
Facebook Use Has Been Dropping Since the 2016 Election, According to SimilarWeb - Kroeler
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2018/05/facebook-use-dropped-sharply-after-the-us-election.html
======
overgard
I don't know if it's algorithmic, or if most of my close friends just hardly
use facebook anymore, but it seems like I just rarely see anything anymore in
my feed anymore that I care about. It also seems weird that what does appear
is generally from people I'm very faint acquaintances with -- if I am curious
about one of my actual friends I pretty much have to go straight to their
profile.

Besides that though, I think it just encourages behaviors I don't really enjoy
seeing in my friends. I definitely know people who in real-life are totally
cool, but their social media presence makes me question why I ever liked them
in the first place. Mostly I see a lot of:

1) very overt attention seeking for pretty lame things (like, pretty girls
posting selfies of themselves doing nothing interesting, or dudes with gym
photos, that kind of thing) 2) Extremely broad and poorly thought out
political rants 3) sharing really vapid motivational quotes 4) people being
maybe a little too vulnerable to a very broad audience, to the point where
it's awkward. 5) This one is the worst of all. People taking passive
aggressive swipes at individuals by posting very vague status updates. I hate
stuff like that.

I don't think of myself as a super judgmental person, but whenever I get on
facebook I spend half my time just thinking "really?" and then feeling kind of
gross.

~~~
0x0
Facebook was a lot more fun when there was a chronological timeline of non-
rich-text status updates and comments from friends. These days it's all semi-
spam from pages and random week-old friend's FB activities being surfaced in a
poorly targeted fashion. I know there are interesting posts by people on my
friend list but they're simply being hidden. Maybe some fb developer was happy
with increased engagement metrics merely caused by confused users forever
scrolling up and down in desperate attempts to find out where all their
friends whose posts used to show up have gone.

And when actual friends' posts show up, 90% of the time it's a like or a share
of some uninspiring web page's article with no comment.

It's like it's become digg.com curated by your non-techie acquaintances, with
a bonus ORDER BY RANDOM() thrown in for good measure.

~~~
taneq
Also their stupid push to make each single-line shitpost bigger and flashier
and more impactful has driven the information density way down.

It was bad enough when people started posting pictures of text instead of just
posting the text. Now they're posting videos of static text. What's next,
immersive VR full sensory presentation to convey "its weekend party yay lol :D
:D:D:D:D" posts?

~~~
newscracker
It's like flashy banner ads from the 90s back again that people jumped to for
grabbing attention. At that time it was ads, now it's people posting their
thoughts in this fashion. Since Facebook provides these backgrounds only up to
a certain message character length limit, many people curate their messages
just so it would fit with these flashy backgrounds.

And because these posts with the backgrounds get larger font sizes compared to
normal posts, to get attention in a voluminous group one must play the same
dirty game. They're literally dragging people into the dirt pit.

Hope they don't introduce animation in these gaudy backgrounds!!!

Why not just give some font controls instead and remove all this background
nonsense?! (Though this could also be argued to be terrible)

One day everyone will look back at these stunts and see them for the ugliness
and abomination they are, just like we look back at banner ads with derision
and hate.

~~~
zrobotics
Wasn't the main selling point of Facebook originally that you couldn't do
flashing animated geocities crap? I remember that being the reason I signed
up, most of my HS friends had no business doing web design. Once they opened
it up beyond ivy-league, it didn't seem to have any particular status, having
a Gmail account was arguably harder (I had to get lucky getting an invite off
/.).

~~~
code_duck
MySpace was often an assault on the senses, and disorienting. Reddit can be
like that these days, perhaps worse since the interface elements also love
around and can disappear. In the early days of FB, users had even less ability
to customize the visual presentation of their pages than they do now. It’s
about like the simplicity of HN vs a 10 highly customized subs on reddit - on
one hand, users like to express their personalities. On the other,
inconsistency can make for a terrible user experience.

~~~
code_duck
(Sorry about the typos)

------
always_good
I have to wonder how many HN comment anecdotes are related to HNers just
getting older.

