Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew

nytimes.com

180 pointsvo2maxer192 comments

"Godzilla eventually died, and as the Facebook Files make clear, so will Facebook."

A speculative piece with zero substance. It focuses too much on whether Facebook is still cool (it isn't) and that it is heavily criticized at societal level (it is).

That does not automatically translate to weakness, decline or a full termination of the service. All of this may happen, but not a single meaningful or impactful piece of evidence is delivered to substantiate it.

A quote like "Facebook is for old people" could have been made 7 years ago. It has been true for a long time, but all meaningful metrics since then are way up, not down. Plus, you know, there's quite a few "old" people in the world, and they have political and purchasing power.

The US-centric take on Facebook is also limiting. In quite a lot of (developing) countries, Facebook is the ruler. It's used for everything, all day. And unlike the West, many cultures do not think its "uncool" to mingle with parents. They don't have a dismissive or hateful relationship with the elderly.

Only 1 in 9 FB users is from the US, yet the entire basis for most of these type of articles is to just forget about the other 89%.

Also, it's cheap to buy cool. Facebook has built a machine to monetize cool social apps. There will always be new apps for them to buy and monetize.

Sure. But what worked with WhatsApp might not work with the next cool social app. Snapchat IPOed, and why would the typical founder of a hockeystick growing social network sell to facebook if there is a realistic chance of becoming the next facebook? Not that we would be off any better, so.

Because they won't wait until there's a 25% chance of becoming the next facebook to buy something, they'll do it when there's a 5% chance. There's at least 5 years between that 5% and 25% chance; to have that 5% chance means you probably have 50 million users. And after this company turns down that first offer, and after facebook releases the clone, they'll take the second.

I don't think anyone has had a realistic chance of becoming facebook since facebook became facebook. Google didn't have a realistic chance of becoming facebook, and they partially wrecked a lot of their other properties in the attempt.

This is something you see with Twitter, as well. A lot of the extremism on Twitter drives a lot of journalists and politicians. But most Americans are not on Twitter.

There's a cool dev I'd like to follow on Twitter, but they require my phone number. So I'm still not on Twitter. Their suckiness is just not worth it.

You can skip submitting a phone number. They don't make it obvious but an option to skip is there at sign up. Though from personal experience it may make the moderation system more aggressive towards your account.

Thanks, I did skip it on signup, but now every time I try to log in, I'm forwarded to a phone entry page, and there's no option to leave it except by signing out or hitting the help page. It appears I'm worthless to Twitter without my phone number, something I'm not willing to give them.

Statistically, almost no one is on Twitter. I think the recent numbers I saw were less than 3% of people send 90% of tweets and only 8% of Twitter users tweet at all.

I only lurk on Twitter and recently have been paying some more attention to such numbers.

One thing that indeed sticks out is that if you take a particular topic and inspect the leaders in that topic, many have more than 100K tweets. That's over 270 tweets per day if you'd compress it to a year.

A quick glance at these leaders' timelines shows that they tweet all day every day, you need to scroll endlessly to just catch up with a few hours of their activity. It's basically all they do.

On the other end of the spectrum are indeed people that never tweet or hardly ever tweet.

And there's an important in-between category. People that do use it frequently, mostly commenting on those extreme leaders, yet for some mysterious reason, they can never get above the magical number of 2,000 followers themselves. They are basically the cannon fodder for the Twitter elites. It is them that like, retweet and comment, all to boost people already winning at the game even further.

Why is 2000 a magical number?

I don't know, just a pattern I spotted.

I remember reading something similar that studied online spaces in general and found similar trends. I wasn't able to find that article, but I found this one for Twitter [1]. It's an important to remember that when lurking any online forums. The vast majority of content is submitted by individuals who live their entire lives through online spaces. The narratives being formed by people who are by definition, not normal. Sometimes that can be beneficial, like when one person submits over 76k SQL answers on Stack Overflow [2], and sometimes it can be destructive, like when a tiny fraction of disconnected radicals can present fringe political ideas as mainstream (aided by a complicit media).

