
Facebook lost a million users in the US and Canada last quarter - fahd777
https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2018/02/01/i-salute-the-1-million-north-americans-who-ditched-facebook-last-quarter/
======
pmlnr
A lot of the HN readers come here to comment "I left FB". Well, good for you.
I didn't - if I did so, due to a variety of factors, I'd have lost the option
contact a few people. I'm not talking about friends, I'm talking about the
option of connection, should it ever be needed, much like a rolodex.

I did, however, started using the HTML only version of Facebook (
[https://mbasic.facebook.com](https://mbasic.facebook.com) ). Since you
manually have to click the pagination at the bottom, the urge to keep
scrolling is extremely low if the first page doesn't offer anything valuable -
which is the case most of the times.

Some links and articles coming via certain groups are quite useful if you have
interest in some niche topic. A decade ago these would have been on small
subcult sites, but those days are gone, sadly.

Anyway, what I wanted to say: it doesn't matter if you leave FB or not, your
time is your time. If you spent hours on FB and the only way for you to leave
that behind was to delete you FB account, that's not completely FB's fault.

 _Don 't get me wrong though, I hate FB and what it's made of, all the hoarded
user data, with their one and only goals of keeping you fixated at the screen,
but this doesn't change the fact that while it's simple to manipulate people,
getting rid of addictions is usually only a matter of will. It's not different
this case either._

~~~
ravitation
So, what you're saying is that you came here to comment "I didn't leave FB"?

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Oras
It would be interesting to know the age group of those 1 million and why did
they leave. I left Facebook 6 years ago and its a never come back! The time I
used to browse Facebook was replaced by reading books, articles or even just
to do nothing which is still more valuable comparing to wasting time on FB.
The only thing that was interesting for me was the feed from tech companies
and tech news which now I just use twitter to do so.

------
th0br0
I don't think we know whether this million were genuine users or fake
accounts?

Original post: [https://www.recode.net/2018/1/31/16957122/facebook-daily-
act...](https://www.recode.net/2018/1/31/16957122/facebook-daily-active-user-
decline-us-canda-q4-earnings-2018)

------
kumarvvr
Left fb about 2 years ago.

\- Gained a few hours everyday. \- Gained a solid amount of battery time on my
phone. \- Increased my happiness as I dont have to look at all the hyped up,
over advertised, 'Look, my life is a bed of roses' posts from everyone. \-
Better focussed on my own life.

~~~
segmondy
I didn't leave, I can go weeks without checking it out. I do once in a while
and when I do, I spend at most 30 minutes. I rarely post anymore, just see
what my friends are up to. I only use it via browser and never installed the
mobile app or messenger.

My free time, well, I started using twitter...

------
spodek
> _Why are people quitting Facebook? The rise of fake news, meddling by
> Russian agencies, and plenty of content in your feed that you don’t remember
> subscribing to may all be to blame._

Those reasons are nice, but I hope the reasons become things like going
outside to play tennis or shoot some hoops, cooking dinners from scratch,
biking to work, and active things like that. Then, instead of posting pictures
about it, to continue to more active things with people you're actually in-
person with.

~~~
ravenstine
The media seems to have a very different view of how the public used Facebook
than what I think reality dictates. Even my most left leaning friends have
never told me they were particularly bothered by fake news on Facebook,
besides maybe some viral crap posted by their aunt.

People are leaving Facebook because it's not that satisfying, and the public
has become increasingly aware of this. Pretty much everyone knows that people
exaggerate the hell out of their lives and that maintaining an online persona
has diminishing returns. It's also just not cool anymore because Facebook is
seen as a highly censored platform, and you never know when the algorithm has
decided that your post won't "go viral" so many of your friends never see it.

Then of course there's seeing the same ads over and over again.

But no, it's because people are concerned about Russian meddling and fake
news!

Hahaha

------
nofilter
As my overall Facebook usage had naturally gone close to "check once per week"
in 2017, and do even that because of habit, I decided to delete it entirely
from my life as soon as 2018 came around. The only thing that I'm not 100%
happy with is that without Facebook you also don't have Messenger, which was
the main thing I used to communicate with people. However, I still use
Instagram to share Stories and photos and, luckily enough, it has a chat built
in as well which works wonders.

~~~
spondyl
Just so you know, Messenger can be used standalone.

It tethers to your phone number, and backs up an account key to Google
Drive/(iCloud for iOS?)

Functionally, it's the same except you don't have a profile of course. The
only missing thing is that messenger.com doesn't support this so your only
point of access is mobile.

~~~
sofaofthedamned
Doesn't work with Messenger Lite which requires a full fat FB account.

~~~
nofilter
Messenger Lite which requires the bloated FB account. Ironic.

~~~
sofaofthedamned
Agreed, it's crazy. No interest in a FB wall or whatever, just want to chat to
my family. Not a chance.

------
geebee
I use facebook to keep up with events. I follow the feeds of organizations,
not individuals (I hide almost all personal feeds). I follow SFJazz, symphony
and opera, various music groups, theater companies, a few outdoors/ecology
organizations. There are probably other ways to get this, and I'd prefer not
to use facebook at all, but facebook provides a decent roundup.

This works pretty well for me. I can keep up on interesting things without
being subjected to constant political sloganeering.

------
konart
I still can't comprehend how can you spend "two hours everyday" there. What
can you possibly do there for two hours? 0_o

I have account on all major social nerworks (Fb, VK, Twitter, Reddit), but I
rarely even open their pages\apps, except for reddit and some evening twitter.

Two hours per week is the max I can possibly think of.

~~~
lostmsu
What about daily 2h routine of HN?

~~~
konart
Definitely not 2h for me.

Over all I thinl I spend more time deciding on music tracks to listen then
things like social networks\blog posts etc.

------
lolive
Switching from FB to Instagram. What a progress :)

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scardine
I left facebook a few years ago when HN became my favorite time-sink. :-)

------
mark_l_watson
I think about doing the same. I limit myself to less than 10 minutes a week on
FB, and find that worthwhile to get news of people I have mostly lost contact
with and see pictures posted by friends and relatives.

Reevaluating time spent on FB has also made me consider time spent on HN,
Reddit, and Twitter. Tech social media is fun, sometimes useful, but I try to
be mindful of the time I am spending. For me a good substitute is taking
classes on Course and edX, read more books, and listening to audio books.

~~~
adventured
I've taken to checking FB a few times per week, spanning less than maybe ten
minutes. It's not quite worthless, it's a notch just above that. I find I can
catch up with the posts that are valuable extremely quickly.

I abandoned Reddit entirely, in the lead up to the election. I was a daily
reader/contributor there for years. It got so disgusting on all sides I
couldn't stand to be around it. Politics seemed to invade everything.

HN is the only community I still read daily. I credit the fairly strict and
consistent moderation here, and the effort to stay very close to its
foundational premise.

~~~
mark_l_watson
One thing that I like about reddit is being able to choose subreddits to
appear on home page. I choose funny pictures of the day and a few tech topics,
no politics.

------
empath75
Sold my Facebook stock and stopped using it for anything but the messenger app
on my phone three months ago.

~~~
lolive
Just for my information, what is the difference between Facebook Messenger and
WhatsApp?

I am a (very new) user of WhatsApp. And I think it is a GREAT little tool. A
woldwide OS-agnostic Facetime+iMessage. SOLD!

~~~
empath75
I already have a big network on Facebook.

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ogdoad
This is awesome, I think I will give it the thumbs up and share it with all my
nonconformist friends.

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jacksmith21006
I am curious how much of this is PR. They are getting a lot of political
pressure.

