
U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says - rmason
https://www.marketplace.org/2019/03/06/tech/exclusive-look-numbers-showing-users-leaving-facebook-by-the-millions
======
peteretep
By far the biggest factor that had me stopping checking Facebook, and indeed
LinkedIn, is number of utterly fictitious notifications they generate. There
was a time a few years back when that red dot made me drop everything to check
FB, but these days it’ll be some completely bullshit message they’ve made a
notification out of. Feels like they got greedy for my attention and killed
the golden goose there. I check it about once a day now, and in the browser
not the app. If the notifications were still meaningful I’d probably still
have the app and all the metadata that sent them.

~~~
Slartie
Even more annoying is the same thing that they do with email notifications.
They seem to keep inventing new "categories" of notifications all the time
that I haven't yet opted out of - basically because I seem to be only able to
opt out of just that specific category that they just sent me an email about,
when I click on the "don't want to receive any more of these mails" link below
the message.

And every time, they gladly acknowledge that I will not receive any more
messages of that kind.

"Okay, you won't get any more mails about new messages from friends. Okay, you
won't get any more mails about stuff your friends liked. Okay, you won't get
any more mails about stuff some other random people liked. Okay, you won't get
any more mails about new stuff posted in groups you joined. Okay, you won't
get any more mails about new stuff posted in groups you did not join, but we
think you might be interested in. Okay, you won't get any more mails about new
photos posted by your friends. Okay, you won't get any more mails about new
photos of cats posted on Facebook. Okay, you won't get any more mails about
news articles with dogs in the title. Okay, you won't get any more mails about
postings your friends liked that complain about the weather and were written
by women of age 35-40."

Okay, admittedly the last three were exagerrated, but all the categories
before have been actual "notification categories" that I successfully opted
out of, before I put a generic Facebook email filter in my mailbox, because
apparently nothing else is able to stop their overly-specific-category-
generation-engine from spewing out new categories to keep me busy opting out
of.

~~~
mihaifm
I tried setting up email filters based on subject and keywords, I currently
have around 15-20 but it's a futile attempt, they keep changing everything,
they've even changed the language. It really feels like I'm harassed by a
beggar at this point.

~~~
lcnmrn
I filter messages that contain the Unsubscribe word.

~~~
mcnichol
Omg...so simple...so brilliant.

------
no_wizard
Here's the kicker, which I think others have pointed out, but I want to say
this succinctly:

First, to quote the article:

> _The big gainer, interestingly, is under the same roof as Facebook. It 's
> their co-owned Instagram_

Now, to my point: The average person does not care about privacy, just the
illusion of privacy (I suspect people reading this site intuitively know this.
At some level, nearly everyone is in different ways, it turns out.)

Instagram provides that illusion by not injecting opinionated content into
your feed (The most obvious example: you aren't seeing injected news stories
in your Instagram feed, generally its only ads and people you follow, and the
ads are marked)

Rest assured, they're getting their data's worth, maybe not the same way, but
photos (particularly metadata on the photos that most smart phones, for
instance, default collect) are just as (if not more so) valuable, not to
mention there are still a myriad of other ways of collecting privacy intrusive
data about users.

Hows about that?

(just to show my assertion is not completely unfounded, check out this survey:

[https://www.pewinternet.org/2015/05/20/americans-views-
about...](https://www.pewinternet.org/2015/05/20/americans-views-about-data-
collection-and-security/)

The survey says: 9 out of ten americans care deeply about privacy (particuarly
around data privacy and collection)

Yet, our actions, even faced with the _outright knowledge of those very things
being actively and routinely violated by services_ , is not enough for people
to leave platforms for good, simply, people shift between social media
outlets, like those leaving Facebook over privacy concerns yet still continue
to use Instagram, in fact, Instagram is projected to grow as noted in this
article, in part _because of people migrating away from Facebook_ )

~~~
dd36
I think they do actually care about privacy but are only ever offered
illusion.

The problem really is lack of choice.

~~~
baroffoos
No one wants choice either. Having 100 social media apps on your phone is not
ideal. We want one choice that is also a good choice. That seems virtually
impossible when companies are motivated only by profit and only kept in check
by customers having a better choice or by government regulation.

If facebook was driven purely by the motivation to help people stay in touch
with their friends and to find events going on it would be a truly wonderful
platform. Virtually every issue on facebook comes from seeking profits. At
least problems from facebooks side anyway. There is also the social issues of
propaganda and jealousy but facebook would have more time to deal with these
when they aren't making the company more money.

~~~
oblio
> That seems virtually impossible when companies are motivated only by profit
> and only kept in check by customers having a better choice or by government
> regulation.

Assume this in every situation and you'll never be disappointed ;)

------
kojackst
Note: personal opinion bellow

It seems to me that the overall interest in Facebook is decreasing. The social
network hasn't had any interesting feature added to it in the last couple of
years. It's becoming boring and boring, so that's why I believe people are
leaving.

Still, Instagram and WhatsApp are running strong with barely no competition.
We don't see any news about their user base decreasing and news channels don't
seem to dislike them. Facebook is doing a good job making sure their biggest
three platforms are seem as independent from one another, keeping Instagram
and WhatsApp almost free from controversy.

Personally I see no loss for them here. Besides, they will promptly acquire
any new players that look promising, or shamelessly copy them as they did with
Snapchat.

~~~
tombert
> Instagram and WhatsApp are running strong with barely no competition

You're not wrong, but I find it a bit frustrating how much resistance I get
whenever I try and suggest using Signal instead of Whatsapp. As far as I can
tell, it has pretty much all the features of Whatsapp that I use, without all
the spying.

~~~
jjrh
No one wants to install ANOTHER app just to talk to you. Most of us already
have at least 3 messaging apps they use on a daily basis and probably a whole
lot more they use on a weekly basis.

~~~
sm4rk0
But why WhatsApp is one of those 3 and Signal is ANOTHER app? Not so long ago
WhatsApp was ANOTHER. Now it's not. What changed?

~~~
schwap
I don't remember WhatsApp ever being ANOTHER. It was the first cross-platform
messaging app I ever used.

~~~
sm4rk0
Wikipedia says it was released in January 2009. Google Talk started in August
2005. For a GTalk user, it was "another".

------
socrates1998
Anecdotally, I work with teenagers and none of them have a Facebook pages.
It's viewed as a place for old people and parents.

For me personally, it's almost impossible to deal with. Way too many political
posts from my friends and family.

It's probably best use for me is local events and an occasional major event
from a friend/family member.

Still, I find myself going there less and less.

From a small business standpoint, it's just not worth the time, effort and
money to advertise there. It's much more effective to focus on getting
referrals with my current clients.

I really wish there was a paid social media service that everyone used. I
would gladly pay $5-$10 a month for something that didn't sell my data.

~~~
gwbas1c
> For me personally, it's almost impossible to deal with. Way too many
> political posts from my friends and family.

Bingo, that's what's doing it for me.

Before the 2016 presidential election, Facebook was fun. It was also a great
way to get news.

But now, what I'm finding is that a lot of people on Facebook just don't know
how to behave in a public forum. It makes it painful, because someone always
knows someone who's a jerk online.

I really don't know what changed, to be honest. Did Facebook change, or did
too many people come to the party?

~~~
ashelmire
Lots of things changed.

Facebook began as an exclusive social network for upper-class students.
Gradually it grew to encompass not just all of America, but the entire world.
It turns out, many of us well educated people don't really want to network or
socialize with poorly educated people. Police started monitoring our
activities, so the events all but disappeared.

