Why do we keep using Facebook? | Hacker News Reader

Why do we keep using Facebook?

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32 pointsimartin2k75 comments

Full disclosure up front: i work for a company which sells ads based on user behavior.

I get that it's creepy, "spying" on users, but really, would you rather have ads from services which know nothing about you? Companies want to buy ads that users are interested in, obviously. If I have a company selling vegan food i would optimally only buy ads shown to people who are already vegan, right? And they probably don't want ads from your local butcher, but might be interested in my new awesome vegan food.

Again, i get that it's creepy, especially on Facebooks scale, but I feel the discussion gets lopsided sometimes. I don't use Facebook much, but I'm fine with that my browser behavior is tracked.

> would you rather have ads from services which know nothing about you?

I'd rather have zero ads.

If I'm interested in something, I'll search for it, or ask around.

Of course I would rather get irrelevant ads than have irresponsible firms tracking the patterns of my online behavior. That seems like an extremely obvious choice.

Ads are not there for my benefits, they are memetic weapons deployed by corporations to nudge my subconscious. I haven't voluntarily clicked on a single ad in my entire life. They are 100% obnoxious, and these days, privacy violating to a staggering degree.

You're in the minority, though. The majority of people don't even have an adblocker installed. The companies that are able to give their services away for "free" wouldn't be able to do so without the majority of people who are at least marginally accepting of their ads.

I'm not trying to say you have an obligation to look at ads (I hate advertising nearly as much as you do), but I do understand and accept why these practices are there, and believe that, for the people that do see ads, targeted ads are more useful than untargeted random noise.

I would happily instead pay monthly for things that are largely ad-supported, if they'd give me that option.

> would you rather have ads from services which know nothing about you?

Yes, absolutely. Advertisements are not something I seek out. In fact, I do my best to minimize any exposure to them. If they know about me, they are more effective.

I understand that I am not immune to the ability of advertising and marketing to influence behavior. I'd rather start a purchasing decision with zero information than from a biased position because of brand familiarity or other psychological tricks.

If you consider advertising to be the commercial implementation of psychological tactics designed to manipulate your behavior based on decades of data and research, why _would_ you want to provide advertisers with greater ability to manipulate you?

If it's just "show vegan ads to vegan people" why is advertising such a cornerstone of modern infrastructure? I trust the big advertising networks less than a sleazy used-car salesman.

Advertising is part of the modern infrastructure because almost every service charges zero dollars for use. So you're asking the wrong question: why won't people pay for social networks?

That's a non-starter. There hasn't been a large social network with an ad-free, analytics-free option you could pay for.

I don't think that's what the parent is talking about, though.

I'm like you: I have adblocker software installed everywhere I can, and when ads on mobile FB and IG show up, I do my best to immediate click the "dismiss ad"/"this isn't relevant to me" button before I even have a chance to look at it. If I visit a site employing anti-adblocking software to require me to disable my adblocker, I close the tab and never go back. I hate advertising in every form and do my best to avoid it. For me (and you), companies building up ad targeting data for us is useless because we aren't receptive, so it just amounts to some creepy company collecting data on us for no good reason -- or worse, to attempt to find our advertising weak spots and make it through our defenses.

I think the parent is more talking about people who are ok with advertising, and who might actually find it valuable. In that light, I think, rationally, it's better to have targeted ads (assuming the targeting is done well), than untargeted. It might be creepy how the ad companies are able to do their targeting, but the end result should be much better. A vegan isn't going to want to see an ad for a local butcher, and a childless person has no use for ads for baby clothes.

Apart from the already mentioned alternative of having zero ads - more or less the way I see the 'net due to the rather extensive ad filtering I apply (on DNS, router and browser) - I'd prefer for ad companies to advertise on sites related to the material they're advertising. Sell drills? Advertise on DIY forums. Sell cat food? Sell on pet forums. Sell sex? Advertise on porn sites. Sell creepy products designed to profile users? Advertise on toilet paper.

