcement, the TSA, the NSA and foreign governments are going to read it."
As another has said.

I abandoned Facebook because the connections I have that are active only use
it to post baby photos or political content. To me political content is the
worst because it is mostly whining and people feel like if they whine on
social media they are being heard and therefore validated. Not to mention the
postings of 20 pages op-ed pieces they clearly didn't read. And then one of
their random acquaintances decides to disagree and then someone else feels
compelled to "set them straight" and then its like 100 comments of bickering.
Dude fuck that...

I especially despise the people who use "Instagram Stories" for political
content because they basically trick you into giving your entire phone to them
for 1-2 seconds for their political message. Yea no thanks. Unfriend...

~~~
flying_kangaroo
The counterpoint to your potential Instagram downfall is that "kids these
days" are making "Finsta" accounts, or fake accounts that they only add their
close friends to, so they can post things they don't want the family seeing.
Facebook tries very hard to enforce people using their real names, something
that Instagram doesn't need to do.

~~~
philipodonnell
> Facebook tries very hard to enforce people using their real names, something
> that Instagram doesn't need to do.

Yet.

------
Yhippa
I'll throw my hat in the ring for how my social media usage has changed. I've
largely moved off of social media and onto chat networks. Discord seems to
have nearly every type of interest group. I use Telegram for international
sports and random tech groups. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat
usage has gone down significantly for me. I was checking Reddit daily for a
year but that has gone down significantly. I don't know if it's an Eternal
September thing or what but that site has seemed to have regressed to memes
and recycled content across all of the subreddits.

I'm still learning about Mastodon but it seems like it utilizes the same
concepts as Discord and other chat apps except it's federated which seems
really cool to me.

~~~
polaritron
Mastodon really has the exact same feel as twitter. The difference being that
CAP theorem produces really weird conversational effects.

If you look at the myriad Mastodon domains, operating as single-instance
hosted websites, on whatever infrastructure they deploy to, very, very few
sites have more than 1,000 users, and any of the under 1,000 club are filled
with mostly geeky accounts, and a fanout of a handful of lurker accounts per
each identifiable personality.

The one really, really huge Mastodon node is basically filled with sex workers
(and their johns, presumably), and is operated out of Australia.

That being said, consider what CAP theorem does to conversations as federated
servers pop in and out of existence as they go offline. It's going to be link
rot to all hell. You can figure that the prostitution Mastodon instance is
probably going to experience some pressure, and eventually collapse. And not
only that, any users on that trunk of the federation will disappear. So what
happens to the followers, and the followed? Where do the conversations go?
Does it matter? It's mostly the promotional efforts of ladies (and not-so-
much-ladies), hawking their fare.

Anywho, right now, suffice to say, Mastodon is in a weird place. The first
people driven out of Twitter, were using Twitter as a bunker, after Backpage
was dismantled. Then Twitter cracked down on those sorts of accounts, and now
they're pioneering the largest Mastodon community in operation, because there
are few open options.

So, Mastodon is likely going to become associated with that sort of Craigslist
vibe, but in the form of a Web 2.0, single page web app, right now. And where
that will take things in the future is anybody's game, but we see what happens
to these underground bunkers over and over again. Mastodon will unfold a
little bit differently though, because of it's Twitter-style publicity angle.

------
lkrubner
Around 2004, when tech writers were trying to explain why Friendster failed,
and why MySpace was becoming such a power, there was a lot of writing about
Metcalfe's law -- the more people who joined, the more valuable the network
was. Then around 2009, when MySpace was dying, there were several articles
that pointed out that the opposite was also true: the more that people
withdraw from a network, the more that network loses value.

Perhaps we will see similar articles soon, making the point about Facebook.
But I'm not expecting to see people abandon Facebook suddenly, the way people
suddenly abandoned MySpace. Rather, the process this time seems a bit more
subtle -- people realize that everyone they know (plus future employers) is
watching, therefore they have to censor themselves, therefore they have to
limit their engagement. The effect is the same, Metcalfe's Law in reverse, the
network loses value.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law)

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
The hundred billion dollar question is where will people alternately socialize
online?

Lots of people I know spurn Facebook but use Instagram. Nearly everybody I
meet on Fortnite communicates off-game via Snapchat. I personally get my
internet dopamine fix through Reddit and Hacker News, and if I want to stay in
touch with friends, I call/text/email, like the good old days of like 10 years
ago.

I don’t see a general global social network around the corner gearing up to
dethrone Facebook, but at the same time I am noticing social media usage
splintering across a myriad of sites and apps, instead of being dominated by
one giant social network.