Somewhat related, I encountered this curious phenomenon myself accidently when trawling through CBC news articles in the lead up to the latest Canadian election. I casually scrolled through the comments for some guilty pleasure entertainment, and found the same few commenters posting on every single article. I took a peak at the profiles of two commenters who were flighting over their political view points and found they each had over 100k comments.... On CBC news articles....

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28642326

> I remember reading something similar that studied online spaces in general and found similar trends.

Probably "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18881827

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

I had an entirely different interpretation of the article. It seems to me that it's mostly centered around evidence: the WSJ articles based on Facebook's leaked research. The author isn't saying FB is in trouble because kids think its uncool. He's saying FB itself thinks they are in trouble as evidenced by their own data--"internal researchers predicted that daily use would decline 45 percent by 2023"--and by the desperate attempts to remain relevant like trying to target the pre-teen audience.

I think the point of the article is that while FB might look strong to outsiders, if you look at internal communications and efforts, they sound pretty worried about becoming irrelevant. What stronger evidence could you want than that?

Of course they are internally worried. Every business is internally worried, otherwise they wouldn't be doing their jobs.

The point is proportionality. A single signal, the slow decline of teen activity, which has been known for some 2-3 years, is used to lead to an existential conclusion. A service with 2.7 billion users that has kept growing despite years of criticism is called "weak" for it. I consider that a baseless dramatization.

Seeking next growth areas (such as pre-teens) isn't "desperate", it's just Facebook trying to keep growing the user base, which is obviously a hard thing to do at this size.

> It’s far too early to declare Facebook dead. The company’s stock price has risen nearly 30 percent in the past year, lifted by strong advertising revenue and a spike in use of some products during the pandemic

Stock price is not an indicator of aliveness. Facebook is morally dead. It is the new smoking. Slowly but surely people will ween themselves off it, and a great diaspora will begin. To where? Who knows, but I imagine people will have a choice of multiple services instead of one or two big behemoths (i.e Facebook & Twitter).

Any other service will become like Facebook or worse unless people start paying directly for social media and privacy regulations get passed.

The trend I've seen is the emergence of services that exclusively cater to an echo chamber (usually far right or far left) and will probably monetize by selling that audience out to interests who want to reach that demographic. That I'm afraid is even worse than Facebook since it puts people into permanent filter bubbles from which they will not escape unless they leave the network.

Facebook is like smoking in some ways, but there is one huge difference: the dynamics of the market forced Facebook to be like that or die. Since everything has to be "free" but nothing actually is, things can only be monetized in sleazy underhanded ways.

"Free" is really the central pillar of surveillance capitalism just like it was for classic wall-to-wall advertisements television.

Not necessarily. Just changing the newsfeed to show most recent first instead of their algorithm that is designed to make you angry and/or sad in order to get more clicks would be a huge step in the right direction.

The next FB could be smart enough (or regulated enough) to require this change.

It would require regulation and/or a financial model that is not based on user exploitation, which in turn requires either direct payment or a highly regulated ad experience.

All the financial incentives right now heavily incentivize sleaze.

People pay for the Fediverse, but it doesn't seem to be an echo-chamber.

>Facebook is morally dead.

But Instagram is not, and Facebook will keep adding ads and mind-tricks so they can further milk their addicts' attention.

And if not Facebook, TikTok will do so.

Marlboro may be in trouble, but the new Big Tobacco is doing-well-thank-you.

Instagram is dying too, take it from an early(ish) leaver

It depends on how the pivot to prioritizing video works out. I forget who, but one photography YouTuber mentioned good results from adding the occasional video to their Instagram feed. It also boosted their photos. Not good news for people who aren't equipped for or interested in doing video, but it might just work out for them. Especially if they can lure enough people way from YouTube. I'll quit watching someone before I follow them to Instagram, but I don't think I'm representative.

I don't. Many of my friends, who finally left Facebook, are very happy with Instagram. It feels like what Facebook was in 2010, people exchange their Instagram handles instead of phone numbers.

Do you have any kind of stats or even anecdotal evidence to your claim, other than you left ("early" in your own words)?