Yeah, I'm meeting fewer people than I did in uni. I use Facebook less than I
did in uni. As I get older, it takes more and more effort to meet people. Easy
for me to see downward trends in Facebook when I don't plot them against
downward trends in novelty in my own social life.

But then I moved abroad at 25, I'm almost 30 now, I'm meeting new people
(immigrants and locals) every month, and Facebook has become useful again for
growing acquaintances into friendships like it always was.

HNers like to grandstand about how they rediscovered how to call people
instead of messaging them, but that's still something you do with your closer
circle, not acquaintances in 2018. And that's a personal issue if you had to
quit Facebook just to relearn how to call mom or your best friends. I
certainly don't relate to that.

It's like people who condemn Facebook because they got addicted to scrolling
the news feed. Seems like condemning Netflix because you can't stop binge-
watching. At which point do you take responsibility for yourself?

Aside, SimilarWeb, like Alexa, seems pretty useless for metrics. I remember
gaining 100k+ Alexa ranking by installing the Alexa toolbar on my own machine
and visiting my own websites as usual. Never looked at Alexa ratings since.

I guess I'm getting anti-Facebook fatigue. Especially when the predictable HN
comments are things like "I quit Facebook and now I go outside again. Everyone
needs to try this!"

~~~
freddie_mercury
I would add that Americans are (possibly uniquely) politicised and can't seem
to stop constant posting about news. My friends from other countries never do
that and instead use Facebook to talk about their actual lives.

I also have anti-Facebook fatigue and HN threads about Facebook are tiresome
and predictable. It is like a never-ending line of newly converted going on
about veganism or Crossfit or whatever...but in HackerNews' case it is about
anti-Facebook and how you'll be smarter, sexier, sleep better, lose weight,
and your children and dog will love you more once you give up Facebook.

~~~
zerostar07
Facebook is actively incentivizing posting of news. I remember over the years
they made multiple changes specifically to bring more news to the users. Which
is strange, given that they had the bulk of their growth when people were
posting banal stuff and game requests.

------
jchw
While I do think it's silly to assume that #DeleteFacebook is responsible for
any serious movement in numbers, I also don't necessarily agree with the
interpretation that this is just a downturn from how active Facebook was
during the election; it seems it probably would've already dropped off and
stabilized if that were the only cause, since the election hasn't been hot
news for quite a bit now.

Speaking from personal experience, the scandals Facebook has been involved in
are only a small part of why I deleted Facebook; more than anything, I just
felt like it was not providing any value to me, just a pure time sink that I
became less and less interested in. Maybe I'm not alone.

~~~
joering2
Its also important to ask the “network effect” works both way; people sign up
in en-masse hockey stick shape grow because of others. It is quite possible
someone in your network is using Facebook less often today, knowing you are
inactive/dont exist there anymore. Eventually once the real exhodus starts, it
will be equally rapid and happy to watch, as inicial waves of signups.

~~~
r00fus
After a while the dark-pattern growth hacks stop affecting the populace, I
guess.

The "Jane is waiting for you to see her post on your timeline" stuff where FB
impersonates your friend was when my wife started ignoring everything from FB
(I had quit a long time ago).

------
AznHisoka
This data is meaningless because:

1\. There is no benchmark and we need one because SimilarWeb is based on a
panel. The less people in that panel, the less total traffic to _any_ website.

2\. Most likely cause is more app usage and less desktop usage.

Also can we please stop using SimilarWeb as some sort of authority reference?
Their panel isnt humongous. Despite the fact they pay Chrome extension owners
and later hijack the code to track everyone who installs it.

~~~
seano314
Agreed.

By chance do you have references on SimilarWeb paying "Chrome extension owners
and later hijack the code to track everyone who installs it"? Curious to learn
more about exactly what they're doing here.