Based on the other comments so far, it sounds like HN'ers mostly don't use facebook and don't miss it. Fair enough, but I'm in the same camp as the article's author, and looking for a way out. I might be unique, but I didn't really have much of a social life before facebook. That's not causal relationship - before 2007ish I was a very introverted kid who didn't know how to make friends or form strong relationships. All of my good friendships came into existence after about 2009, when I started to learn how to socialize better, and for the most part, facebook is my main contact point with all those people. That's only because facbook was the dominant communication method during that time. But there it is, and I'm stuck with it, and I can't seem to get unstuck. I want to hear about the new babies, jobs, city moves, projects, and parties that people have going on, and facebook is the best way to get that info. But 90% of what you get there is political garbage, pointless memes, MLMs, and facebook's own "manufactured content". It's frustrating and it's making me unhappy too.

> I want to hear about the new babies, jobs, city moves, projects, and parties that people have going on

This is the point. We non Facebook users decided we don't care enough about that stuff. Or at least not until someone tells us about it in person.

There's no real problem with hearing half a year late that a friend of a friend, who is also a direct acquaintance of sorts, became a parent.

You're generalising a lot about the motivations of users and non-users.

Fair enough.

At least in Germany this role of keeping up to date about events among family and friends seems to have moved to WhatsApp. You still get all the baby- and vacation-pictures, but without the propaganda-, 'you might like'- and advertisement-postings Facebook is bombarding you with. Personally I have moved off Facebook since end 2016 and was one of the last holdouts, most of my family, and friends from the 'real world' don't have an Facebook account or have left their account idle since long before that.

PS: the irony is of course that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook ;)

> Based on the other comments so far, it sounds like HN'ers mostly don't use facebook and don't miss it.

Let's just say that the "sour grapes" crowd are much more likely to pile on to stories like this.

Facebook provides me and my friends with immense value, I'm a very happy user, and as long as that value is higher than the annoyances of using Facebook, we will keep using it.

The reality is that Facebook's DAU numbers and engagement metrics just keep on rising. A bunch of disillusioned users on this forum is not a negative trend. Facebook's biggest enemy is themselves, because the corporate machine pressures everyone there into change for change's sake, which fuels user fatigue, which in the end will lead to some sort of exodus.

Sour about what? Using Signal instead of Messenger?

Facebook's DAU numbers and engagement metrics just keep on rising

and OP's

*If Facebook makes people unhappy, and the more they use it the unhappier they are, why does usage continue to grow? Not only are more people using it, a higher proportion are checking Facebook at least once a day.

are also true of heroin. And no, I'm not saying that Facebook is like an opioid but it just isn't a convincing argument about its value.

Zynga also had great DAU numbers while frustrating more and more of its users. Blackhat engagement techniques are strong in the short to medium time horizon. There's so much opportunity for fb if they could just focus on slightly different goals.

It's not like having and using Facebook is necessarily unfeasible for people who aren't crazy about it, which makes that a bad metaphor. Having a case of "sour grapes" over Facebook makes as much sense as having a case of "sour grapes" over pie. Just go out and buy some if you want. But what makes it a really bad metaphor is that the likelihood of someone using Facebook or not on a daily basis depends on how much value they attach to it. But why would anyone resent others for doing stuff that they don't care about?

Now, if you think Facebook provides with you with something of value, good for you. You're using a service and you're happy about it. But that says nothing about the preferences of others.

Agreed. My problems with FB aren't deep rooted or ideological, I used to use it all the time. But now it's gotten so big, and I have so many friends, and friends-of-friends, it feels more like the open internet than a community of my friends.

It's hard to manage, but with the right controls and tweaks, they could make it more comfortable again... and I'd start using it again.

Kind of a good counter-example: LinkedIn may be much smaller and less loved, but when you post something there, you know it's going out to your work colleagues, and it'll maintain the respective level of discourse. FB is just all over the map.

> But that says nothing about the preferences of others.

That was exactly my point. OP claimed that it seemed like people on HN weren't using it based on the comments to this thread so far.

I'm claiming the opposite, that a majority of HN users are also relatively happy Facebook users, but that those users won't comment on threads like this. Because these threads always attracts the contrarians and turn into a pissing contest about who deleted their FB account first.

One technique could be to start unfollowing certain people. Note that this is different from unfriending them and afaik there's nothing that will notify them to the fact.