> Many of my friends, who finally left Facebook, are very happy with Instagram.

Counter-anecdata: Many of my friends are unhappy with Instagram because of the (randomly![1]) filtered timelines, intrusive ads[2], etc.

[1] e.g. I see different timelines on web vs iOS with the same account. It's bafflingly stupid. I just want a chronologically sorted list of post from everyone I follow.

[2] Checking just now, scrolled through 25 timeline entries - 7 of them are ads.

Are they leaving it? Did they identify a replacement they would rather use?

I didn't mean no one had criticisms, maybe "very happy" was an exaggeration. I'm just saying I don't see the exodus the GP thinks is imminent, even on a small scale.

Where dix you leave to?

I made a similar comment before, but what I think will happen is that "Facebook.com" will die, and FB will turn into a digital conglomerate that's made up of acquisitions. They did it with Instagram and with WhatsApp. Facebook knows their core platform (facebook.com) is on it's last legs. They know they have virtually no chance of attracting back the "Young Americans" core demo to use Facebook.com. At this point they are scrambling to acquire and bring in other tech before their core platforms becomes as worthless as MySpace.

It's inevitable that at some point, Facebook the company will part ways with Facebook, the social network. They'll probably rename the company to "FB Inc." or something equally meaningless, ala KFC or FedEx (where the "federal" is no longer apt).

We might even see the name change while the social network is still up and running, resulting in some ridiculous re-brand like "Facebook by FB" (did you know that the actual Express service from Fedex is now called "FedEx Express"? :)

I don’t know how you could say Facebook.com is on its last legs when it is still growing, both in DAUs and MAUs, with 1.9B and 2.9B, respectively.

A fourth of the world population uses it daily, and a third uses it monthly. They are far from dead.

True, I was really only talking about the American market. I will say I think the same will happen in other countries eventually. If you think about it in terms of Digital Churn, first the young folks used Facebook, then the older demo. This churn is lagging in other countries but I feel like it will catch up.

Even in the US, FB is still growing their MAUs, albeit slowly.

Sure, one day that will not be the case. But you can say that for any company out there.

I disagree very strongly. FB is big piece of digital real estate and it keeps growing in the developing world. Innovation might be stagnant at fb but I would argue this is the case for all of big tech

> Stock price is not an indicator of aliveness. Facebook is morally dead. It is the new smoking. Slowly but surely people will ween themselves off it

It sounds like you are predicting that their user base will shrink significantly? Since the stock price is essentially people estimating the expected value of the company, including future growth or decline, it seems to me like the stock price should be a good indicator of this?

> it seems to me like the stock price should be a good indicator of this?

Successful value investors like Warren Buffet have proven time and again that the stock price is often wrong. They are so rich only because others are so often so wrong (paraphrased from Charlie Munger).

Stock prices can be right or wrong. Here’s the interesting question - What should Facebook financials look like to justify its stock price now? You can read “Expectations Investing” to find out the approx “correctness” of $FB current market price.

Warren Buffet being able to pick stocks better than the market doesn’t mean that a HN commenter will be right about a given stock though. Anyone here could easily be of the others who are “so often so wrong”

Buffet’s insane returns are numerically more to do with how long he’s been in the market:

> $81.5 of Warren Buffett’s $84.5 billion net worth came after his 65th birthday. (Housel)

Possibly one business will come into being: quit-Facebook coaching. Probably won't be as big an industry as smoke-quitting or Alcoholics Anonymous but might still be profitable.

the smoking / nicotine analogy is incredibly apt:

* addictive

* network / peer pressure effects

* damaging (but insidiously only after long cumulative use)

* poorly regulated even after the negative externalities became known

* less developed (and even less regulated) markets the final "growth" act of the industry

We can thus extrapolate that usage will only stop when governments start actively warning people (instead of tacitly approving and bankrolling with gratuitous advertisement when they maintain presence on the platforms and invite their citizens to engage there)

Can we push the analogy towards a solution / better social media? There are various proto-alternatives in the fediverse space. But some look suspiciously like E-cigarettes. Maybe the only cure from (at least this type) of social networks is to just pull the plug. As long as the billions keep pouring in and financing this sick business model we'll never really have a proper exploration of possible healthy alternatives to online social media

> addictive

Not just that, but like tobacco, FB was strategically, scientifically researched and optimized for addiction. In FB's case it was through emotional manipulation instead of chemical but capitalizing on biology in both cases.