~~~
AznHisoka
[https://www.howtogeek.com/180175/warning-your-browser-
extens...](https://www.howtogeek.com/180175/warning-your-browser-extensions-
are-spying-on-you/)

------
ggg9990
I see it myself. I used to see people’s baby pictures and vacation pictures on
Facebook. Now it’s mostly people breathlessly writing about the Mueller
investigation or other pointless political shit. My visits have probably
dropped 1/3 or more.

~~~
code_duck
How many friends do you have on there? Facebook shows you a tiny percentage of
the content added to your network, including repeating items way before they
have run out.

If the News Feed team is trying to show me what I actually want to see, and
not what they think will get the most interaction, ad clicks or time out of
me, they are doing a terrible job. I find that the items displayed do not give
me an accurate view of what my connections are posting. Often when I check the
pages of in-person friends, while Facebook has been showing inane political
posts by people I barely know, I have not been presented with the actually
relevant and interesting activity my (real) friends have posted during the
same time, or more recently.

I have unfollowed, blocked, and hidden so many stories about guns and
politics, yet Facebook manages to find new friends I’ve never heard of with
similar stories for my newsfeed. Ever since 2016, at least, I feel like
politics is shoved in my face every time I go to Facebook, provoking me to
interact with strangers regarding my opinions in one of the worst venues that
one can do that.

I think they may be chasing interaction, regardless whether it’s positive our
negative. Another wild theory is that they want to gather information about
members’ reaction to politics, as it is not as lucrative to record reactions
to someone’s cousin’s baby photos. The other alternatives mean they are very
bad at their jobs, so I’m not sure.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If the News Feed team is trying to show me what I actually want to see, and
> not what they think will get the most interaction, ad clicks or time out of
> me, they are doing a terrible job.

The News Feed believed that interaction reveals a preference for seeing
something. Even though they added more icons so that you weren't thumbs-upping
your friends personal tragedies to indicate that they matter to you,
interactions all mean “like” in the sense of “I like Facebook relaying this
content to me”.

~~~
code_duck
Sure, that’s what I mean by chasing interaction regardless of whether it’s
negative or positive. If you comment on something, they show you more items
like that, assuming you like to comment on those things. My impression was
that Facebook’s user behaviors analysis is way more detailed than that,
though.

There are the specific negative indicators you can give to them such as hiding
stories, which even says it will make them show fewer stories like that one,
and unfollowing people. When you unfollow someone, surely Facebook attempts to
analyze why? Neither of these seem to have an impact on the type of items
shown to me.

------
partiallypro
I have been avoiding a lot of sites since the election, largely because they
can't seem to let the 2016 election go. Reddit is the biggest, I used to use
Reddit a lot, now I'll use it a bit but generally I avoid all but a few
subreddits. The others are unbearable, /r/politics is a swamp itself. I am
willing to bet a lot of people have dropped off because politics is virtually
unavoidable on Facebook. Meanwhile on Instagram, there are very few political
posts. Facebook also changed their algorithm and now I see all kinds of stuff
I literally do not care about at all, I find myself muting people all the
time.

I follow GQ on Facebook and even things they post are so political it's
unnerving. Everything has been politicized, people are burned out. I can't
even watch a late night talk show anymore without political news being shoved
down my throat; so why would I log into Facebook and see what my old classmate
or uncle thinks? I am a very active Twitter user, but the crowd I follow sees
politics and the media obsession with it as it is, largely a joke.

~~~
sigmar
>I used to use Reddit a lot, now I'll use it a bit but generally I avoid all
but a few subreddits. The others are unbearable, /r/politics is a swamp itself

Is it "politics" that you want to avoid? or just views that differ from your
own?

~~~
partiallypro
I follow everyone from DailyKos to Weekly Standard on Twitter...I don't think
I want to "avoid politics" or ones that differ from my own, most people find
it very difficult to nail down what my views even are.

I want to avoid circle jerks, nonsensical news items and conspiracies, etc.
/r/politics and /r/The_Donald both offer no value to Reddit or society, they
are all just echo chambers, and they don't value or encourage diversity in
view points. They are the same thing but on opposite ends of the spectrum.
/r/Politics will be full of "ShareBlue" links and /r/The_Donald will be full
of Breitbart. Not sure where the diversity of thought comes into play, which
seems to miss the point of a "forum."