~~~
zahrc
Wasn't it always like it? Yea Facebook is a big name since 2005(?) But MSN,
ICQ, Skype, XFire, WhatsApp and Telegram also were and are still around. (And
many many many more)

I think that if we would be talking bout people switching from using Google
services (specially considering androids Marketshare) that would be more
surprising.

------
superkuh
I have not ever changed my relationship with Facebook. I never even started
because it was obvious that a proprietary centralized platform would have
perverse incentives for censorship and spying. It's nice that other people are
finally waking up to it, but unfortunately their motivation seems to be
primarily driven by partisan politics rather than the root problem.

~~~
philwelch
[https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-
he-d...](https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-
own-a-televisi-1819565469)

~~~
irrational
Heh. I don't own a TV. The only time it comes up is when cable sales people
come to my door or stop me in a store. When I ask them if their service comes
with a TV they always get this aghast look on their face. I don't know if it
is because they can't imagine life without a TV or because I've totally thrown
them off of their sales script so they don't know what to say next, but I've
got to admit I do enjoy it.

~~~
kasey_junk
I’m surprised no one has offered one yet. They are super cheap these days.

~~~
irrational
It's probably just not a part of their script. After all, who doesn't have a
TV? It probably didn't occur to the sales script writers to include that path.

------
jakeinspace
I use Facebook for 3 things: messenger, University/student groups, and
marketplace/for sale pages.

I live outside my home country, so messenger is the only way I can talk to
many friends back home (or friends here in Canada when I'm home myself).

Being in school(as well as some employers and organizations) means there are
all sorts of groups for socializing, sports, clubs etc etc, and Facebook is
certainly the main platform for organizing these sorts of things here.

And just a few days ago I managed to find an apartment sublet through Facebook
(1 day before classes started, yes I'm that dumb).

Aside from those 3 activities, I'd estimate I spend about 30 minutes a week on
Facebook max. It's just not fun, feels very lowest common denominator (despite
analytics-driven content). I have the impression that a lot of people (my age
or otherwise) are in a similar camp: depending on Facebook for a few key
services but otherwise loath to use it.

------
Damogran6
I've poisoned my profile. Chopped the friends list by 75%, quit using them for
Single Sign On, will automatically halt video playback the second an AD hits,
Report a significant percentage of ADs I see in the timeline as 'offensive to
me'.

If they can abuse my profile, I can significantly lower it's value to them.

~~~
paulie_a
I've been banned from reporting ads more times than I can count. every third
post is an ad or some low quality suggested post. Ive definitely lowered my
Facebook usage. For all the data they collect they do a terrible job at
utilizing it.

~~~
zahrc
Their useless, annoying and most importantly toxic ads are one of the main
reasons I stopped using it. At least advertise me something I am really
interested in and not stupid ripped of play store apps.

Reddit is now doing the same thing. Yea no thanks

------
brlewis
I was temporarily excited when I saw they had a link to their methodology. I
always want to know how questions were phrased in surveys like this, since
phrasing can affect the answers. Unfortunately the 3-page methodology doc
didn't cover that.

Like many such surveys, there's selection bias here in that it's people who
have a land line and will agree to answer a survey about Facebook. This is
going to bias toward people for whom something interesting has happened
recently in their relationship to Facebook. Additional bias comes from the
fact that the only participants invited were ones who previously agreed to
answer a political survey.

------
gnicholas
> _Around four-in-ten (42%) say they have taken a break from checking the
> platform for a period of several weeks or more, while around a quarter (26%)
> say they have deleted the Facebook app from their cellphone.

44% of younger users (those ages 18 to 29) say they have deleted the Facebook
app from their phone in the past year, nearly four times the share of users
ages 65 and older (12%) who have done so._

~~~
lozaning
I wonder what percentage of those people who removed the app still use the
platform though. Anecdotally almost everyone I know has uninstalled the app in
favor of the webclient. It's usually faster, has less tracking shit, and
doesnt eat battery like their native app does.

~~~
gervase
I'm a little surprised they didn't even bother to _ask_ if anyone stopped
using FB (i.e. "deleted their account") completely. "Deleting the app from
your phone" is a pretty poor proxy for "I reduced usage of FB" in my view.