And, just like the tobacco companies, Facebook has

- deliberately sowed doubt and misinformation about the harmful effects of their productt

- hired in-house researchers to produce bad science to counter the legitimate research finding the product is harmful

- insisted that "the science isn't settled" while hampering study into the harmful effects

Weird how much all this sounds like people against video games, you can add targets kids to the list.

>To where? Who knows, but I imagine people will have a choice of multiple services instead of one or two big behemoths (i.e Facebook & Twitter).

Hopefully, they will re-discover the joys and challenges of in-person communication and social networking.

Definitely not.

The next frontier is vr metaverse.

Hard to tell if you're serious. If so, the "VR Metaverse" will only exist for a select few techno-elites, and I'm not really sure what they would say to each other. Probably end up just scrolling on their phones in VR.

You're seriously disconnected from what young people are doing. Search 'vrchat' on youtube.

I am not going to spend my time watching videos of other people in VR. You're seriously disconnected from what young people are doing. Search "dirt jumps" on youtube.

...which is currently a multi-billion dollar effort at FB (Facebook Reality Labs)

I want to be fully wired in and never interact with someone in person ever again. Your username reeks of pure evil for someone like me.

To where?

Twitter and Instagram are just as bad as Facebook.

Reddit is magnitudes worse.

Interested as to why you think Reddit is so much worse?

Not OP, but Reddit is really awful morally and from a user perspective unless you heavily curate your subreddits to low population subs. The front page has to be 95% secret ads or corporate/political shills. Its heavily populated by posts from bot accounts that use them to sneak in advertising posts.

> unless you heavily curate your subreddits to low population subs.

Isn't this true of any service, at least of a certain size? My Twitter feed is tightly, tightly curated, and even the comment replies to these extremely high-quality accounts are full of unbelievable levels of stupidity and hostility.

Not only that, Reddit is an echo chamber, populated by people who claim to be tolerant, intelligent and open to new ideas. In reality most are single minded and will attack annoy one those who don’t share their believes.

I closed my Reddit account after the last Danish parliment election, when it became clear that only left wing politic was considered “correct” and apparently any liberal party or candidate is not to be trusted, so no argumentation would considered valid.

Reddit is in general hot garbage, but sub-communities have been wonderful if you can find them. Reminds me a lot of the old message board communities.

The smoking analogy gets thrown a lot, but it’s just a further and less accurate one than the TV analogy.

The TV industry has been booming and the only issue is more advanced successors.

TV can be addicting, rage inducing, waste of time, ruining teenagers minds and giving them bad body images issues.

TV is also informative, educational, and makes people happy since it’s fun to watch at other times.

While some people have been for years complains about the destruction of human society by TV, the majority just nods and prefers having it to not.

(FB employee, opinions my own)

Your employer is toxic and causes long term damage, like smoking. As for the TV whataboutism...

TV doesn't track me, doesn't tailor content to influence my behavior, TV doesn't try to build a model of my social network. And the big difference - TV actually creates content themselves.

TV wants to and at times is starting to do many of those things.

Ok, does this change anything about parent's main point that Facebook's core business is results in major society level issues?

No... ? Did I say anything to contradict that point?

Facebook showed them the way

Do you mean traditional over-the-air television? Because I'm absolutely certain companies like Netflix, HBO and Disney tailor content to influence your behavior. Haven't you ever compared the Netflix recommendations for your account with anyone else's? And yes, "TV actually creates content themselves", but that means you'll be exposed to whatever agenda and viewpoints the stakeholders of the production company that creates the content what to promote, and only that viewpoint.

Netflix recommendations is one of the reasons I’m not worried about tailored content. Netflix apparently have zero idea about what shows or films I like. Either that or they don’t have them. All I want is fantasy removed from sci-fi, explosions, spaceships and boobs.