Anyhow, on the Facebook front you have equally uninformed people telling you
their opinion on something, usually based on a false premise from a biased
source they read...except this time you actually -know- these people.

If you do try to find a middle ground, which is generally where most truth is,
in the grey, you are attacked by both sides for not being on their team. Like
it's some game.

~~~
InternetUser
> /r/Politics will be full of "ShareBlue" links and /r/The_Donald will be full
> of Breitbart.

I know it feels good to just breezily generalize, but I just looked through
the 2 subreddits you named, and of the 125 top-voted links of the past 24
hours on /t/The_Donald, a whopping 4 of them are from Breitbart (a simply
Ctrl+F on each page shows it). That subreddit is most memes, tweets, and even
simple photos with smart-ass original titles written by the poster. Just do a
word-find on "i.redd.it" and then "imgur.com" on each of the first few pages
and see.

As for Shareblue on /r/Politics, there are no links from the Shareblue.com
domain in the top 125 links today, but I assume you were referring to the
source of the narratives; well, you would more effective in just point to
actual sites: of the top 125 links on there for the past 24 hours, 16 are from
WashingtonPost.com and 15 are from TheHill.com.

Edit - here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/](https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/)

~~~
sudomake
I'm pretty sure "ShareBlue" links include washingtopost.com and thehill.com.
Those sites are pretty much in total agreement with ShareBlue's positions

------
rbosinger
I think I'm just getting bored of information. I even find myself unexcited to
check Reddit, or major news sites, or even this site. My routine used to be to
check Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, CBC and CNN, GitHub "explore" and
HackerNews. Now I just tend to get up in the morning, eat a muffin and stare
off and think about stuff. I'm tempted to look at these sites but know I won't
see anything that tickles me. So I find myself actually just deciding not to
look at all.

~~~
been_done1234
I have a friend of a friend who has described the same feeling. They weren't
sure what to make of it.

~~~
LeRoyVoss
I have the same feelings too.

In my case it is because of information being overwhelming. I just check a
couple of sites at maximum now, the digital wellbeing thing that Google
presented at io this year really resonated with me

~~~
brain5ide
I have the same feeling but am still guided by the monkey in my head that has
the habit of checking everything. Any good replacement ideas for that dopamine
hit?

------
jfindley
I don't see any strong correlation here. To me it looks like it was dropping
from about Aug'16, and this blog has merely drawn a line for the US election
and called it a story. Based on a quick google search, the US is only number 2
in terms of total Facebook users[0] - maybe it might have been worth
considering other factors outside of US politics that might account for this
trend?

0:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-
based-on-number-of-facebook-users/) (No idea how accurate it is, but.)

~~~
askafriend
Exactly, you have to tease out seasonality and the impact of special events
like elections on user behavior. For example, is the percentage drop any
greater than after previous elections?

I think people underestimate the truly global scale of Facebook. Even then,
the US is a fraction of FB's user-base.

------
maytc
The author confuses mobile web for mobile app traffic which isn't accounted
for. One is the traffic from users using facebook.com via a browser on their
phone versus using the installed application. Maybe the drop is real or
Facebook has successfully converted more users to the Facebook app, Messenger
app, etc.

~~~
lopmotr
Holy crap. Now it makes sense. I couldn't understand how Facebook usage could
have been steadily dropping for over a year. So the entire article is
pointless and wrong.

------
JansjoFromIkea
Facebook is two things for me right now: 1\. A lazy way of registering to
sites 2\. New Urbanist Memes For Transit-Oriented Teens (my feed is
exclusively this one right now)

The notifications going a bit mad about 18 months ago or so when they
introduced the market stuff and "your friends are interested in going to X"
was what ran me off. I'd unsubscribe and unfollow and new worthless ones would
take up their place.

Now I don't even bother checking my notifications; I'll log in maybe twice a
day to check if I received any messages, have a scroll through NUMTOTs, that's
about it.

