Hacker News Reader

Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

> Around four-in-ten (42%) say they have taken a break from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more, while around a quarter (26%) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their cellphone.

44% of younger users (those ages 18 to 29) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their phone in the past year, nearly four times the share of users ages 65 and older (12%) who have done so.

View on HN

"... and then installed Instagram." Instagram usage in the US has been increasing faster than people have been abandoning FB[1].

I may be a cynic, but whats the biggest consequence of people moving from FB to Insta? Probably not having to pay all of the tech debt FB incurred during its meteoric rise.

[1]: https://www.spredfast.com/social-media-tips/social-media-dem...

Both the EU and US groups have called for breaking Facebook up. More specifically, they want WhatsApp and Instagram to be separated from Facebook.

Facebook should have never been allowed to buy Instagram, just like Google should have never been allowed to buy AdMob and perhaps Deepmind and a few other companies.

It hurts competition and the economy (in the long term) when large players can just buy out anyone that presents a threat to them, and then either integrate them into their main service or shut them down. Facebook has been trying lately to get Instagram people to post more om Facebook for instance. Facebook also attempted to buy Snapchat at one point.

If the rules to stop such mergers don't yet exist, then maybe someone should invent them. Much more often than not the consequences of these mergers and consolidations, as well as various crimes the big companies commit, are dealt with when it's way too late, and the companies have profited much more than what the punishment takes away a decade later.

Oligopolies are also how we get business driving fundamental R&D. The tradeoff isn't as clear cut as Econ 201 makes it, because in additional to the above point you also have a difference between oligopolies and monopolistic competition.

I would be curious to read some literature supporting this idea. Oligopolies driving R&D sounds counterintuitive to me.

Sure! There is a lot of lit, here is the basic idea. On mobile now, hit me up via github (same name) for academic refs later?

http://www2.harpercollege.edu/mhealy/eco211/lectures/monopol...

I don't see what part of your link supports your statement. Losing 44% of 18-29s is massive, and I can't accept your assertion without data to support it.

I wonder what percentage of those people who removed the app still use the platform though. Anecdotally almost everyone I know has uninstalled the app in favor of the webclient. It's usually faster, has less tracking shit, and doesnt eat battery like their native app does.

I'm a little surprised they didn't even bother to ask if anyone stopped using FB (i.e. "deleted their account") completely. "Deleting the app from your phone" is a pretty poor proxy for "I reduced usage of FB" in my view.

I, although not in US, a year ago deleted the app because I was wasting too much time on Facebook feed, & also used its web client maybe only 2-3 times since then.

Half of my friends have done the same and migrated to the web client. If Facebook is going to hog memory and show data-chugging videos, it might as well do it in a JavaScriptCore VM context so I can stop it when I want to.

Bringing out my own anecdata, everyone I know who deleted the app did it in the process of abandoning the platform itself. It wouldn't surprise me that the web client is gaining in relative popularity though.

Sure but how many are on Instagram? If so Facebook (the company) has still got 'em!

When people "delete their Facebook", most only ever delete the app. Many still use it on other devices, or maybe even their phone browser.

Depends on the group. My wife’s friend list has many of the grey ghost profiles of deactivated users.

Sure wish I didn't have to root my phone to delete the Facebook app. Is this a T-Mobile thing, or do most carriers bundle Facebook now?

It can be either a carrier thing, or a phone manufacturer thing. Of all the phone I deal with at work (3 models each from all the major manufacturers) I loath the HTC ones most because of the amount of shitware you cant uninstall.

One of my conditions to go with a cell provider is whether I can bring my own phone. I've found BLU phones to be highly serviceable, and works great with an MVNO (I use one on T-mobile's network). I am not associated with BLU, just a satisfied customer. The sub $200 price point is nice and the hardware tradeoff hasn't been too bad. I do worry about their phone-home issues though.

That was a big motivator for me as well when I finally jumped ship from Verizon. Admittedly, I went to Fi, so I was lucky that the limited phone selection worked out for me. The ease of international use more than outweighs that for me.

Another key reason I prefer iOS.

It's just as valid of a reason to prefer 'stock' Android or something like Lineage, though. Not having to worry about the minutiae of operating systems can be a definite platform benefit though, it's just not worth the tradeoff for me.

Adb yo, you can remove packages without root. Even then, I do wonder what fragments are left behind. I fear Facebook/Google/et. al are too intertwined with the likes of Samsung and LG.

Even when I remove all related packages, Facebook stuff still shows up in the app manager as 'Not Installed'.

Anybody have a complete list of packages and know if removing them prevents data harvesting by FB?

While it may be a good idea for people to delete the Facebook app from their phones and and stop logging in as often, it seems to me like any user tracking on the part of Facebook is still going to be happening regardless.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com