The world changed, too. Facts used to matter; we read books and the newspaper,
not 25 reasons to be an idiot on Buzzfeed. Truth used to matter; less of the
nation was as polarized. It was easier to get along without people shoving
their ignorant political ideas in your face. Then 2016 happened, with the
Russian trolls and other psyops used against us, and some of us realized we'd
fucked up by buying into and encouraging others to join this network and
others like it.

I could probably go on for a lot longer, but that's the gist of it.

~~~
smokeyj
What changed is FB had to make money - and they discovered "outrage" sells.
That's the full answer. It has nothing to do with the lower-class crowding up
your social network lol.

~~~
ashelmire
It really does have to do with that. It ceased being useful as a networking
and socializing tool. It was a slow descent, but that’s the truth of it.

------
JohnFen
I'm not sure losing that age group has much to do with Facebook's scandals.

This is purely anecdotal, but with my daughter and her social group, Facebook
stopped being a service of interest to them quite a while back. Not because of
data issues, but because (to use my daughter's words) "Facebook is for
businesses and old people".

~~~
Leace
What does your daughter use to connect with friends? Just curious.

~~~
the_pwner224
Not parent, but I am a college student at a large university in the US.
Instagram is just _huge_ , for the entire [university] population here.
Snapchat is still used but not as common - Instagram is eating up Snapchat's
userbase. GroupMe is used by the entire population for group chatting, and
many males (especially more 'nerdy' guys) use Discord as the preferred general
chat application.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Snapchat is the most annoying platform I have ever experienced for messaging.
Disappearing messages (with no option for them to stick around) is literally
an anti-feature.

Instagram is just annoying, because it's an image sharing platform being used
as a messaging platform. I actually get annoyed when people message me on
Instagram, because it means that their messages to me are scattered over
different platforms.

~~~
saberience
You can keep any message you want by tapping on it. So yeah, you clearly
haven't used SnapChat much.

------
jasonbarone
The crazy thing is, for me, Facebook was actually useful for following news
ever since Google Reader died. I spent quite a bit of time following many
pages (people and businesses) in order to stay up to date on news, and I was
incredibly happy at the results. I even went the extra effort to unfollow
"Friends" that I didn't want to offend by unfriending.

Facebook simply screwed up everything. They removed custom lists a few months
ago, so instead of chronological posts that I could navigate with lists, it's
now back to a single algorithm-based feed. Many of the people I spent time
unfollowing continue to blast me with notifications for literal shit posts
that I can't disable. Did you notice that when you swipe a notification in the
feed, there's no way to "Hide all notifications like this" or "Hide
notifications for Events from xxxx"? It's unbelievable what Facebook is doing
to ruin the experience. It's now impossible to disable specific categories of
notifications or from people, without just unfriending them.

I moved back to Twitter and barely touch Facebook now. The product decisions
are just plain frustrating. It's now no longer an app for following news.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
Exactly. It feels very much like giant company syndrome. Some directors picked
metrics like "frequency of fresh content on top of newsfeed," then that metric
become a goal for some manager a few levels down, and when metrics become
goals, they stop being good metrics. Nobody with the power to stop it would
have been focused on "average value of content item," and everybody else had a
motivation to get whatever content their group was in charge of some
visibility, so it's more or less inevitable that it'd all go to shit.

------
standardUser
It feels like Facebook now contains all of the negative parts of social media
- complaining, arguing, chain posts, fake news, relatives, etc. While
Instagram now has all the pleasant parts - pretty photos of families,
vacations and food! So these days I find myself using Instagram regularly and
Facebook almost never.

Having said that, I'll never leave Facebook until something else replaces it.
It's the only place I have to keep in touch with a couple hundred people I
would otherwise have no contact with. And it's still common for various groups
of people I know to use it for event planning.

I also find myself having to share invites and news with people I know who are
not on Facebook. They appreciate it, but I consider it a pain in the ass that
they could easily resolve by getting a Facebook account again and just
checking it once a week.

~~~
fullshark
Instagram to me seems like the worst parts of social media, in that it's a
vanity feeding mechanism amplified. Which in turn makes it an anxiety inducing
experience if you aren't doing "cool things" that make other people jealous.

~~~
peruvian
I enjoy using IG but I don’t follow many real people. I follow organizations,
brands, etc. I like seeing their new stuff as well as any news such as sales,
new releases, etc. I follow photographers and artists. It’s essentially a feed
of stuff I like.

I wouldn’t follow “real” people unless they’re close friends. Don’t want to
see people’s lunches or vacations.

~~~
standardUser
It's also the only platform of any kind where I have clicked on ads... on
purpose!

------
ryanianian
I live in a somewhat large gated community that has a pretty active facebook
group. The group is somewhat loosely moderated by the HOA (for better or
worse) so in general people stay on-topic and neighborly. It's great for
asking for recommended contractors, asking if somebody has a thing they can
borrow, etc. This is one of the few things that keeps me on facebook.

Of course facebook is a _terrible_ venue for this group - with its algorithmic
feed, horrible search, and showing "notifications" when nothing of consequence
has actually happened. If there were a more prevalent network I'm sure the
group would move but there's really no other alternative that already has a
critical mass of users and people aren't going to sign up for a new service
unless everyone else in the neighborhood is already there.

~~~
atwebb
Nextdoor really needs to get it's act together on siloing neighborhood
discussions, it's basically built for this.

~~~
echelon
Nextdoor is terrible. I get push notified of every lost cat or dog. Or
whenever the local grocery store is out of cabbage. Or "suspicious people"
walking around. I can't find a way to get any value out of it.

~~~
romwell
>Or "suspicious people"

The bane of Nextdoor. Every person within 100 yards is suspicious, especially
if they have "Hair color: african" (I kid you not, this one is from my
neighborhood Nextdoor).

------
JumpCrisscross
Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing,
consider what I did over the past few years:

1\. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; _next_

2\. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera
apps on your phone; _then_

3\. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; _then_

4\. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone;
_and finally_

5\. Log out of Facebook on your desktop.

It took me 2 years to go through from step 1 to step 5. It has made me happier
and more productive. I still have a Facebook account. But the friction of
grabbing my laptop and logging in forces me to consider "is this what I want
to do? Or am I thoughtlessly reaching for the crack pipe?" (It's been months
since I've cared to log into Facebook. Feels more like trudging through spam
in an old e-mail inbox, now, than anything compelling.)

~~~
frabcus
I quite like the plugins that remove the newsfeed too - or unfollow (not
unfriend) everyone. It's a nice intermediate step so you can still use events
and messages, but the most annoyingly addictive bit is gone. The light
versions of the apps can be a useful step too.

Finally, after logging out - deactivating your account, and then deleting your
account (or better, getting a trusted friend to do so for you) are the last
steps. (If you're interested in UX, are you a little bit curious what the UX
for those two is like?)

------
toomanybeersies
I'm going to go against the grain here and say that I really like Facebook and
think that overall it's a good platform with some flaws.

Right now I'm messaging 2 different groups and about 5 different people, while
organising an event that's happening in a few weeks, and organising supplies
and camping for a festival on the weekend. After this festival in the weekend,
I can post the photos I took on Facebook, where everyone can tag each other in
the photos, so they can be easily found.

For me it's an integrated social and event management platform. It works
incredibly well for this purpose. If I need to find a generator for an event,
I can ask in a group chat, or even put up a timeline post asking for one, and
it will probably manifest. I had a friend who's laptop died and he needed a
temporary replacement, so he put up a post and later that afternoon was in
front of a new laptop.