In your analogy of smoking, the returns of smoking companies like Philip Morris have been astronomical.

Adult smoking has been on a downward decline in the US for decades and youth smoking peaked in 1997[1]. While I'm sure the returns of stocks like Philip Morris were very good in their heyday, nowadays MO stock does not have astronomical returns. They just have an extremely solid dividend yield. Compared to FB (>21% 5-years) or Snap (>100% 3-years), Altria Group total 5-year returns are just over 10%. Over 15 years, they don't even break 5%[2]. Philip Morris International has a similar story: returns in the mid to high single digits[3].

1: https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco... 2: https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xnys/mo/trailing-returns 3: https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xnys/pm/trailing-returns

In their heyday is about 30-40y of holding period. So, it seems we have to wait another 20y or so to see single digit FB returns.

> Facebook is morally dead.

It's also just about the least cool thing out there now. In the early days of FB, old people would sign up b/c FB was where they could get in touch with their grandchildren. Now 20 somethings keep their FB account around just to keep in touch with their Boomer grandparents. FB is the new Fox News. A financial juggernaut fueled by angry baby boomers.

I’m hopeful, but I think it’s important to note that this isn’t inevitable. Facebook could just as easily go the way of junk food, where everyone knows it’s bad and everyone sees how it contributes to major social problems but we just accept it as a fact of life.

> a great diaspora will begin.

That was announced to great fanfare and support in the NYT a decade ago, and it didn't turn out so great.

I think the smoking analogy is a pretty bad one, because smoking is an empty activity with little redeeming value. Once you quit you actually become sort of repulsed by the activity. There's very little at the core of smoking that's worth keeping.

But the core of what Facebook does is very good. Everyone I care to still be in touch with from high school, college, and multiple past jobs is there. That core feature is good, not bad.

And it's not at all obvious that those people are ever going to go somewhere else. Sure, teenagers are going to keep adopting new, fun stuff, but none of that new, fun stuff replaces that core feature of Facebook.

"Teenagers hanging out" is a different use case from "adult who wants to stay in touch with people he knew a decade ago." There's no competition for this latter use case.

I have no love for Facebook, but it's not as weak as media thinks it is. While its user base might be older now, that age group has ton of money.

1. My favorite local events/groups/restaurants/shops are doing all on FB now.

2. Facebook market place has replaced craigslist for me in the last year or so.

3. WhatsApp is as pervasive as it gets.

Oh, FB is also holding something like $64B in cash.

Craigslist is the biggest loss for me. It's such a nice simple website that doesn't require much of me to get things listed. I refuse to get back on facebook just for the market place, but damn if it doesn't make selling off old equipment/stuff much easier.

Yeah, FB market is infuriating to use. I have no senes for whether my search is giving me "real" results or filtered results that FB wants me to see. I assume the latter. It doesn't easily allow nationwide searches. Its auto search is a hacked together steaming pile. Craigslist is/was so much easier to use, particularly with some of the aggregator sites allowing nationwide searches.

If you want to level-up your frustration try selling on Facebook marketplace. No one reads your ad text and they just use the vile automated one-click replies. I used to give away very nice items, assuming there are many people in need in my community, but it has become very abusive. The amount of time I have to waste is too much to justify. The only thing I would sell on there anymore is a high dollar item like a car. Even then, I don't suggest that. The last car I sold resulted in getting nagged to death by the person who couldn't figure out how to transfer the title. The convenience features of the platform are the opposite of convenient. It's cancer.

Most of the people who reply to marketplace are older women who see a promoted post and just click "Is this still available?" button and never talk to you again or talk for a day or two and then ghost you after "my husband took me on a surprise trip and I won't be home until Monday, you can give it to someone else if you want." Happens too much to make it worth the trouble. I had to start selling things I wanted to give away because the price reduces 20% of the pain but anymore it's just too much effort. Craig's list, aside from potentially getting murdered, is a much better experience.