------
cryptozeus
Do you think its possible that the fb socializing was fun when it started but
after few years we all realize that its just not the right way to socialize.
You can only post so many updates and likes have no meaning anymore.

~~~
reaperducer
_Do you think its possible that the fb socializing was fun when it started but
after few years we all realize that its just not the right way to socialize_

Pretty much. It's all so pointless now.

My feed today:

Important service alert from a transit agency in some other city.

Obviously fake friend request from someone who thinks a Sharpie is an eyebrow
pencil.

Promoted post from some company I've never heard of pushing something I don't
care about.

People You May Know who are all people I don't know.

Someone else's shared memory of an event 5 years ago I wasn't at and don't
care about.

Post from a "neighborhood" group on the other side of town.

Suggested Post about something I don't care about.

Post in a language that I don't speak, but that's OK because I did
intentionally follow the Yomiuri Giants.

Post from the state parks people about a state park 400 miles away.

Image caption repost of a repost of a repost of a repost from someone who
thinks that life's problems can be solved by re-posting other people's
refrigerator magnet thoughts.

Ad for a coffee chain in another city with no locations within 700 miles.

"Breaking News" weather alert about a dust storm last week.

News item that a local TV station posted three months ago.

Photograph of someone I don't know who is friends with someone who is friends
with someone I might know.

Photo from an actual Facebook friend, but it's of his tween daughter in a
leotard. Ummm...

Ad for a coffee chain in another country.

One of those "URGENT! URGENT!!! !! Please help us find out dog!" re-posts from
someone 2,500 miles away.

A re-post of an image caption that's been around since the 1990's.

Photograph of a friend not wearing enough clothing with a bunch of other quite
hairy people not wearing enough clothing in what I really really hope is a
sauna.

Good job, Facebook. Glad to see the $70 billion spent on "user engagement AI"
is working out for you.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Yeah some of it has just gotten too silly, especially the notifications of ín
your 'neighbourhood' which aren't even in my city. Maybe this is based on US
car culture, I don't know. But they're notifying me about friends who aren't
even really friends, going to an event I wasn't invited to and have no
interest being, like a colleague from another department going to a barbecue
with his highschool friends in his hometown I've never visited in my life and
is an hour away... as an event in my neighborhood.

Just no. And it's not even on my timeline or something, it's an actual
notification, the ones we use if an actual human being sends you specifically
a one on one message.

------
erickhill
Last year I finally, after over a decade, 100% deleted my personal account omn
Facebook. I just got so fed up with it all. The service had this sour yet
addicting pull over my online experiences - a pull I grew to despise.

I had found myself either hiding or unfriending folks I'd been friends or
acquaintances with over 25 years ago. People I no longer had anything in
common with, yet had re-connected on Facebook because we could. Seeing some of
their posts, however, became a total pool of swirling toxicity.

So I finally just deleted it. I used to "take breaks" and simply disconnect it
for months at a time. But I'd never gone full nuclear option until last year.

At first I had these weird feelings of - I assume - withdrawal. They lasted
intensely for 2-3 days where I'd experience something with my kids and think,
"Man, that would have been a photo I would have loved sharing." After about
two weeks all of those thoughts drifted away. By week three, they were utterly
gone. I don't miss it one bit. I'd relearned to experience life normally and
not feel the need to put it out there. I still take a lot of pics; I just
email them to my mom now.

Now that being said, I did create an "anonymous" Facebook account for one
single use: Groups.

I'm deep into the retro-computing/gaming scene (especially Commodore) so I
created a moniker that has nothing to do with me personally. This allows me to
maintain my privacy and sanity while being able to stay "in the know" around
these niche topics.

I never post any personal articles, photos, etc. It's just for Groups. And at
least from that standpoint, I've found it very useful. None of the content
(for the most part) is ever objectionable nor even controversial. It's the new
Forum, basically.

------
everdev
I was at a store in Reno that was giving out free gifts to people who weren't
on Facebook or Twitter. The tide is turning on the public perception of
utility and safety of large social media networks, even if extremely slowly.

------
naochan
Just quit already. Plenty of meaningful relationships in the real world!

~~~
em0ney
I quit a while back. One of the best things I have done

------
benatkin
44% of people 18-29 deleting the app from their phones sounds bad, but it's
important to take into account that Facebook does all sorts of things to
increase engagement in their apps that cause some people to be annoyed.
Facebook could make their app less distracting or make it easy to turn off
annoying features, and fewer would uninstall it. It also doesn't take into
account people reinstalling it. I've deleted and reinstalled it in the last
year, and it is currently installed.

------
JumpCrisscross
Deleting the Facebook apps (Facebook and Messenger) has been a huge boost to
my productivity and happiness. Could not recommend a single thing more to the
average person.

------
IkmoIkmo
One of the big failures I think is for FB to not push friends lists more. The
default is that you have 500 people on FB that you sort of know, and that you
don't reject people that add you but you barely meet. So you end up not
feeling like you want to share anything because your supervisor is on there,
which you're work-friends with, but not close enough to share just anything.