There are some really shitty features that I hate about Facebook though, to
the point that they induce anxiety. For messenger, being able to see when
people were last active and when messages have been seen really makes my
anxiety build up. I know that people aren't ignoring me and just take time to
reply, because I do exactly the same myself, but it still plays in the back of
my mind.

The second really shitty feature is that the people you interact with more are
the people you keep seeing on your newsfeed or at the top of your messenger. I
had a bit of conflict with a friend a while back, so we were giving each other
some space to cool down. I kept seeing all her posts at the top of my
newsfeed, and she kept appearing on the top of my contacts list for messenger,
Facebook would even give me notifications that "Alice and 89 others have
responded to events near you tomorrow". It actually did my fucking head in to
the point where it was causing significant problems with my mental wellbeing.

I understand exactly why Facebook does this, to increase activity and
engagement. But fuck it pisses me off.

~~~
quelltext
> It actually did my fucking head in to the point where it was causing
> significant problems with my mental wellbeing.

You could have turned off seeing updates from her. That would not solve all
the things you mentioned but it should in almost all cases suffice.

Friends giving each other space is maybe a thing but not being able to handle
seeing her name pop up at all is a very extreme state of affairs about which I
would suggest consulting with someone.

I think it's unfair to expect a feature that caters to that. You cannot just
full ignore somebody in real life either, e.g. friends mentioning her name.

Facebook does in fact allow you to block a person or unfriend them. If you and
your friend are in agreement about giving each other space, those two options
should be enough from a reasonable feature expectation standpoint.

If you are friends with someone and interact a lot it's obvious and generally
a good thing that Facebook highlights them. Facebook cannot know on its own
that you are currently "not actually" friends with someone.

~~~
bryan_w
You can actually "take a break" from a friend in newsreel. It mutes them for
like 30 days. Don't know if it translates to messenger though

------
morningmoon
_We only show trace numbers of people leaving social media altogether. They
're obviously just transferring their usage. The big gainer, interestingly, is
under the same roof as Facebook. It's their co-owned Instagram._

We already knew this. Another day on HN, another clickbait FB post.

------
b_tterc_p
> How the study was conducted: A total of 1,500 persons were interviewed to
> explore Americans’ use of digital platforms and new media. From January 3rd
> through February 4th, 2019, telephone interviews were conducted with
> respondents age 12 and older who were selected via Random Digit Dial (RDD)
> sampling through both landline phones and mobile phones. The survey was
> offered in both Spanish and English. Data was weighted to national 12+ U.S.
> population estimates.

I wouldn’t put much faith in this estimate. While facebook’s is probably an
overestimate of people actually engaged in their platform, this survey doesn’t
seem very useful to me.

~~~
ryana
I am always sad to see responses like this. Statistics is a very well-defined
mathematical discipline, and any good research firm will use weighting
techniques to adjust for demographic-based likelihood of response. The results
they get from this are very accurate.

If you have concerns about Edison's methodology or application of standard
survey weighting then I think that could be a fruitful conversation. But
implying that 1,500 responses can't be predictive for a country of 350 million
is woefully misinformed.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Phone surveys were accurate when robocalls and cellphones didn't exist. Now
you're only sampling the people who aren't discerning enough to reject unknown
numbers.

------
pnw_hazor
Social media is weird. At the beginning of this year I unfriended everyone and
unsubscribed from every group/page except for a couple parent groups of
schools my kids are at.

It was odd how it felt like betrayal to unfriend people I know and love.
Though experiencing those feelings for something as dumb as FB did confirm to
me how evil social media is.

The human mind isn't really configured to handle social media. It feels so
personal.

~~~
swozey
I deleted my FB last year and was really concerned, like you were, about
offending people. I messaged my then girlfriend "hey I'm deleting fb" just so
she'd know. I have friends that while we're not super close we'd talk a few
times a week, usually just sending funny jokes. They didn't see me on
messenger so they just texted me. They didn't even realize I'd deleted it. One
of my closer friends who invites me to her kids birthdays and what not went to
send me an invite and made me an evite when she didn't see my account. She was
surprised when I told her I just deleted fb.

I realized I really had never gone to anyones actual profile page in maybe a
year or two. Hell, the last profile I may have actually taken more than a
cursory glance at was my ex when we first started dating. I guess nobody else
does either when you can just @them.

With that said I do feel very out of the loop but it's allowed me to focus on
my own life and I'm on a social media cleanse (doh, hn) anyway.

Interestingly enough I do keep having feelings about reopening it but I
permanently deleted so I can't and I'm glad I did. Prior to that I had
temporarily closed it and reopened it a handful of times.

------
sleavey
I've blocked ads ever since ad blockers were a thing. Facebook have finally
managed to consistently get past uBlock Origin, and seeing ads in my news feed
for the first time is really, really annoying me. They look similar enough to
real posts that I read them automatically before I realise, which I find
really disturbing. It's enough that I'm seriously contemplating not using
Facebook any more.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
If you use the facebook.com website (not the app) they are _torturing_ HTML to
get ads past the blockers. Stuff like putting every letter in a separate span
or div, weird encoding tricks, etc.

~~~
throwawaymath
Do you examples? That sounds educational.

~~~
sleavey
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19115460](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19115460)

------
autoconfig
Whenever the topic of Facebook gets brought up I see a lot of comments on how
"the news feed sucks". That it's filled with hateful comments. Leaving
facebook is great because it takes toxic people out of your lives! What seems
to be missing from the conversation is that Facebook to a large extent is what
you make it to be. _You_ decide who to follow, who to keep as your friend,
whose post you want to see. There is nothing stopping you from simply removing
everyone except your family members and your good friends in which case I'd
argue it actually becomes a great tool and a net positive.

~~~
thirdsun
I think a lot of that has moved to WhatsApp - at least here in Germany people
create and participate in groups for all kinds of social circles and
activities:

From never ending, ongoing groups, like family, friends, clubs / sport teams
or work to temporary and occasional groups dedicated to events like birthdays,
travel with friends, festivals, etc.

The concept of groups is easy to grasp and it's much simpler than organizing
Facebook in a similar way. It includes people who don't have a Facebook
account (all they need is a phone number and even grandma can join in) and
participating feels much less public than posting anything on Facebook.

Of course I imagine Facebook won't mind that transition and development all
that much.

------
ebertx
I disabled my Facebook account 4 years or so ago and didn't miss it. That
said, I now have a daughter with an extremely rare genetic disorder. Although
there are a number of databases out there specifically to help parents find
other families with rare genetic disorders, we didn't find anyone until we
resorted to Facebook. This is only one anecdote, but from my personal
experience thus far, Facebook is still unfortunately the best place to find a
needle in a haystack.

~~~
josephwegner
This is my same experience. Son has JIA. There is a JIA-specific website that
connects you to JIA-specific support groups.... but there are none active near
me, and I live in a very big city. I expressed this frustration to my wife who
uses Facebook often, and she joined an active JIA community in moments.

I guess now we have two anecdotes. That makes us a statistic, I think?

------
dotcoma
No problem.

