
Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook - sebst
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/americans-are-changing-their-relationship-with-facebook/
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17919811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17919811)

------
wousser
No surprise. A 250MB app that needs updates every week, can’t show your
friends most recent updates on a chronological timeline, doesn’t let you chat
with tour friends, analyzes everything within the app including maybe facial
emotions, and keeps sending useless notifications to make you open the app; no
wonder people are fed up and delete it.

~~~
dplgk
Also eating battery, always wanting to do stuff in the background, showing ads
that make it seems like it's listening to your conversations.

------
josefresco
"The new survey finds that around one-in-ten Facebook users (9%) have
downloaded the personal data about them available on Facebook. But despite
their relatively small size as a share of the Facebook population, these users
are highly privacy-conscious."

9% of a huge number is... a huge number.

~~~
larrik
And yet, my wife and I downloaded our personal data from Facebook for reasons
very different than privacy (legal evidence stuff), so that's a broad brush.

~~~
kaffeemitsahne
I and several others I know just downloaded it for fun.

------
gexla
There could be a lot of story lines here. I go for web over apps as much as
possible. Less resource hogging. More control over things like notifications.

I just don't have a burning need to check my FB notifications. But I'll still
check FB a couple times a day. No need for the app, but I haven't deleted my
FB account either.

I also prefer the stripped down web version which is "free" on mobile
connections in places like the Philippines. No images, no video, just plain
text in an ugly interface. Perfect.

~~~
nradov
For most people image sharing is the primary Facebook use case. Other social
networks and messaging apps dominate plain text sharing.

~~~
gexla
For me, it depends not on what the masses are doing, but what group I want to
keep in contact with. Family, friends, locals, hobbyists, etc might all be at
different locations on different platforms. For example, one of the
communities I'm most active with uses an old PHP script.

------
tomhoward
I wonder how many people who have "deleted the app" do what my SO does and
keep using it daily via their phone's web browser whilst still telling people
"Yeah I've totally deleted Facebook from my phone".

~~~
beat
When I deleted FB from my phone, it was a solid statement of "I will not use
FB on my phone". I do still use Messenger, because it's primary contact
mechanism anymore for so many people, but I don't read the feed on my phone,
period.

~~~
Timmah
You're still giving them location data and customer profile information.
Probably something like: "white male, from $STATE, income bracket derived from
home and work location, and probably flagged as "privacy conscious" because
you never use the app. That profile is valuable to at least some advertisers.

~~~
beat
Yes, but my reasons for getting off FB aren't privacy paranoia. I don't
particularly care that they're tracking me.

I dialed back Facebook because it ate time better spent doing other things,
and I like myself better when I'm not yelling at people who are wrong on the
Internet so much.

~~~
acct1771
Paranoia? Yeah, that's a completely unacceptable phrase considering what
they're actually doing. Shame.

------
EZ-E
Imagine if Facebook didn't buy Instagram. They must have seen this coming.

~~~
aswanson
Yeah, you have to give it to Mark Z for his prescience on that one.

~~~
yellow_postit
And a flag to regulators for not blocking or at least more heavily
investigating that acquisition

~~~
aswanson
I dont know if they would have had anything to be wary of. Instagram was much
smaller then and even tech savvy folk like us HN folk didn't think much of it
at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840)

------
snarfy
I was noticing this morning that their "I don't want to see this" feature
seems to be stored client side. For a second while the page is loading I'll
see an article that immediately poofs away because the client side js reads
the setting and hides the article.

Every single time this morning that I refreshed the page, I saw a few articles
poof away. They _really_ want me to see the tabloid crap I marked as don't
want to see.

~~~
rbinv
I think it's doubtful that Facebook wouldn't store that information server-
side (you know, to achieve even better ad targeting). Maybe it's both, though.

~~~
ardy42
I think the Facebook "I don't want to see this" data is stored server-side,
but the code that actually hides posts runs as client-side javascript. That
would explain why the client spins so much loading/hiding posts you've hidden,
and why the hidden-ness is persistent across browsers.

I've gotten the impression from several accounts that, despite their prestige,
Facebook's application code is often unbelievably janky, and this just
confirms that.

------
josefresco
"Deleting the app" from your mobile is like an overweight person hiding the
cookies or a cigarette smoker hiding their cigarettes - it's at least a
conscious decision to make better choices, however everyone knows it won't
work until you actually stop the behavior.

~~~
ardy42
> "Deleting the app" from your mobile is like an overweight person hiding the
> cookies or a cigarette smoker hiding their cigarettes - it's at least a
> conscious decision to make better choices, however everyone knows it won't
> work until you actually stop the behavior.

I disagree. A cookie jar doesn't encourage you to make bad choices by nagging
you to eat another cookie if you haven't had one in while. Facebook will try
to grab your attention _any way it can_ to get you to make the bad choice to
open up their app another time. A practical and effective way to escape those
attempts is to delete their software from your devices.

~~~
josefresco
A practical and effective way to escape those attempts is to delete
<strike>their software from your devices</strike> your account.