~~~
thex10
Heh, me too! It was only in the past year that I've discovered NUMTOT and
other fun groups, and my enjoyment of FB has increased a lot since I've joined
them.

~~~
Silfen
NUMTOTS everywhere! (Is _this_ peak transit?) In all seriousness, it's
definitely more fun than vanilla facebook, although I'd have a hard time
calling it a shelter from politics or praising its level of overall discourse.

------
shubidubi
I don't have "data" to back it up but my personal experience is the same. My
feed feels "empty". most of my posts don't get any likes/comments and most of
my friends that used to post few times a day are doing it once a week now.

------
Zaheer
Interesting chart showing FB steady decline over last 5 yrs on Google Trends.
May not be the strongest correlation but interesting nonetheless:
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=Instagram,facebook)

~~~
chrispeel
Larger time window with comparison to Google and Snapchat.

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F02y1vz,%2Fm%2F045c7b,%2Fm%2F0mgkg,%2Fm%2F027lnzs)

Google is also dropping in Google Trends. Assuming there is a drop in usage of
FB (not just a drop in searches for FB), I guess the 2016 election is only one
contributing factor.

~~~
unfunco
It seems odd to me that iPhone wouldn't spike, especially so around 2007. Am I
reading this wrong?

~~~
KenanSulayman
It did spike, being compared with Facebook et al. normalizes the spikes away
though:
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F027lnzs)

~~~
unfunco
I think I expected it to be much closer to the popularity of FB, I'm quite
surprised.

Unrelated, I recognise your name from GitHub, thanks for your work on the
psychonaut wiki, I've used that resource many times.

~~~
KenanSulayman
Great to hear, thanks! :-)

------
bmarquez
Personal anecdote time: The line on that chart, the 2016 election, was exactly
when I cut back on my Facebook use. I had former friends who posted stuff that
night like "white people need to die" and "unfriend me if you voted for
[insert candidate's name here]".

Notwithstanding all the privacy issues, I remember the days when Facebook used
to be _fun_. Back before timeline, back when it was limited to colleges, back
when "Random Play" was listed as a desired relationship option. Now it's meme
and clickbait article land.

------
horseLOGIC
I can see why people are desperate to "prove" that the supposed election
meddling or the Cambridge Analytica scandal is causing Facebook to fail, but
the data just doesn't show that at all.

People make a big deal about privacy, but the actual users of social media
usually post stuff because they want _everyone_ to know about it. The people
who really care about privacy are not on social media. There's already a
general understanding that when using the internet, you're getting tracked by
various actors and people (even begrudgingly) accept that.

That same graph shows that Facebook usage has been dropping virtually every
month before the election and after, totaling almost 50% loss. There's no
exceptional change visible due to any particular event. There are some strong
upticks in there as well, but the longterm trend is down.

I believe the most reasonable explanation is simply that people are moving on,
just like they moved on from MySpace and other previously popular platforms.
Young people are leading the charge here, it's just not as comfortable when
your grandmother and high school teacher can see you on Facebook. It's
_uncool_.

~~~
yorwba
> users of social media usually post stuff because they want everyone to know
> about it

> it's just not as comfortable when your grandmother and high school teacher
> can see you on Facebook

I think most posts on social media are targeted at people in the poster's peer
group, and the only reason that everyone else can see them too is that
broadcasting is the default way to contact multiple people without prior
coordination (say, by joining a group chat).

~~~
horseLOGIC
I don't actually use Facebook, but I'm under the impression that you can post
to just the people who are your friends or just a set of friends. There's
certainly the possibility to at least not broadcast to the whole internet.

------
nevatiaritika
I sometimes wonder if truly my friends have started posting less on Facebook
or is it their algorithm messing up again?