Bots will take up their place, and clueless companies will keep on wasting
dollars by the millions.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucerogers/2019/01/18/will-
it-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucerogers/2019/01/18/will-it-take-an-
adtech-crash-to-end-digital-ad-fraud/#a9232991368d)

------
ajcodez
I’m sure readers on HN are excited about the day of privacy reckoning but I
stopped using Facebook because the news feed sucks. I’ll stare at a photo of
someone I don’t remember trying to recall how I know them and then for the
next month it’s photos and videos and requests for travel recommendations from
them until I block them. It’s clear despite all the data Facebook has
collected the company has no clue who I care about or what I’m interested in.

~~~
jaabe
I think the news feed sucks even if it’s a picture of current contacts. It
probably always has, I mean, there must be a reason Facebook wanted news,
brands and whatever else there.

I just never followed things, so right now the most exciting part of my FB
news feed is the commercials for board-game kickstarters.

I still use Facebook though. It’s still the best place to organise events with
friends because it’s still the only platform everyone is on. I wish it wasn’t,
but because the various other platforms and messaging app didn’t share an open
protocol, no other platform has “everyone”.

Eventually when enough people quit FB, no platform will be good at organising
events. Or maybe we will finally agree to use e-mail. :p

~~~
fyfy18
I only use Facebook for Messenger for the same reasons - everyone is on it. If
that wasn't the case I'd happily delete my account.

The thing about Messenger is it's pretty good too. My wife and I used to use
iMessage. When I switched to Android last year we decided to try Telegram.
Notifications are often not send and calls are buggy at best. Messenger just
works though, just like iMessage did.

------
HeavyStorm
I closed my Facebook account around 2012, maybe even earlier. Recently I had
to reactivate it (oh, and that's when I found out that Facebook never deleted
my account). It still active but I simply don't use it. And I believe that's
the best compromise for most people. It's still there, and if you need to
lookup someone, for instance, just log in. Elsewise, just don't use it.

------
mpoon
The headline is disingenuous. I suspect a lot of folks are taking away from
the headline that Facebook the company is on the ropes, however looking into
the primary source[1] indicates that they are only talking about Facebook the
product. The press is not making that distinction here. A vast amount of
people leaving "Facebook" are just going to Instagram.

[1] [https://www.edisonresearch.com/infinite-
dial-2019/](https://www.edisonresearch.com/infinite-dial-2019/)

~~~
colmvp
Most of my friends despise Facebook, but at the end of the day we're still
using their other products like WhatsApp and Instagram.

------
kazinator
Someone switching from FB to Instagram does not genuinely count as someone
leaving Facebook; they are just switching to a different implementation of
Facebook owned by the same company.

And the only reason most of them are switching is to follow the herd. They
don't want to be left behind in some place where they are not able to obtain
as much validation (fishing for likes and followers). That type of personality
needs to be "where everyone else is".

Their lives are exactly the same, except with a different social networking
application.

------
cm2012
Facebook isn't going to lie on their quarterly filings on user growth. It's
far more likely this random company's polling methodology is flawed.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
Enron and Arthur Anderson weren't going to lie on their quarterly filings
either. Not saying it's true or false, but there's also the possibility that
user count methodologies can change to create the appearance of growth.

~~~
oooooooooo000
How do you suppose that Enron "weren't going to lie" on their quarterly
flyings? This analogy is a bit rich.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
It's rich that you created an account specifically to make this comment. Lying
on financial reports is not uncommon and there are high profile examples, so a
sweeping appeal to honesty on the part of a multi billion company caught lying
in the past is foolish.

------
reaperducer
A bunch of my Facebook friends are taking a break from Facebook for Lent.

It'll be interesting to see how many realize they don't need Facebook in their
lives and simply don't come back.

------
miguelmota
Deleted facebook years ago and never regretted it. It's always the same people
posting the same stuff. It's simply just boring for me because I'm not
interested in personal lives of people. Twitter on the other hand is great for
news updates and it's the only mainstream social network I use.

------
MarkMc
Facebook says their North American monthly active users have increased 1%
since 2017. Edison Research says there are 6% fewer US users since 2017.

I'm curious to understand the reason for this discrepancy. Edison says,

 _We 're saying, "Do you currently use Facebook?" Facebook is probably
measuring it on, "Do you ever open the app, or do you ever use it on any
level?"_

Here's how Facebook defines monthly active users:

 _We define a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in
and visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, or used our
Messenger app (and is also a registered Facebook user), in the last 30 days as
of the date of measurement._

So is Edison's explanation reasonable? Maybe people only think they "use"
Facebook when they scroll through the feed - and people are still using it for
other purposes.

~~~
buboard
using facebook has become a sort of taboo in certain cycles, so people may be
misreporting it intentionally

also, a significant drop in users should be detectable by every website which
relies significantly on facebook traffic

------
chinathrow
I have no mercy for them. I have no explanation other than pure evil for the
thing which i describe below - happy to hear other thoughts on this.

1) On mobile Chrome, in a not private tab, I flag an ad served via the FB ad
network, to be precise it was on imgur.

2) On my smartphone, I strictly and only use FB with
[https://mbasic.facebook.com](https://mbasic.facebook.com) in mobile Chrome in
a private tab. I never logged in in the not private tab.

3) I log-in to FB in the private tab a couple of minutes later and I get a
notification that they received and reviewed the complaint from 1)

That was a huge WTF moment for me yesterday - I would love to learn on how
they do it and why they think that's something the user would be happy to
experience.

------
AngeloAnolin
One area I see why FB is losing a lot of users is that there's just too much
noise generated, where the content which people may find to some degree useful
is being crowded by the same repetitive ads, notifications, (fake) news and
headlines that are being circulated around within your interests (friends,
followed stuffs, etc.).

I recall when FB was immersive because it provided you content which you
relate to - people you know, people you follow, interests that makes you feel
that this social tool is enriching your life. Nowadays, FB is like a river
with too much garbage on it. You won't enjoy swimming, much less even enjoy
what you are seeing.

------
floatingatoll
Original source:

[https://www.edisonresearch.com/infinite-
dial-2019/](https://www.edisonresearch.com/infinite-dial-2019/)

> Regarding social media, the latest study finds the number of current users
> of Facebook continues to drop. The study shows an estimated 15 million fewer
> users of Facebook than in the 2017 report. The declines are heavily
> concentrated among younger people.

[https://www.slideshare.net/webby2001/infinite-
dial-2019](https://www.slideshare.net/webby2001/infinite-dial-2019)

Slide 9-14 or so contain the relevant demographic and year-over-year breakout.

------
anonytrary
There are way too many articles about Facebook that are simply:

    
    
      1. Title implies Facebook is going down.
      2. Body clarifies that everyone is just using Instagram

------
tungwaiyip
Facebook's investor presentation shows MAU stay flat at 242 millions in
Q4'18\. I don't see a 15 millions drop.

(The numbers for DAUs and MAUs do not include Instagram, WhatsApp, or Oculus
users)

[https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2018/Q4...](https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2018/Q4/Q4-2018-Earnings-
Presentation.pdf)

~~~
aboutruby
Thanks for the link, very interesting document, it really shows an impressive
scale.

And for the metrics, it's probably coming from the fact that a lot of people
use Messenger without using Facebook, but it's still considered "using
Facebook".

------
distant_hat
A large part of the problem for Facebook, at least personally, is that its too
popular. Initially I only had my college friends on it. With them I had a
different dynamic and different kinds of things I'd share. Then the first wave
of relatives (cousins, etc) joined. This leads to more content on your feed,
but you have to be more careful about what you'd share since its going to
reach a different network. Also, its weird if your boss or colleagues want to
join your network. Then the oldies joined, parents and grandparents, that
means either you set up elaborate rules for who can see what, and remember to
set them up every time you update something, or you post bland content that
you don't mind anybody seeing. I am not off Facebook, but my engagement has
gone down to about a couple of times a week. Their notifications are
increasingly meaningless and I am not the only one doing this.