Does your neighborhood/town have a "Buy Nothing" group (on FB)? It's a private group for what you describe - giving away unused items. We've used our local group heavily for this - mostly giving away things (we downsized homes a few years ago and have been purging ever since). But, we also picked up some nice things as well - my wife even hit the jackpot with a neighbor giving away a closet full of designer shoes in a hard-to-find size.

Agreed. I miss the simplicity and quirkiness of Craigslist. I don't use FB so I've been using NextDoor for buying and selling locally and I've found the experience pleasant so far. Very simple and you can limit your blast radius. No algorithms involved. Kind of like a modernized Craigslist.

Exactly, you can barely find anything good listed on CL anymore. I hate FB marketplace but use it because that's where the listings are.

4. WhatsApp hasn’t been completely monetised yet.

It's not that the media thinks Facebook is weak, but rather they're actively working on weakening it. FB was traditional media's darling until they realized they're losing advertisers and subscribers to social media, at which point the doom-and-gloom narratives started.

It is kind of ironic that a 11 years old told researchers “Facebook is for old people” when mark zuckerberg is or at least was, a notorious ageist. Karma is a bitch

Facebook bought Instagram and had the last laugh for a while. I'm sure they would have bought TikTok for an insane price if they thought regulators would approve the sale.

>TikTok

Well they would have bought musical.ly, which is where the non-Chinese TikTok came from.

I think that facebook bought instagram because it saw an existential threat on it.

They really changed their demographics at warp speed from college kids to octogenarians.

I've been finding value in Facebook Marketplace recently. It's kind of a step up from craigslist- basically people on it are more willing to ship things to you and Facebook acts as a financial middleman. Facebook has been enforcing quality standards on the sellers- at least they will not pay the seller until a tracking number has been provided for shipped items. For buyers, the prices tends to be better than on eBay.

Anyway, they could give eBay some real competition and could be a future revenue source if it keeps expanding.

Agree that Facebook Marketplace is good at the moment. I think this is because of the small number of people using it.

If it becomes mainstream then it will have the same problems as all other marketplace websites.

It is mainstream and it is painful as hell. Use it more, you will experience it soon enough.

I wonder why it's so difficult for many people to quit. I quit 5 years ago (too many of my contacts turned disgustingly conservative and i had no interest in reading the MAGA bullshit in my feed anymore, so just deleted myself). Never looked back or had any issue with it. I just know that whatever i ever used to write there only turned into a toxic shitstorm with minimal informational or positive emotional output, it was a waste of time and energy all along.

> turned into a toxic shitstorm with minimal informational or positive emotional output, it was a waste of time and energy all along

This is true of just-about every political conversation on FB and other social media. And, no, it isn't limited to engaging with conservatives. The extremes are present on all sides. It's absolutely horrific to watch. We have watched family members and friends turn on each other and end-up on diametrically opposite ends of the political spectrum, locked into inescapable toxic resonant chambers.

The process is insidious. In other words, it tends to happen gradually, slowly, over time. The algorithms optimize and keep shoving people deeper and deeper into mono-culture echo chambers. I have personally seen people go from nice-as-can-be to merchants of hatred, again, on both the right and the left.

This is no different from the kind of indoctrination that produces such things as terrorists. The difference is that it can happen much faster and it is happening to adults. They are in the grips of a machine learning algorithm with a fitness function that optimizes for nothing that is healthy for the user at all.

Like I said, it is horrific to watch. About a year ago I removed all of my FB connections and only kept about a dozen direct family members, just to exchange pictures, videos and keep in touch. The rest is something I do not care to ever be exposed to again. I lost decades-long real-life friends over the effects of the FB algorithm. Truly sad stuff.

That's right, it's not just the MAGA crowd who's obnoxious, toxic and crazy. Liberals can get this way too in so many situations.

It's people, in the grips of what I would call an evil optimization algorithm. If we stopped using labels and focuses on root causes we might just be able to find equitable solutions to the problem of social media algo-driven radicalization. Conservatives and liberals coexist just fine --and have done so for decades-- in the real world. The problem happens when algorithms shove people into deeper and darker caves where radicalization is almost inevitable.

Picture the retired grandma who is on Facebook in between every other thing she does (I see this in the wild). It's complicated.