I see almost no original content posted by friends and only posts from pages
with comments by my friends on them ("X and Y commented on Z page's photo")

~~~
cycrutchfield
Stuff like that is a surefire sign that your friends are indeed posting less
and they are just filling up the space with second degree content.

------
thebradbain
I actually love to browse Facebook, mainly because I've taken the time to
curate groups / pages I enjoy getting updates from. In addition, all of my
friends still actively use Facebook too (all college kids) for status updates,
photo uploads, and a LOT of event postings (most college campus
groups/clubs/activities have migrated to be exclusively on Facebook).

Maybe it's one of those things that drops off after highschool / college /
when everyone goes their separate ways ?

------
marcell
AFAICT, this is traffic for desktop web and mobile web. It doesn't include the
mobile app. Who's to say people aren't just moving to mobile app?

~~~
freyir
The article claims it includes app visits: _" Since then, total monthly visits
to Facebook in the US (both on the web and through the mobile app) have fallen
[by 3 billion/month]."_

~~~
AznHisoka
SimilarWeb has no fool-proof way of tracking app usage, nor even app downloads
(don't trust anyone that says they can, unless they're Apple or Google).

What they _can_ track is the number of ratings - nothing else, but there's
very little correlation between that and app usage.

------
edpichler
I miss the blog and personal websites era. These “too easy to share” years
created a lot of noise and we still do not have a good alghoritm to filter it,
and even if we had, we would blame it for filtering content and shaping our
thoughts.

Users like to be in control. I have seen the rss emerging again, specially
here on HN discussions, and I believe that is the best solution to follow
updates.

------
gkanai
I, for one, am actively trying to limit my FB usage. I started actively
limiting my FB usage last summer, so way before the Cambridge Analytica news.
I do use it still for some groups, and Messenger from time to time, but I try
hard to stay away from the main FB service.

I am also slowly but surely deleting content from my account. Deleting old
content, deleting likes and whatnot.

~~~
mayniac
>I am also slowly but surely deleting content from my account. Deleting old
content, deleting likes and whatnot.

I would have likely stayed on the platform if there was an easy way to do
this. One of my biggest concerns wasn't just Facebook analysing my data, but
allowing others to access it indiscriminately and I wanted a way to delete it.

There's no API functionality to delete/untag/unlike anything. Timeline is a
mess, there's no bulk delete option or option to even select multiple/all. No
"delete after X days" feature. In the end I spent 3x12 hour shifts writing a
python script using image processing to find delete buttons in timeline and go
through the motions to delete everything. It took about 3 hours for me to
write/debug/test 300 lines of spaghetti python and another 30 or so for it to
go through everything and try to delete. All of which should have been doable
in <30 lines, a single API call, or by just hitting ctrl+a and delete. I
deleted my account afterwards mainly out of spite.

Considering how politicians are already getting stung by things they posted to
FB/Twitter in their teens here in the UK it is absolutely incomprehensible to
me how Facebook doesn't have half decent delete functionality.

------
xster
Ironically propagations of articles like this is actually more or less the
reason I stopped using Facebook.

No one reads primary sources anymore. All kinds of baiting conclusions and
titles are drawn on absolutely minimal data with zero scientific rigor like
this blog entry and my feed is just reshares of these McNews for shock value
and social credits.

------
ulfw
Facebook has lost it when it stopped being a social network where people
follow their friends' lives. Once it became a 'I share random links or "news"
stories off the internet' feed it lost all its value. There is nothing social
about a Fox News or MSNBC story link. At all.

------
hn_throwaway_99
I didn't see any sort of methodology in how they get that data. While the
article said it included both web and mobile app traffic, I'm skeptical unless
they provide more data. Could be that usage is just moving more to the app
than web and the counting is different.