On the other hand, I feel Facebook as a company is doing great. WhatsApp is
incredibly popular for exactly the reasons Facebook itself is not, private
groups that you can share stuff with as needed. Less chance of people seeing
material you did not intend for them.

------
ciacci1234
What are people's thoughts on not deleting FB to better secure your personal
identity. In the context of leaving google's services, I see people say that
they sit on their email so no one else can take it, but I never see that
sentiment about deleting fb.

Is it just that the bar to successfully impersonate someone via fb is higher
and email is lot easier to manipulate?

I am particularly interested because I am planning on deleting my personal fb
soon.

~~~
two2two
It's easy to not delete and stop using to serve your purpose. I loathe
facebook et al., but some employers (fewer and fewer these days) want to see
my online presence. To not have a facebook was considered strange, so for that
reason, I keep it around. However, as far as maintaining an identity, or
holding on to your custom facebook url, that’s a non-issue. Delete away, and
create again—facebook is intelligent enough to reconnect you to all those
people if need be. Personal identity is strengthened by other's endorsement.
That's easy to get again with FB, especially if you're who you really are.
It's difficult to take someone’s identity in that sense and it be valuable to
the person doing it.

~~~
JohnFen
> some employers (fewer and fewer these days) want to see my online presence.

That's a really huge red flag. I don't think that I'd be willing to risk
taking a job with a company that asked for this.

------
danschumann
I think their AI is programmed to keep people on the site and therefore they
leave bugs in like: When you scroll down and a video pops out, you're suddenly
at the top When you like a message in chat, on desktop, you have to hover a
few times until it shows up. These are bugs, but they keep you using the site
longer.. I just leave when they do that.

~~~
danschumann
Oooh wait, a new one! Every time I go to the site, it says I have 1 unread
message, but it goes away when I open messages. This keeps me on the site long
enough to look at my messages and click "mark all as unread" again.

------
arthurcolle
Basically if you have any kind of publicly available contact
information/presence, and you have friends that really care enough to want to
reach out to you for a meaningful, enriching interaction, they can figure out
how to reach out to you.

This facebook culture of needing this centralized service to dictate whether
or not you exist as an individual is complete bullshit and I reject it
outright. The idea that we're trading away true autonomy for the "ease of
social interaction via the web" when most facebook interaction actually is
people looking at the endless feed of nonsense/memes/political garbage on the
news feed, and not any kind of meaningful 1-on-1 messaging, is the ultimate
farce.

Furthermore, whats even worse about the facebook normalization thats
occurring, is this idea that, "oh, you don't have $(OUR_OFFERING)? What's
wrong with you? How can I possibly reach out to you?"

What do people really get out of facebook? I'd be willing to wager that there
is no value creation occurrring. Either you're wealthy enough that they'll
figure out how to hook up your anonymized profile info in such a way that you
will get sold useless nonsense, or you're poor enough that they will try to
dominate what your impression is of the "broader Web experience"

Why are we all paying $(MAX_INT) dollars a month on a cell phone subscription
if we're all supposedly intimately connected via Internet platforms?
Meanwhile, people feel more depressed than they've ever felt before, and
socialization is declining across all quantifiable dimensions. So either I'm
missing something, or its just a huge joke at everyone's expense.

I finally got around to deleting my facebook recently and while, as with all
addictions, has been challenging, I feel myself slowly taking my life back
from the social media theatre that has taken over human life over the last
decade, give or take a few years.

------
resters
It's obvious that Facebook is having some challenges from the dramatic
increase in the number of inline ads (promoted posts). FB is scrambling to
generate enough revenue to avoid spooking investors.

What the investors will be missing if they abandon Facebook, however, is that
Facebook has one of the most valuable data droves in history. Long after the
kind of dark patterns and data collection policies used by Facebook have been
outlawed, the trove that has already been collected will provide AI with
plenty of information on human behavior for many decades into the future.

Imagine if you are studying the human genome and you are forced to stop
collecting new DNA samples after you _only_ have 1.74 Billion samples
collected. Not a bad place to be in considering that no new competitors will
be allowed to collect samples in the way FB does today in the "wild west" of
privacy violation.

~~~
shostack
They'd actually somewhat recently taken steps to reduce the number of posts,
and instead push advertisers to bid more for fewer impressions. If successful,
this has the impact of getting them more revenue with a better UX since there
are fewer ads and in theory higher-quality brand advertisers who can afford
more for those impressions.

------
sureaboutthis
The only reason I signed up for Facebook, just five years ago or less, is
because someone posted a scientific paper or video there. This post wound up
being not worth looking at and I didn't go to Facebook for anything until
about three years ago when I went to a funeral and found some long lost
relatives I hadn't seen in decades and others I never knew. "Are you on
Facebook?", they asked.

So I went there and friended them. It was kind of fun or interesting for a few
posts but, the only one I was most interested in talking to, I talk to on the
phone or email more often than Facebook. The rest is idle chit-chat about
people and things I know nothing about or care about.

So now my Facebook involvement never goes further than to visit the login
page, see if I have the red notification icon that someone posted something
directly to me and, if not, leave.

~~~
swozey
Not sure your age range, but I'm an older millenial (mid-30s) and I couldn't
tell you the last time I picked up the phone and called someone to chat
without intention (making plans, etc) or sent a non-work email that wasn't
related to something financial/house-buy/sale related.

I deleted FB last year but when I did use it it was purely as a messaging
platform.

My personal gmail about 10 years ago turned into more of a graveyard for spam
and receipts than a communication platform.

~~~
sureaboutthis
Well, yes. If I have nothing to say to someone directly, I do not call them
but I also do not spray message everything I have to say to everyone on
Facebook.

------
DeonPenny
They are going to Instagram though. Thats one of facebook smartest move.
Buying all the other social media sites.

~~~
nabla9
This is also one of the biggest failures of the modern antitrust law.

If giants like FB can't innovate and must buy competition to survive despite
all the advantages they have, something is wrong.

~~~
travisoneill1
Counterpoint:

Many new innovative companies are being founded in this space and those that
are successful are richly rewarded (by selling to FB). The system is working
exactly how it is supposed to.

~~~
nabla9
>The system is working exactly how it is supposed to.

US system is designed to be anti-markets and pro business, so you have a
point. Good for startup, good for FB, bad for consumer and competition.

It's still against what anti-trust law was supposed to be.

~~~
JohnFen
Also remember that in the US it's perfectly legal to be a monopoly. What is
illegal is abusing your monopoly position by engaging in unfair practices
(which is a rather fuzzy and hard-to-prove thing).

------
YeahSureWhyNot
I deleted my Facebook more than a year ago and never missed it but I had to go
back on Facebook multiple times this week because I created a page for my new
business and I was surprised how repelling the whole thing was. I was confused
why am I disgusted by it but it was really pushing me away.

------
AdrianB1
I lost too many "friends" on Facebook: I knew these people for many years, but
I was shocked what they posted - from stupid to incredible things, mostly
politics and mostly far left. I started cutting all these people and I was
left with less than 20 when I closed my account.

~~~
anarchy8
> mostly politics and mostly far left

You're upset that your friends have different political opinions than you? And
you're blaming Facebook for this? Why?

~~~
0xffff2
Is that wrong? I have virtually no interest in politics. It's unlikely that
I'm going to remain friends with anyone who expresses particularly strong
political views, left or right. I just don't care, and find it too exhausting
to be bothered most of the time. If the only place I see/hear those views is
on Facebook, it might be easier to drop Facebook than to drop those friends.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
How do you do it? I find myself so wrapped in what feels like a fundamental
struggle for our future, which could be so amazing or so horrible depending on
the glacial shifts in collective will and which I may be able to influence if
only I ignite enough low-bandwidth arguments.