For those that deleted their account, how do you navigate a world where more communities exclusively use Facebook?

I deleted my account almost 10 years ago. I've had no regrets. However, I'm finding lately that more communities have no option but Facebook to communicate with others. I live in a somewhat large metropolitan city in the US but it's nearly impossible to find anything on Craigslist anymore — Facebook Marketplace has displaced it. Even local enthusiast groups or my children's school's parent groups communicate only through Facebook. I feel like a luddite when I ask organizers if there is a email mailing list or suggest to start one. Lately I've had urges to create an account again solely for these sorts of groups, but knowing myself, it's a slippery slope.

This is basically why I'm back on FB despite my many account deletions.

Ultimately to participate in civil society in my community I have to be in particular FB groups. I'd much rather meet people at local events, but the past 2 years basically I can either be isolated or on FB

Same here, about 10 years clean.

I simply won't participate in a community that insists all communication go through Facebook-owned channels. I have found that most hobbies and groups I participate in do send out their important info over E-mail as well as whatever they post to Facebook. I've never been embarrassed to go E-mail only. And if they really insist on FB, I just do without. It's not worth it. Be part of the solution, and all that.

Instead of quitting social media I used the approach of use it a lot less. I seriously scaled back by Facebook usage and when I did, my mood improved considerably. I chalk it up to not getting all the daily anger and outrage Facebook tries to feed us.

Now that it looks like the worst of the pandemic is behind us (hopefully???), and people start getting out more and seeing people in real life, I think Facebook usage will decline accordingly. Facebook got a serious bump due to the pandemic and now that things are subsiding I expect so will Facebook usage.

As has been pointed out, I think we will see Facebook usage decline in the first world as the existing user base ages out and young people migrate to other platforms. Facebook's growth and popularity will rest with the developing world.

https://twitter.com/StartupLJackson/status/32983572490604134...

I've quit Facebook on Jan 2017. Since then, I returned FB using an old dummy account for development and testing, and while I was doing that I was checking most of my relatives, friends pages, all almost dead, no postings since 2018 most of them. It's like all the activity switched to Instagram.

If they're on Instagram they are on Facebook. Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories are 1 and the same now.

I agree that they have made a change of neighborhood, not country. I just pointed out the FB app is like a cementery of profiles.

Facebook and Instagram.

Duff Beer and Duff Lite.

I don't like Facebook, but these "Facebook is declining" pieces have been appearing for 5 years now. FB (and Google) have made traditional news much less relevant, which is one possible explanation for why these articles keep appearing -- part wishful thinking, part hatchet job. Both parts mostly ineffectual so far.

The only anti-trust action needed is to prevent Facebook from buying out the competition. Without Instagram, WhatsApp acquisitions, Facebook would have already withered down.

Facebook has by far the worst corporate governance among big tech companies. Everyone is just competing for Zuckerberg's attention and approval (Microsoft has the best).

It's remarkable that "Facebook owns the four most downloaded apps of [2010-19]" [0]

1. Facebook

2. Messenger

3. WhatsApp

4. Instagram

The rest of the T10 have "one owner": Snapchat, Skype, TikTok, UC Browser (Alibaba), Youtube, and Twitter.

[0]https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50838013

It's a lot worse than it seems.

The top 4 apps are 100% controlled by one person, Mark Zuckerberg.

There is no board or committee that can overrule him. If rumors are true, he cut a deal with the previous White House to avoid regulation, so even government (until recently) couldn't stop him.

There is one, semi-educated, ruthless, unscrupulous person running an unprecedented experiment on billions of under-informed people. He has access to a substantial percentage of all messages sent between people every day.

No one person (even an elected person) should have that much power.

> semi-educated

This is an interesting take, but what a weird modifier to add in here. IMO education level is more or less irrelevant here, but if one had to force it into the equation, it seems to me that his Harvard pedigree, even if he didn't graduate, makes your picture of an out-of-touch unelected puppetmaster _more_ sinister.

In college, many of us learn the ethics around experimentation, including the ugly history of experiments performed in secret without ethics boards and without concern for the subjects.