There's also an argument to be made, that cookie makers want you to keep
eating cookies, just like Facebook wants you to keep "sharing". Facebook has
an advantage (living on a device you obsess over), however those cookies you
hid on top of your refrigerator ... are they whispering to me?

~~~
ardy42
> A practical and effective way to escape those attempts is to delete
> <strike>their software from your devices</strike> your account.

That is another way to do it, but it might not fit many people's lifestyles as
well intermediate measures like deleting the app. Facebook is a communication
channel, just like email and the telephone, and totally deleting your account
has definite costs that vary from person to person. I think it's totally fine
for people to manage how they make their own tradeoffs, and I know for a fact
that the most extreme action is often more than is really required to get
resuts.

Take myself, for example. I'm quite anti-facebook and hardly ever use their
software. But I haven't deleted my account because I have friends and
acquaintances who still use it for event planning, and I don't want to be
either left out or be a prima donna demands special treatment. I get an email
notification when I get an invite, and I only log in to RSVP and check the
event info.

~~~
beat
That's a problem for me, too. I'm in a few bands and otherwise host events,
and I'm involved in other performance scenes, so FB events are really
important to me. They're the #1 reason I can't give it up completely.

~~~
ryandrake
Meetup, Evite, probably many more in this space. All you need to invite
someone is an E-mail address.

~~~
ardy42
> Meetup, Evite, probably many more in this space. All you need to invite
> someone is an E-mail address.

I could use one of those to plan an event, but there's no way that I can force
people to use them to _invite me_ to and event _they 're planning_ instead of
Facebook. If they choose to use Facebook, I'm not getting an invite unless I
have a Facebook account.

My solution to that problem is to leave up a vestigial Facebook account that I
never use and very obviously communicates that I no longer use the site. It
contributes to the impression that Facebook use declining and ensures I won't
miss anything.

------
PunchTornado
I exited facebook too. Unfortunately, I started using Instagram instead.

~~~
edshiro
Same thing. At least I know that Instagram is mostly all fake and ego-
inflating, and I am totally fine with that.

Plus I have much stricter controls on Instagram and only allow a few people to
see my photos and videos.

------
pkilgore
Strangely, the front page is linking a better summary than the single item
view: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/facebook-
exodus-44-percent-o...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/facebook-
exodus-44-percent-of-americans-age-18-29-have-deleted-app.html)

Especially insofar as it includes this topline note:

> The survey does not measure usage of Facebook's Instagram, WhatsApp and
> Messenger, all of which remain popular overseas, and does not measure
> Facebook's continuing growth overseas.

------
sparkling
As a shareholder: not too worried about this. Instagram and WhatsApp have
plenty of room for growth that can compensate for FB users leaving. A few
weeks ago, WhatsApp released its official API[0] and at least here in Europe i
have seen many companies starting to utilize it. For example airlines, sending
WhatsApp messages keeping you updated on the status of your flight, much more
convenient than installing a extra app for every airline. Lot of potential
there.

[0] usable via third party providers, for example Twilio

~~~
heavenlyhash
I find this kind of amusing. I suspect the adoption of this varies by
area/country based on how, ahem, well, _poorly_ basic SMS is implemented and
priced in that area.

For example I notice that when in Germany, Whatsapp adoption is quite high,
because SMS rates are absolutely ridiculous. Other countries... less so.

I still get SMS (and email, but SMS frankly still _pushes_ more reliably than
data based systems) notifications for my airlines, and that also certainly
qualifies as Not An Extra App :)

~~~
nradov
SMS will always be more reliable than data service because SMS runs over the
GSM signalling side channel.

~~~
Rjevski
Which is irrelevant when GSM is going away and additionally Wi-Fi being more
and more common.

~~~
heavenlyhash
Sure.

Aaaand last airport I flew through had a wifi signup which required your phone
number.

To send you an SMS.

With a code for the wifi.

So uh...

I'll continue to take my SMS notifications (and emails, which also have nice
well-known offline sync properties...) over any more modern appy things,
please and thank you.

------
seba_dos1
I don't think it's about leaving Facebook - it's just that their app is
ridiculously bad. Some people I know eagerly switched to FaceSlim after I
showed it to them, which is just a Facebook's web interface wrapped in a
lightweight app with added notification features.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
I use Facebook pretty regularly, but have never installed the app on my phone
or tablet because of all the horrible things I've heard about it.

------
phonebucket
What is the reinstall rate? Are historicals higher or lower? What are typical
app delete rates for other apps?

So many bits of missing information that prevent these stats from actually
providing meaningful insight.

------
pjmlp
Yeah, and how many of those are on Instagram and WhatsApp?

------
BrandoElFollito
I cannot remove it on my Samsung S9+ phone, just "disable"

------
tomhoward
As this paragraph reveals, the title is predictably overblown:

> "Overall, 26 percent of survey respondents say they deleted the app, while
> 42 percent have "taken a break" for several weeks or more, and 54 percent
> have adjusted their privacy settings."

~~~
HappyRobot
The article could be clearer, but 26% might be out of all age groups. 44% is
only the people in the 18-29 age range.

I would be curious to see additional breakdowns. Sure 26% deleted the app, but
are they still using messenger? How many are using a web version of Facebook
or have stopped using the platform entirely?