Posting is warfare.

------
andrei_says_
That’s still a billion users too many.

I can’t wait to see the commodification and decentralization of the services
fb provides. Identity, chats, content distribution and subscription, events
etc.

My accountant still has an @aol email. I hope to see the same reaction to fb
pages, events etc.

~~~
throwawaymath
I doubt that reaction will happen. I would expect Facebook to follow
Microsoft’s lifecycle instead (which was founded in the same era as AOL).

------
tedmcory77
Anecdotal data; I’ve purposefully stopped posting, liking, commenting, and am
transitioning all my business hooked in things to a “business acccount” I’ve
made with a goal of deleting the non business one by May 1.

It’s crazy how many places FB wormed it’s way into.

------
chris_mc
Good, I hope it dies. I don't use Facebook for the obvious reason (privacy)
and my family almost refuses to contact me in any other medium. If I didn't
take the initiative to contact them via email or phone, they'd forget I
existed.

~~~
kjar
Right we are supposed to believe FB at this point - laughable.

------
osrec
I was a regular user of Facebook, now I'm not. I never used Instagram, but I
can see that becoming as tedious as Facebook for people who do. I use WhatsApp
every 5 minutes, but I don't think Facebook monetises it yet to any large
degree. I have a hunch that as people leave the "whimsical" platforms, only
the universally useful WhatsApp will continue to hold on to users. If they
don't monetise it, they may well have to operate it at a loss. If they do
monetise it and become greedy by killing the UX with ads, people leave anyway.
They've got a very fine balancing act ahead of them. It won't be easy for
Facebook.

~~~
fartcannon
They monetize the data though?

They monetize the heck out of the data. Why not just use something that
doesn't? Be the change you want to see.

~~~
osrec
But they probably use the data to target users with Facebook/Instagram ads. If
those platforms go south, then what's the data going to be used for?!

P.S. I use Signal. Problem is no one else does :p

------
throwaway5752
This has been up a while and has a lot of comments, and there is no mention of
Cambridge Analytica? A lot of people talk about polarization on Facebook
around 2016... that was the intended result of deliberate and concerted
efforts. Whether or not user metadata disclosure was done intentionally, the
data was then used to radicalize target populations on certain political
issues
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal#Use_of_the_data)

Of course people are leaving and don't trust them.

------
kawfey
My twenty-something friends and I used facebook extensively to run all aspects
of our social lives, but now we exclusively use it for messaging and event
planning. Nobody reads posts, comments, or notifications unless it has to do
with an event.

A few of us have been dropping off and now we're starting to use chat programs
(groupme, now Discord) to socialize.

I have to stay on to keep track of goings on in my amateur radio hobby, which
as you'd expect is chock full of old men, a majority of which are on Facebook.
I think the generational lag has finally caught up to them.

------
aboutruby
At this point Facebook is so big that "millions leaving" could be people
dying, people losing their accounts, etc. It's very small compared to their
scale of more than 2 billions users.

~~~
toufiqbarhamov
That’s true, if that’s where it ends and doesn’t represent a burgeoning trend,
and if it doesn’t have a feedback effect leading to greater losses. After all
if a fire starts in a mansion, well the fire is tiny and the mansion is huge,
why get all excited over nothing? You have to leverage what you know about
fire if you want to appreciate the threat it represents to the structure.

------
mcv
The only reason I still have a facebook account is because a friend at the W3C
posts interesting stuff there. (Ironically, once of his recurring issues is
that we need to take the internet back from the big corporations, yet he's the
one keeping me at Facebook.) As soon as he leaves, I will leave too.

A couple of years ago, friends lived abroad for 3 years and used Facebook as
their primary means of communication with people back home. I think that was
when I started to check Facebook more often. Sometimes every week.

------
hojjat12000
I only haven't deleted my account because of the facebook messenger and all
the messages that I have there. I should find a way to back it up to a
readable format and delete the thing.

~~~
tokai
You can download all your chats.

[https://www.facebook.com/help/212802592074644?helpref=faq_co...](https://www.facebook.com/help/212802592074644?helpref=faq_content)

------
georgeecollins
Even if you feel like it is impossible to leave Facebook, the truth is they
make most of their money from ads served while you are in their ecosystem.
Just spending less time on their platforms is good for you and good for
reducing their relative power in the market.

We are all better off in a world where Facebook and Google face an economic
harm if they abuse their monopoly power. I don't think consumer action is the
best way to cause that harm, but it is the way that is available to everyone
on this forum.

------
cloudsinthesky
Article discusses the differences in measuring what a user counts as, so the
numbers are difficult to pin down exactly. Anecdotally, I still _have_ my
account, but no longer log in. It has been 2-3 months now, so I ought to be
counted as such - that is, not an active user despite having an account. I
don't use insta or whatsapp or messenger either - but I still have my FB
account.

I wonder how many people there are like me, with nearly dead accounts but
could still be 'counted' if you wanted to.

~~~
newen
Yeah, I'm late 20s overeducated and I never post nowadays and go to Facebook
once a month or so. My feed is almost dead now and none of my friends post
like they used to. Decent amount of activity on Instagram though but not like
it used to be with Facebook when I was in college. Though probably because we
graduated and grew up I don't know.

------
lsiebert
I co-run a small board game group in SF, and we have been using FB for years
to organize events.

I've considered moving to eventbrite or meetup.com, but the app buy in with FB
and FB messanger means we can post an update or send an IM and assume people
see it, which isn't the case with either alternative, unless people check
email.

I really wish there was a ubiquitous open standard open source IM client, so
people could download one client and use it for everything.

~~~
no_wizard
Like XMPP [https://xmpp.org/](https://xmpp.org/) ?

I'm with you, and I didn't mind XMPP (having implemented a Jabber server
before, it wasn't _all_ bad)

Same deal with IRC (which I think is the best protocol wise).

They all suffer from the same problem: the openness of the standard is not
data collection inclusive. The upside is better privacy, the downside is its
incredibly hard to fight spam in such wide open systems.

Also, for a the briefest of overviews about the some notable issues with mass
adoptions on XMPP, check this:

[https://blog.samwhited.com/2019/02/whats-wrong-with-
xmpp/](https://blog.samwhited.com/2019/02/whats-wrong-with-xmpp/)

------
imgabe
I wonder if there's a market for a paid Facebook. Charge $5 per month for a
Facebook like profile. Communicate with your friends. Share photos. See
updates (in chronological order!). No data mining. No advertisements. No
"brands". No emotional manipulation to maximize engagement (actually, the less
time you spend, the more profitable your $5 is). I'd pay for this if it
existed, hopefully enough of my friends would too.

------
gerdesj
I started reading some comments here and then fired up FB in another tab
because I have been away from it for quite a long time. The first post is:
"Add a phone number to your Facebook account"

No.