For example, all my friends in their 20s will post pictures of them at various
raves but none of them will post it on Facebook. Everyone knows half the
people there are on ecstacy, which is fine for your friends to know, but
perhaps not all of your colleagues.

There's a great deal of limiting self-expression on FB, because it's become
such a public place. You're left with people who keep very small facebook
circles, which is a tiny minority of mostly inactive users, people with
sizeable circles who keep quiet because things you're open about to your 20
closest people, you don't want to share with the other 480, and there's people
with huge circles who are the most vocal and often extreme in opinions and
things they share.

Facebook has all the basic functionality to change this, moreso than instagram
for example. You can put all your contacts in a limited-profile list, which
reveals a profile picture, a handful of holiday pics and posts you explicitly
set to public. And then you can put 20 friends in your close circle, which
every picture and post is revealed to by default. This can be even more
private and intimate than say instagram. But FB doesn't push it. So people end
up having 1 privacy setting for everyone, accepting everyone on facebook, and
rejecting most people on instagram. Most friends I know will rather accept 100
distant accounts (travel, food, lifestyle accounts of individuals abroad or
companies) on instagram than accept a colleague that's 10 years older that you
have lunch with everyday and are cool with, and have been facebook friends
with since your first week at the company.

------
amha
This study doesn't show that "Americans are changing their relationship with
Facebook":

>Just over half of Facebook users ages 18 and older (54%) say they have
adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months, according to a new Pew
Research Center survey. Around four-in-ten (42%) say they have taken a break
from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more, while around
a quarter (26%) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their cellphone.
All told, some 74% of Facebook users say they have taken at least one of these
three actions in the past year.

Is this different from what these people have done in the past? I've changed
my Facebook privacy settings in the past year––but I've also changed them on a
regular basis since getting on Facebook. Likewise, I've always taken regular
Facebook breaks in the 13 years I've been on it.

This study is interesting, but it doesn't prove the claim in the headline.

~~~
artemisyna
I also don't quite understand why "adjusting their privacy settings "is a
metric for people changing how they use FB.

FB threw an interstitial in front of people for GDPR. It'd be weird if people
didn't change their privacy settings then?

------
cm2012
Except US daily usage of FB has been perfectly steady for 8 quarters.

~~~
frizkie
I think you can be sure that Facebook is not happy with usage not increasing,
especially over a period of 8 quarters.

~~~
cm2012
Once more than half of all Americans use FB every day of their lives, not a
ton of room to grow! They are increasing US rev though and international
growth.

------
Ws32ok
The penny dropped for me about 5 years ago. I cleared my account out. Didn’t
bother deleting the account though.

------
ageitgey
Facebook has been product-managed and algorithmed to death - two real
sicknesses of short-term thinking common in SV companies.

If you've used Facebook continuously for the last decade, you won't notice as
much because the changes have been gradual. But if you came to Facebook now as
a new user, it's all but incomprehensible. Combined with being "the place your
parents hang out", it's no surprise that no one new wants to join Facebook or
understands why they would want to be there.

Here are three concrete examples of these diseases:

1\. Comments on posts and groups are shown _out of order_ using relevance
ranking. You just see the fragments of conversation that are most likely to
get you to click and write an enraged reply without any context. No sane
designer would ever choose this design for a message posting system. It's
clear that a PM ran an A/B test and is optimizing for short term "engagement
numbers" and doesn't care at all if you can actually have a normal discussion
with their product. Juicing engagement drives users away in the long term.

2\. Since the visibility of nearly all content is algorithmic, the shittiest
content rises to the top automatically. If you are friends with people who
work on products like YouTube, they will tell you privately that the reason
there are so many conspiracy videos suggested by YouTube is because crazy
people click on ads at an absurdly high rate compared to the general public
which makes that content very valuable to the algorithm and drives it to the
top unless the penalize it artificially. The same thing happens all over
Facebook. Human misery and lowest common denominator content rises to the top
because it gets clicks. Again, you are juicing short-term engagement but
driving away users in the long term when misery fatigue sets in.

3\. Facebook has so many overlapping features and no clear product vision. PMs
have slapped on feature after feature with little consideration for the
overall product. You can literally feel the PMs fighting over screen space in
the web page layout.

For example on my default landing page, I have a live chat sidebar, a widget
to post "Stores" and separate a widget to post "Posts", separate links to
"Watch", "Live Video" and "Gaming Video", a link to "Marketplace" despite a
totally separate link to something called "Buy and Sell Groups" and yet
another one called "Offers", and all manner of bizarre and creepy sounding
stuff like "Town Hall" and "Messenger Kids"(!). There's even some bullshit
about a "Friendiversary" and a separate "Memories" tab. There must be 100+
separate "Products" on the screen that I can navigate into. Who is Facebook
for??

If Facebook is going to survive as a viable place for people to hang out,
someone with a clear product vision needs to be put in charge and the product
needs to be severely stripped down and de-algorithmed. But of course that will
never happen in a giant company, so instead Instagram will eventually overtake
Facebook because it's actually still somewhat usable. But then Instagram
itself will be PMed and algorithmed to death and replaced by something else.
It's the corporate lifecycle.