Perhaps start by unfollowing those that post the "political garbage, pointless memes, etc". Quite quickly you should start to see your feed be a little more streamlined / less noisy.

On a related note I went even further and unfollowed everyone so my feed is now completely empty. As such it proactively requires me to view profiles of connections that I care about or view my list of "close friends" which is a feed in itself. That said, I barely use it anymore (which was my original goal).

If what you want to maintain is contact with all those people, you can deactivate your Facebook but keep Messenger on. They're separate apps. It's worked wonders for me.

Confirmation bias aside, I've actually had people who neevr respond to email, don't use any standalone messengers, only read their private facebook messages weeks later... but are indeed replying to status posts and comments. So yes, you either stop communicating or adapt.

And no, phone calls are not an option. These are people I've never talked to on the phone in my whole life, why would I start now?

How much does the average user actually use Facebook, specially nowadays?

I'd be rather surprised if the total amount of time spent on Facebook didn't have something like a power-law distribution. The only reason I have an account at all is so that, in the unlikely event that I might be notified of something that I actually care about or that someone might try to reach me, I'll know it. And I'm sure that is true of at least a portion of other users.

Having Facebook today is like having a landline seven years ago. I wonder if in seven years Facebook will only be used for marketing, too.

Zuckerberg and Facebook are smart. They know FB isn't for everyone, that's why they have Instagram and whatsapp.

Facebook says that 5.5%-11% of accounts are "fake". I'd guess the number is higher. There is so much spam, fake friend requests, and general internet hucksters on FB, that I've lost trust in the platform.

Real-life people send me friend requests a few times a week, but I easily get 5-10 spammer friend requests a day. I don't know if stuff I'm reading is (1) just there; (2) put there due to an algorithm trying to cater to my tastes; (3) inserted by spammers; or (4) paid for by god-knows-who.

Every time I log into FB, I feel like I'm stepping into a room with people I sort of recognize but don't know. On the internet, I rather make conversation with true strangers on Hacker News than these quasi-strangers on FB.

Just curious, why are you still on there?

I don't have a moral or ideological opposition to FB, more of a practical one... I don't really know who my friends are on there or who I'm talking to when I post something. I know I could exhaustively go through my friends and sort them out... but it's a pain. So I keep the account and check in once every few months. If they fixed the problems, I'd use it more.

Fix your friends list. Consider one of these groups to keep it small and not-fake.

People you’ve:

- shared a roof with overnight

- been in their home or had them over

- shared a meal with (by invitation, not bumped into)

Don’t let FB water down your personal definition of ‘friend’.

I don't do this anymore, but long ago (I've had a FB account since at least 2005), I used to add friends I met while traveling. We'd have an awesome night in some foreign city, shared a roof, and ate dinner together... so I added them. At this point, I can't remember anything about them, but it'd meet your definition.

But it's not just friends I don't remember. It's that I have all my family on there, my ex's, my kindergarten classmates, my work colleagues. I'm wouldn't say the same think to Aunty Iris as I would to my college friends.

I don't know what the average person's FB experience is like, but yours sounds very different to mine. I rarely get fake friend requests.

Not sure what I'm doing, I got 6 requests in the past 2 days. As far as I can tell, all but one are fakes. Sometimes it's hard to tell if it's a fake or a person who I met only briefly.

I stopped logging to Facebook years ago. I also haven't had much any interesting long-form online discussions in years and I miss them. Several people I know say Facebook comment threads and a curated friend group are just the sweet spot for them now. Still not going to log into Facebook, but I think there's an axis where my life is worse for that.

It's been 2 years that I have deleted both my FB accounts (one for family and friends, the other for business), my IG account and my Twitter account. All accounts had many years of activity and substantial following. I never looked back and I am very much happier.

What made me decide is that I realized that I had become an self inflicted obligation to create content to feed my online personas every days. Basically I was doing things in my real life that I did not want to do just to feed a virtual person's life (mine) on other people's websites to impress my friends and contacts. This is insane.

I've heard other people make the same point, and I don't understand it. Why did you feel obligated to create content? A lot of the time I've used it, I've personally been happy just seeing what other people have posted.