FB knows my number indirectly via friends anyway but I have not ever given it
permission to actually admit to knowing it. I never will. To be fair, I have
never received a call that I could attribute to FB abusing that chain of
_cough_ trust.

~~~
maybelater
But what is your point? Facebook asked for your phone number, as many services
do, and you declined. You assume they have your number already, but they don't
use it, but they asked you.

I don't follow...

------
hhs
I wonder if Facebook UX researchers review feedback from threads like this?
This seems like useful qualitative information for them to improve their
product.

But then again, I wonder if their target population is different. In that
case, it could be that Facebook is being strategic on what things to
prioritize and they're banking on certain sub-populations, because they can't
win over everyone, for their bottom-line?

------
qudat
I stopped using it once my mom wanted to be my friend on FB. Now both my
parents use it all the time and are always wondering why I'm not on it.

------
iamgopal
They optimise what they measure. When I'm on Facebook, I like some type of
posts and they continued to show me similar posts, without realising that, I'm
coming to the facebook and like those posts but I'm not coming to facebook to
like that post. My frequency of visit reducing and I think they do not have
any idea why, since all my visit shoes good portion of engagement.

------
chrischen
Yes but they're going to Instagram, and the Stories feed is not much better
than the newsfeed in terms of developing strong, true interpersonal
relationships, not wasting time, and improving onself vs mindless consumption.

The good news is facebook has failed at creating a product that is truly
lasting, so they have to keep this charade up of constantly reinventing the
time-waster product.

------
danilocesar
I quit facebook a while ago but then I went back. Not for the posts or updates
but because of the market place and seeling groups. It's, by far, the easiest
way to sell stuff in Brazil.

I thought about having a 'fake' account, but having a 'real' one with photos
and friend list helps a lot to earn trust from buyers.

Then, when I have nothing to sell, I disable my account again.

------
danilocesar
My biggest disappointment with Facebook is that it - at least my feed - became
toxic. There's only post complaining about politics, calling right/left people
dumm, and fake news, a lot of fake news.

And now they are engaging in this fake notification scheme (same with twitter
and LinkedIn)...

As i explained in another post, facebook is only useful for me because of the
marketplace...

------
asdfk-12
I hope they can figure out how to make it work over at Facebook. I would
happily pay for a service that clearly stated how they use my personal
information, and curates news and provides a platform to interact with friends
on/offline, as well as with a greater community. But it doesn’t do any of that
well. & that’s why I deleted my account.

------
sigi45
I thought FB will become something like family and friends sharing. Taking
part in other lives but in an efficient way.

But it didn't happen. Very rarley are there any picture galleries. And lots of
stuff other people share? Always the same.

So the realization set in that it isn't that interesting to have a social
network.

I only need a chat and we replaced our family chat with whatsapp.

------
weisser
POW for status is so difficult it’s practically nonexistent. Utility hasn’t
been increased to compensate for inability to earn social capital.

[https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-
service](https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service)

------
aussieguy1234
Looks like I'm launching Libr ([https://librapp.com](https://librapp.com)) at
the right time. I started it because of Tumblrs new censorship policies, but
it looks like there's a good opportunity to set it apart from Facebook and
Twitter and their ML powered unethical tracking

~~~
Tepix
You don't have a privacy policy yet you are asking people for their data.

------
thorwasdfasdf
Hacker news peeps seem to not like FB, giving an impression of a dieing
service. But, look at the revenue: "Facebook reported revenue growth of nearly
32 percent in the U.S. and Canada compared to last year, bringing in $8.43
billion in its fourth quarter 2018 compared to $6.39 billion during the same
period in 2017."

------
beepboopbeep
Being on facebook is like sticking your pant leg in a briarbush. It's random
bits of window and content that just tries to cling to you. Nothing about it
is fun or engaging. Instagram is quickly going that path as well.

That said, any bets that FB's user count will magically continue to increase
quarter over quarter?

------
iak8god
> The biggest drop is in the very desirable 12- to 34-year-old group.

12-34 is a very wide range. While I do know a few people toward the high end
of that age range who did have FB accounts and deleted them, I wonder how much
of the drop in this bracket is because younger people are simply never signing
up for FB accounts.

------
mmjaa
I'm old enough to remember when online social networking meant logging onto a
BBS and chatting with whoever else was also connected.

To me, Facebook is just another BBS that has pushed past its prime and is
overloading me with candy ( _cough_ ANSI graphics, boo! _cough_ ) in order to
keep me connected - its an age-old formula, and while the density of
information being pushed is orders of magnitude greater than it was back in
the 1200bps day, the mechanics are still the same.

So what was old is new again.

And just like the BBS era, we seem to be fitting on a curve where the
potential for disruption is very real.

What I perceived happen to the Golden BBS Age is, the users grew up. They
became a bit more technically competent. They learned to use other tools
("Winsock, TCP/IP") that - at first, were quite daunting - but once mastered,
gave them wider access to a far broader range of information sources - the
Internet.

So perhaps there is some of this factor occurring here, too. People are tired
of the man-behind-the-curtain technological manipulation of Facebook and its
related services, just like we tired of tyrannical BBS ops booting us for
wrong reasons back in the day.

So, where will the sophisticated new, liberating technology come in? Like,
back in the end-of-BBS days, there were a lot of tool vendors selling shovels
and pick axes along the road - the "Winsock for Dummies" and "Easy TCP/IP"
products that made BBS'es irrelevant.

Is it IPFS? Is it Mastodon?

I believe, if there is hope, it lies in the OS vendors.

Just like these additional services eventually became integrated (nobody needs
to install a TCP/IP stack any more - you've already got one), social
networking needs to become a feature of the OS.

Trouble is, the OS vendors have been mostly asleep at the wheel for too long,
having been lured into walled gardens themselves.

But, if there is hope, its in the eventual integration of advanced
technologies into the default, out of the box, OS stack, such that there is no
need for a centralised monopoly of subversion any longer. Imagine if Microsoft
or Apple decided to nuke the scene, and add IPFS and Mastodon tech to the
default stack. This would wipe Facebook out in a matter of months - just like
happened to BBS's when the Internet finally got the tools from smart vendors
that were needed to make intelligent Users again...

------
philshem
I deleted my Face&#*k account in 2010. But I can't remember exactly when I
created the account. Based on my user ID (17502xxx), is it possible to
determine roughly when I created my account?

For the record, Facebook in the early days, when it was only colleges in the
Northeast US, was wild, wild fun.

~~~
giancarlostoro
I tried joining when they added high schools and you needed a social proof to
join. But I was homeschooled so they wouldnt let me on cause nobody knew me
from the same school I was registered with. Good job Facebook.

I wish social media needed more social proofs to try and weed out certain
types of problematic accounts. I only finally went back to Facebook once it
was open for everybody. Deleted it a few times now keep it for family only. I
dont go on it every waking day though.

------
matthberg
Looks like a small summary of:

[https://www.marketplace.org/2019/03/06/tech/exclusive-
look-n...](https://www.marketplace.org/2019/03/06/tech/exclusive-look-numbers-
showing-users-leaving-facebook-by-the-millions)

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we've updated the link from
[https://www.fastcompany.com/90316249/report-facebook-has-
los...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90316249/report-facebook-has-
lost-15-million-u-s-users-since-2017).

------
rasikjain
FB in the initial days was useful. Now its full of crap and spam articles.
Stopped visiting many years back. LinkedIn is still useful for connections.
But I believe they need to change their algorithm and policies to make sure
the users don't flock to the other networks.

------
tytso
Re: users giving up Facebook but moving to Instagram, Malinda of Google
Translate Sings called it in her "Honest 2018 Christmas Song":
[https://youtu.be/70QwQ5kgxzk?t=33](https://youtu.be/70QwQ5kgxzk?t=33)

------
upofadown
These sorts of things normally come and go. So the thing that is currently on
top is going to show the greatest decline. There isn't really a lot of
analysis required. The implication that something like Facebook might be good
for the ages is kinda nuts.

------
jopsen
I'm a lot less active on Facebook, but... it's still super useful for
coordination, finding people, groups.

The thing that convinces me FB isn't going away is my dad using groups to
debate wood working.. he's never participated in anything online before.

------
DigiMortal
I've always been so tempted to leave it Okay so i'll download all my history
of data and all that, that's fine I may just go through and see who I care
about and let them know im leaving? idk. I think i stay for my grandpa at this
point

------
stared
12-35 is a huge age range (3x!). Either it is a really strange methodology
(biding underage and adults? seriously?) or it is to distort the
interpretation.

I bet the decline is not uniform - does anyone know which age ranges are down
(or up)?

------
Taylor_OD
Facebook isnt for the USA anymore right? Their growth across the globe has to
be far greater than their USA based growth. They had their time but other
websites, several of which they own or have a stake in, are in now.

------
viburnum
Facebook actually pretty useful for events and looking up businesses if you
have a fake account with no friends. I recently disabled my account but there
were things I missed so that's why I made a fake account.