~~~
jrnichols
think that's bad, wait until Facebook gets into online dating.

oh, wait. too late. it's coming.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/facebook-dating-service-
how-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/facebook-dating-service-how-it-
works.html)

~~~
droidist2
It's interesting that Facebook is becoming everything that it was trying so
hard not to be in the beginning.

~~~
codethief
Didn't Mark Zuckerberg originally want Facebook to become an online dating
platform when he started it?

~~~
mirimir
Sort of, I think. More like Tinder than AOL.

~~~
codethief
Found it:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#FaceMash](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#FaceMash)

~~~
mirimir
Woah, I'd forgotten FaceMash.

> The website allowed visitors to compare two female student pictures side-by-
> side and let them decide who was hot or not.

... and ...

> I'm a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if it's not even 10 pm and
> it's a Tuesday night? What? The Kirkland dormitory facebook is open on my
> desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendiedous facebook pics. I
> almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of some farm animals
> and have people vote on which is more attractive.

Internet memory is an amazing thing, no?

------
sytelus
This is complete BS survey. None of these are reflected in Facebook DAU/MAU.
If anything they have gone Ted bit up. Pew Research has been becoming a joke
since past couple of years and mostly becoming just sensentionalist link bait
grabbing headline generators.

 _Just over half of Facebook users ages 18 and older (54%) say they have
adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months, according to a new Pew
Research Center survey. Around four-in-ten (42%) say they have taken a break
from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more, while around
a quarter (26%) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their cellphone._

~~~
stevenicr
as to where I think all surveys are tinged with multiple layers of BS for
various reasons, I do think it's quite possible for 30% or so of people to
change how much and in what ways they use fbook, and yet fbook could still
show high numbers of DAU/MAU - certainly not everyone who deletes the app
totally stops using it - they can access the portal in other ways.

I can also imagine that older people could be lured into using it more while
younger people abandon it nearly completely, which may show a steady MAU and
that Americans relationship with Fbook is indeed changing - they can both be
true I believe.

------
tareqak
The only value I found in Facebook around 2005 was something to keep track of
people's birthday's so that I could wish them happy birthday, but the privacy
implications seemed pretty obvious and pretty dire. In late 2010, I wanted to
reconnect with people, and I decided to compromise on privacy. Sometime in
2016 or 2017, I saw the post on HN about how to delete my account and all the
information. Given how Facebook made me feel as a user of their service and
all the different accounts of how they use personal information that I read by
that time, I was glad to have gotten rid off it then, but I wish I just stay
off of it in the first place.

------
em0ney
I don't think it's just Americans for what it's worth.

------
alkonaut
I use facebook as a calendar and event planner. And I don't see another
service overtaking theirs any time soon - for the simple reason that no other
service can hope to get 99% of a persons social circle onto one single service
again. I think the window for that kind of dominance has closed.

The question is whether facebook can afford to pay the bills in 20 years when
its only us 70's and 80's kids that still use it for only messenger and
calendars/events.

------
irrational
I was at an event recently where an older teenager was giving a speech. He
mentioned Snapchat or Instagram (or some other social media platform) and then
said "that's like Facebook for you old people". Ouch. But, I wasn't surprised.
I have children in their late teens and early 20s and they and their friends
openly mock people who still use Facebook.

~~~
yesenadam
..all those billions of them? Meanwhile in the rest of the world...everyone's
on there. Tell them not to be so embarrassingly naïve and provincial, if they
can.

------
Cowicide
The only thing that breaks my heart with Facebook going wayside is I know of
many people with illnesses who use Facebook as one of their only outreaches
for family and friends. Really is a shame that Facebook's greed and lack of
integrity is driving people away from each other in this manner.

------
mikekij
I stopped using Facebook in December of 2015, but I desperately want to know
if they count my “sign in with Facebook” SSO uses toward their DAU count. It
would be really misleading if they do.

------
yAnonymous
Facebook confronts people with their own contradicting behavior from the past
and people hate that.

------
wokawoka
Facebook - a place where you can share photos of your fugly children and
comments of your low-meaning life.