One could argue that those social platforms are designed to keep you engaged.

I've slowed down a lot lately in my posts to FB and IG. I think the turning point for me was when I saw a friend at a party (someone I don't see often and don't have much of a one-on-one relationship with), and she told me something to the effect of "I decide where to eat based on the photos you post on IG". I'm sure she was exaggerating, and certainly didn't mean to imply any sort of obligation on my part, but it hit me... why am I posting all this stuff?

I've never had any burning desire to be some sort of "online influencer", so what was I really doing? Either I'm bragging about all the cool places I've been to (which I think would be pretty lame of me), or I'm in effect advertising for the restaurants I visit (which isn't too objectionable, but certainly isn't my job). If I were posting things for artistic or comedic value that I wanted to share, or posting actual photos that illustrated what's going on in my life, I'd feel better about it.

So I post less.

And as for FB, my feed is overloaded with politics and social justice posts. Both of which are important, but it gets to be too much, very quickly. And it's not what I want to use FB for -- I have news aggregators for those sorts of things. I used to have pinned tabs in Firefox open for FB and Twitter, but upon closing them a couple months ago I find I'm much happier. I can still manually navigate to FB when I need to, and I still have the mobile app, but I think I'm starting to find the right level of engagement with FB that makes me happiest and gives me the most utility.

The blog poster seems to be missing the critical point - maybe he's never smoked. It's an addiction.

To your phone, to social response, to 'new'. The way way to give up is to treat it like an addiction.

Actually, I would say that you were missing the critical point that he is making in the article. It's not an addiction in this case, I also would like to get off Facebook, and I am certainly not addicted to it since I check in on it maybe once a month. But I stay for the same reason the author does, which is that everyone I know is on there, and I don't have an easy way to stay in touch with them otherwise.

I haven’t used FB for years, I don’t even have an account, and don’t miss it at all.

When I want to connect with my friends I use WhatsApp, for brainless time passing I use Reddit and I use HN for stimulation and discussion.

> I haven’t used FB for years (...) When I want to connect with my friends I use WhatsApp

Mark Zuckerberg rubs his hands :)

Not a criticism, I do the same, despite having refused to join FB.

And that's why FB's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were so brilliant: Zuck recognizes that he's going to inevitably lose some people from FB, so he's diversified.

As a counter point to the article and most of the comments on HN, I like Facebook don't find it makes me feel bad. I suspect that in the studies showing a correlation between feeling bad and using Facebook the causation goes the other way. People who don't have enough friends and social life in the physical world both feel bad and go on Facebook as a substitute. This would be a simpler explanation for why they have 2bn users and growing - people like the service.

Like in so many situations, causality is more likely to be cyclical than linear. That's how malignant habits work: they appear to easily alleviate a symptom, but thereby prevent actual recovery or growth.

Unfortunately, FB is about the only way I can keep in contact with a lot of my old friends since they don't use any of the alternatives and are also scattered all over the world.

What is really creepy though, is signing up for a new account, on a new device, using a fake name, and a different email address, and having FB immediately start suggesting people you've know IRL for 20+ years. I get that there's a million ways they could work out who I am, but the fact that they go to that extent from the get-go is a more than a bit creepy.

I'm actually tempted to do a bit of an experiment next time I go overseas - buy a brand new device, with cash, on the other side of the world and sign up for email and then facebook using just that device and see if they can work out who I am. I'd half expect to see someone in a FB t-shirt lurking in some nearby bushes whispering into a mic...

Ok, I am not be the "usual" reader of Hacker News (HN). I am reading HN since 2012 for disclaimer.

So basically, Facebook (FB) is for socializing in real life. Since I am currently in exchange, It is useful to create parties and to invite people to them. It is also useful to talk with your friend on the other side of the earth (more than Whatsapp), to keep up to date with them. And it is also the best way to get into groups, to exchange ideas, or into the group of your university.

So basically, FB is my social life. Do I like that ? No. But would i have a social life without FB ? No. Most of the people here are seeing FB as the devil, but it helps me to invite to parties girls I want to hang out with or get invited to parties, and since everyone (or most of the people, more most of the people) are looking for raising their number of friends on Facebook, it is really useful to connect with new peoples. But, yes, I am invited to parties without FB, but not as much.