~~~
molotovbliss
Your shadow profile already has your other account linked, I would bet.

[https://browserleaks.com/canvas](https://browserleaks.com/canvas)

------
homero
They're leaving to Instagram which is Facebook. Some may not realize this.

------
rblion
Facebook is the next AOL or Yahoo, I've been saying this for years. They have
a critical flaw in their design and in their philosophy, technological
innovation can't fix this either.

------
paulpauper
The < 35 age demographic are spending more time on Instagram, which is owned
by Facebook, and this explains also why Facebook's stock has done well
recently and is not a concern.

------
JTbane
I use Facebook solely for keeping in touch with acquaintances (chat) and
planning events on a (mostly) ubiquitous platform.

The blogging/posting functions are pretty much useless to me.

------
jaimex2
If you combine Instagram they haven't really lost anything.

~~~
ehsankia
Exactly. Everyone's leaving Facebook for Instagram, so at the end of the day,
basically nothing is changing.

------
johnwheeler
It seems like social networks are inherently fads with low switching costs
(how many of your facebook friends do you really need to drag over to the next
one).

------
irrational
At one time people thought I was crazy for not being on Facebook, but the more
time goes by, the more never getting on Facebook looks like the smart move.

------
newshorts
I just don’t log in because it makes me feel terrible and longing.

If they sold my data, then some companies have some really outdated material
on me. I’m fine with that.

------
buboard
> the biggest drop is in the very desirable 12- to 34-year-old group

i wonder if millenials and kids are a profitable or desireable demographic
these days

------
jonstewart
AFAICT, Facebook consists solely of one’s baby boomer-aged aunts sharing
ridiculous memes and other such factually-challenged posts.

------
awalton
What's the accounting for people who still have Facebook accounts but
realistically never or very infrequently check them?

I've had no interest in using my Facebook since it became Babybook, and maybe
I'll poke at it once a month to see if I've missed someone's huge life event
(you know, other than people having babies)... but that's it - I just have no
more interest in surrendering my thoughts, photo copyrights and what's left of
my privacy there anymore.

------
nix0n
Facebook still has profiles on all 15M of them.

------
duxup
I like to think that it is because of the privacy issues, but in reality I
think it is just the experience sucks.

------
stevehiehn
I ended up mostly moving to Instagram because I could follow people's lives
and not their political opinions

------
edisonjoao
[http://foxie.cool](http://foxie.cool) join the new wave!

------
At1C
My new hero's are Smart People who don't use Fbook I call them Mind Athletes
who fight for privacy.

------
larrydag
I never installed the FB app for the very reason of being metadata spammed for
anything.

------
lgregg
This isn't really too surprising, I rarely ever go on my own account anymore.

------
klyrs
So many lulz. Sure, they're quitting farceblat, but where are they going? The
graphics suggest that instagram is picking up the slack, with a little jump
for snapchat. With insta owned by facetrash, the headline is highly overblown

------
ArtDev
As my son said: "Facebook is for old people".

------
huxflux
That was about time.

------
bitxbit
Something seemed very off about FB’s metrics in the past 2-3 quarters. It
could be my own bias but I expected to see a more pronounced
slowdown/contraction based on my own anecdotal evidence.

------
nkkollaw
Facebook is like a boring family dinner that you have to attend.

Many people kind of _have to_ have a Facebook profile, but definitely check it
rarely.

Personally, I keep it only because I have a few apps that use their API.

------
kissickas
I'm shocked by the decrease in twitter usage (compared to other social
networks) in 2017.[0] I have seen a huge uptick in friends tweeting, mostly in
replies to Trump's tweets, and several times a week news stories come to the
top of my feed purely generated by a single tweet of his.

[0] the credited article for the story, linked in the second sentence
[https://www.marketplace.org/2019/03/06/tech/exclusive-
look-n...](https://www.marketplace.org/2019/03/06/tech/exclusive-look-numbers-
showing-users-leaving-facebook-by-the-millions)

~~~
narrator
Twitter has been shamelessly deleting a lot of interesting right of center
accounts (e.g Thomas Wictor, Imperator Rex) for no good reason, so a lot of
people have given up on it for political discussions.

Jack Dorsey was on the Joe Rogan podcast with , of all people, his lawyer and
got called out for censoring and gave a lot of non-answers.[1] if you read the
youtube comments it's almost 100% negative on the direction they've been going
with censorship on that platform and Jack's lack of candor as to what exactly
they're trying to do.

Edit: Why the downvotes? Did I trigger some sort of HN Godwin's law by
mentioning Americans outside the San Francisco/LA political bubble as a
possible cause of Twitter's loss of popularity?

[1] [https://youtu.be/_mP9OmOFxc4](https://youtu.be/_mP9OmOFxc4)

~~~
Simon_says
You're downvoted because a significant fraction of HN readers live in leftist
filter bubbles and are never exposed to serious criticisms of their ideas.

------
straxorx
leaving facebook? does it even get affected? I think that non-tech guys
doesn't give a damn about it.

------
ykevinator
What's that in percentage?

------
erkose
Where are they going? Instagram? This is not leaving Facebook.

edit: How do you down-vote the fact that Facebook owns Instagram?

------
arisAlexis
and they flock to Instagram

------
sabujp
uhh FB + instagram usage > FB usage alone, so where's the loss?

------
throwaway_9168
I am leaving a link to what I think should now be an obligatory reference to
the Facebook Free Business post by DHH every time this topic comes up:
[https://m.signalvnoise.com/become-a-facebook-free-
business/](https://m.signalvnoise.com/become-a-facebook-free-business/)

------
dandigangi
Good

------
devaroop
The world is finally growing up

------
turc1656
Couldn't have happened to a nicer company.

------
GrryDucape
And this was their best decision imho.

------
trumped
lol facebook is probably just deleting a few troll accounts....

------
forgotmysn
that sounds like a drop in the ocean that is fb's massive and growing userbase

~~~
_red
You may be an older person, but for anyone with teens an interesting aspect is
that they hardly use it.

FB is turning into a "how to talk to grandma" network.

~~~
aylmao
Isn't that what it's supposed to be? Facebook has the market of young people
captured pretty broadly with Instagram. I doubt they would appeal so much to
older people if they focused in appealing to younger people.

------
GuillaumeBrdet
It's amazing how its only acquisitions keeping Facebook alive besides
Messenger.

~~~
dymk
Acquisitions which were developed and grown a great deal _after_ becoming part
of the company.

~~~
GuillaumeBrdet
I am not denying that! It's just interesting how the core product is really
taking a bad hit lately. I am curious to know where FB would be today without
them.