------
btilly
By "Facebook" do they mean "Facebook" or "Facebook + Instagram + ..."?

~~~
tgb29
That's my question too. It seems more Facebook users are migrating to
Instagram. They did announce 150 million people now use stories. My
experiences could be biased, but it amazes me how many Instagram users don't
know it's a product of Facebook.

------
tehsauce
Doesn't this go against the numbers that facebook put out in its most recent
quarterly report?

------
makecheck
Facebook dependency can’t really drop significantly as long as people keep
_requiring_ it for things that don’t technically need Facebook.

Don’t link to articles only viewable on Facebook. If somebody plans an event
on Facebook, push back and request to be sent the details and say “I can’t log
in to Facebook”, etc. Check in with your friends in non-Messenger ways, e.g.
phone messaging or (gasp!) actually seeing them in person. Make walled-off
sites unacceptable.

------
sandrobfc
Facebook is alive and well, at least for everyone who uses it on a daily
basis. The mass users of Facebook are not the least worried about the negative
effect of social networks and those who actually left after recent events are
not enough to affect those statistics.

Probably what's hurting it the most is the new users count, as I think that
nowadays new users pick other social networks to hang out with their friends,
such as Snapchat or Instagram.

------
nkkollaw
I wonder how many were just bots during the election.

My experience from running Facebook ads is that Facebook is crawling with
bots.

We might never know the actual numbers.

~~~
adventured
Facebook recently said they deleted 583 million fake accounts in just the
first quarter of 2018. It's entirely plausible a lot of that supposed usage
drop, is more aggressive bot elimination.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-deleted-583-million-
fake-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-deleted-583-million-fake-
accounts-in-the-first-three-months-of-2018/)

~~~
nkkollaw
Yup, good point.

We also have no idea how many more there are, certainly FB wasn't warning
anyone that their numbers might have been incorrect because of bots any time
before getting rid of them..?

~~~
adventured
From what I understand of the bot deletion in question, these were newer
accounts and are not counted in the official monthly active user figures (the
2.2 billion number). That is, Facebook's monthly active count isn't going to
suddenly show 1.7 billion now instead.

------
dontwaitesforme
So bored of Facebook hate.

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xstartup
Correlation is not causation.

SimilarWeb buys data from ISP DNS resolvers. During the same time, Cloudflare
DNS resolver was released to the public and marketed heavily.

Even my nontechy gf started using Cloudflare Resolver. She saw that on twitter
was curious about the benefits and was not disappointed.

So, yeah usage did decline a bit but not that much.

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elvirs
I can say the same thing about my observation of how my friends use Facebook.
Most of my friends have started to comment and post stuff lot less in the last
year or two.

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sdan
Waiting for school to end. I rely on Facebook for quick messages and group
classroom posts. Once Summer break starts, I can #DeleteFacebook until next
year.

~~~
droidist2
Will you start over again with a new account in the Fall?

~~~
sdan
Sorry for the late reply. I most probably will. I'm working on making a
middleman website to remove FB tracking. If it works out, I'll rely on that
instead.

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tzury
just so you'll know, similar web gets it data, mainly by spying on users via
browser extensions. this is far from being legal. or at least a dark gray
area.

I have personally complained about that, once found private URLs I sent to
clients, and were not published elsewhere ever, were listed in their stats
under that specific sub domain, but never got a satisfying response, if at
all.

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0x7f800000
Good.

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Nimsical
This is just bad data journalism.

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shahocean
I suspect Facebook is going to die "The Orkut Death"!

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picacho
Nice. that platform's just wasting primates' time.

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fringedgentian
Ah yes, I remember The Great DeFriending of 2016.

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smt88
This is only web traffic and doesn't tell us much. Facebook usage overall
might be up, as far as we know.

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anovikov
I gave up on Facebook about 10 months ago because of my friends there, most
people who kept posting something were Commies/Putinists - which is a Russian
equivalent of Trump supporters - those with liberal views just stopped
posting. For me, it became a conservative outlet. I no longer saw anything of
value for me there, and just deleted my account.

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jsemrau
Bot DAU's are a fraudulent metric. FB ( and other social media sites) have
been using this for quite some time to inflate their performance.

~~~
spookthesunset
Really? You think Facebook has an army of bots trying to inflate their
metrics?

~~~
cycrutchfield
It wouldn’t be the least ethical thing that Zuck as ever done...