Also, for group projects, it is the closest thing to Slack for College students.

So as much as I hate FB, it is really useful, sadly.

Have you tried dropping FB? Relying on old-fashioned txt message to ask your friends whatsup?

As an aside, it's funny that text messages can now be considered "old fashioned".

I removed my account a few months back (you have to request that, you can't delete it on your own, which I think sucks). I did it because I feel that they betrayed our democracy for profit and I do not want to support an organization like that. And that was the feedback I gave them. I do not miss it one bit.

If you think companies like facebook can manipulate democracy, you have problems with open democracy, at least information-age democracy, not facebook in particular.

Undergirding democracy is the idea that citizens are intelligent and trustworthy enough to deal with yellow journalism, propaganda, etc. Or, at least, that is a downside of the least bad approach to governance so far.

> Undergirding democracy is the idea that citizens are intelligent and trustworthy enough to deal with yellow journalism, propaganda, etc.

The Nov 2016 US election, and the investigations into news propagation on sites like FB, is outright proof that citizens are in fact not intelligent enough on average to deal with this.

I'm not trying to shit on people or be flippant, but... it's not looking good. Certainly censoring people or legislating FB into oblivion isn't the answer, but I'm not sure what is. "Educate everyone better" seems like a catch-22 at best, likely destined to fail.

And I don't think this is an example of a company influencing elections. FB was pretty unwitting there. Others found creative, unintended ways to use the platform to do their dirty work.

There are serious implications to that conclusion. The citizens are the watchers in a democracy. If they can't be trusted to come to reasonable conclusions on their own, there is no other authority qualified to ensure they are properly informed and vetted.

It is circular, to say the least, to have the government regulate how to educate citizens about how to pick the next government.

Yep, and that's one of the main reasons I'm finding the political climate in the US so depressing. The answer would seem to be "marginalize people who lack critical thinking ability", but... that's not really a solution.

It seems like people becoming increasingly physically isolated and not connecting even with neighbors makes online connections valuable. It's pervasive and avoids moving physically. And of course, the network effect of others being on Facebook.

>It seems like people becoming increasingly physically isolated and not connecting even with neighbors makes online connections valuable.

This kind of thinking never held much water with me. You don't get to choose your neighbors, the odds that they'll be compatible with you in the way that might lead to meaningful friendships is extremely low.

None of my parents friends are former neighbors. Lots of them are former church-goers from the various churches they've attended though. I think that shows that you really only need one thing in common to help filter out the majority of the population. If you like bowling, take up bowling, and I bet you'll find quite a few people you get on with quite well. Ditto paintball, and obviously ditto friday night drinking.

But the idea that Facebook is "ruining the connection we used to have with the people around us" is pretty much nonsense. We never really cared that much about the people around us, neighbors were always just acquaintances.

Very much agreed. I've lived in the bay area for 13 years, in apartments with at least 20 units in them (usually many more), and I have not known even one of my neighbors. Beyond that, I have a very healthy in-person social life filled with people I've met through other avenues. Even though you'd think it'd be easy to do so, I just don't have much interest in meeting the other people who live in my building.

This isn't universal, of course -- one of my good friends lives in a building with 4 units, and he knows everyone who lives there. Diff'rent strokes, I guess.

I wonder if knowing your neighbors is more of a suburban/rural/family thing? When I was growing up (suburbs of NJ and later MD), we always at least knew the people who lived on our block, even if we weren't close friends with them.

>I wonder if knowing your neighbors is more of a suburban/rural/family thing?

Mutual self-interest brings neighbors together. The further out in the sticks you are and/or the lower income your neighborhood is, the more you get out of a firm working understanding with your neighbors.

You may be partially right. A few hours after I posted the comment, I realized that the urban vs. rural difference is also a factor here (like kilnos described in another comment). Before we had much larger concentrations of human population in cities, it seemed to me that people were a bit more than acquaintances even with neighbors. May not have been the thickest of friends, but were still around to connect with, gossip, reach out for some quick help, etc. I'm sure there were variations across geographies and cultures, but a "modern city life" has made many people more busy and stressed to form such connections and keep up.

What I have found that everyone uses facebook to post stuff about themselves and voice their "important" opinions on stuff.

Nobody uses it to "connect". Or for sure maybe sometimes but surely it's not the only way that people can connect in these days. I can connect with people in a myriad of ways, as always, even before facebook. I have seen absolutely no change in how "connected" I am after facebook has taken over.

Anyhow if it so important for "connecting" then how come I, without facebook, still am very much connected with my friends and family.

> What I have found that everyone uses facebook to post stuff about themselves and voice their "important" opinions on stuff.

I have got the very same impression. It ended up like a huge ego driven circle jerk. Most "communication" happens passively (likes, post emojis, passive comments, shares). And barely anyone is even interested in provided OC.

Its a sad place these days

I don't know about others, but I use it primarily to keep up to date on bands I like, and because it's a convenient way to manage an event and invite people.

>keep up to date on bands I like

Specifically for this use case I like Songkick [0]. Lets me know when anyone I'm following is touring near me. Lets you import artists from Spotify too.

0: https://www.songkick.com/home

I used Bandsintown for the same thing for a while. But neither gives you updates straight from the bands, about contests and other stuff that isn't directly tour-related.

Same here. Most, if not all, bands/labels/party organizers I know are on FB. Even the more underground ones eventually switched. And last time I checked there was still no proper alternative (and the forums I used to frequent for that same goal are gone or close to dead, mostly because of FB). For me this is the key value of FB, the solcial aspect is close to non-existing for me, most of my 'friends' being blocked so their messages don't generate noise amongst the messages from bands I do want to see.

I do realize this makes me a bit of an outlier though: none of the typical science/articles about FB, like this one, applies to me because I'm not in it for the social part. I do understand it though; just like I'd urge hose who are like 'I got rid of FB and didn't miss it one moment' to realize that while it's possible that worked for you, some people just don't have that luxury of being able to easily quit. I'd also miss FB if it were to disappear tomorrow, but mainly because I'd had to spend time and search for a new practical tool which does the same as what I use it for now.

I use Facebook essentially as a RSS feed for bands I like since a concert I missed of one of my favorite band in 2007. They were playing in my town and I wasn't aware of it. Since then they split so I'll never see them live.

So I started subscribing on my bands Facebook pages to never miss anything again.

Also using it to comment sometimes.

I am in a weird situation where I have to teach people about Facebook, pages and ad campaign while I myself haven't logged (not even for a sneak peek) or posted in a year. That thing is a cancer and one of the aspects of my job is basically to be a Facebook evangelist.

In my observation, unhappiness leads to more social media use, rather than the causal arrow going the other way. It's not that Facebook makes people unhappy, but unhappiness that drives many people to post prolifically on Facebook.

Unfortunately the amount of groups on Facebook is nowhere else to be found, especially important for people who move/travel a lot. Not to mention the majority of events & co often only is posted on FB.

I travel a lot plus mostly live in a different place than i originally grew up with, so moved quite a few times, so have plenty remote friends.

Still i dont miss it and i never felt i should get another FB profile. Even thought i dont had one the last 4 years.

What i am trying to say is that you most likely wont even know how irrelevant FB is for you life as long as you hold on to it for whatever reasons.

At the heart of it? The need to connect with others.

(Not saying that Facebook satisfies this need, but it is a need.)

Focus on friends that only share memes and Facebook makes you feel awesome

During my last days, I spent my time on Facebook for the memes. But I still deleted it anyways

I don't use it a ton. I prefer Twitter.

Ok, I a

Please people stop it. They will inject they agenda on everything.

Trying push they political agenda.

They steal your private information and sell it.

Follow, locate you with they mobole apps.

Prosecute you for liking anything, expose your information to government / CIA officials..

Just take a moment and listen all CIA whistleblower statements..

Alex Jones have been talking about this now over 10 years and still.. there people who just follow the mainstream liars.. quite unbelievable

Why people ? I really wonder so many times the ethos of these companies.. google, facebook, twitter .. all just same big brotherhood company ..

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