I included that qualifier only to suggest that Zuckerberg likely didn't have the training in ethical experimentation that many of us got in college.

I tend to agree that a Harvard education makes someone more suspect, but only (in my opinion) if the degree is an MBA. Their undergrads, on average, have always seemed to me to be as sincere and compassionate as any other school's.

>In college, many of us learn the ethics around experimentation, including the ugly history of experiments performed in secret without ethics boards and without concern for the subjects.

You have more faith than I do that this lesson is actually absorbed. And it's leaving aside the fact that the kind of elitist detachment from the masses that underpins your framing is going to be correlated with getting education, not lacking it.

Though again, I don't think any of these effects would be strong enough to be worth mentioning.

Just wait for one of the AANG companies to buy the other T10 apps.

By my count, 4 of the other 6 are owned by companies that are either in the FAANG acronym or would be if the FAANG grouping were internally coherent (or considered foreign companies):

- Youtube (Google)

- Skype (Microsoft)

- UC Browser (Alibaba)

- TikTok (Bytedance)

Now all we need is for Amazon to buy Snapchat (or anyone to want Twitter).

I'm convinced that WhatsApp is Facebook's most valuable property, not Facebook itself. It's ubiquitous in the developing world, whereas I think (overoptimistically?) that Facebook itself is dying.

> The rest of the T10 have "one owner": Snapchat, Skype, TikTok, UC Browser (Alibaba), Youtube, and Twitter.

I think you mean that each of those apps has a different owner? Or do you actually mean that there is a single entity that owns all of them, e.g. a common investor?

What makes Microsoft’s corporate governance so good, in your opinion?

Microsoft board and board Committees does their work and contributes. They also have good basic rules for corporate governance. They have Lead Independent Director. Also the independent directors have time to meet in executive session without company management.

The board is not just same minded good guys club who hangs together, or lapdogs of the CEO. Microsoft has been is surprisingly Teflon-like in diplomatic in relations to foreign governments and public opinions. Part of it is of course Nadella, but another part is the corporate governance that directs Nadella.

Good example is how smoothly they handled Bill Gates scandal. Bill Gates decided to resign from the board for "completely unrelated reasons" after Microsoft's board of directors hired a law firm to investigate a Gates romantic relationship with a Microsoft employee. It shows some gut to just toss away founder and major owner in order to look after the company interest.

I would’ve quit FB long ago but need it for community groups.

I'm in the same boat, but have found that a lot of the groups I depended on FB for (local tabletop gaming groups) have been slowly migrating to Discord. Each local game store that spins up their own Discord is one less group I need to engage with on FB.

These journalists are delusional. If you look at monthly active users, you'll see a line that goes straight and up.

For instance, in Q1 2021 to Q2 2022, the monthly active users went from 2.853 billion to 2.895 billion or 1.45% quarter to quarter growth or just under 6% growth annually. And that growth is sustaining with nearly a third of the world population as a monthly active user. If you look at their other stats you'll see they're similarly indicating consistent growth.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...

>If you look at monthly active users, you'll see a line that goes straight and up.

It's a question of quality though, not quantity. Facebook's MAU growth is almost entirely international users from the developing world at this point, who are orders of magnitude less profitable than US users. They will remain an advertising juggernaut forever, but their cultural relevance has passed.

This has been true for quite a while, the stock price keeps going up but it can take quite a while for the break to actually come.

Also, I think what people heavily underestimate with FB and GOOGL is that the majority of their growth is coming from volume, which they are 100% in control of over the short-term.

All they need to do is add another ad to the page, and their revenue goes up. The problem is that, over the long-term, this results in less and less product. With the targeting changes, with the valuable US/young userbase shrinking rapidly (amongst young people, Facebook isn't even in the top five social networks), it is very clear that management are turning all the dials they can now but this can only end one way (I also suspect a lot of the "international growth" is not real).

It's true that they have less US user growth, but its incredible to consider that they still have US user growth.

> Facebook will experience its slowest (US) growth ever in 2021 at just 0.8%. [0]

That's with a ~61% penetration in US internet users. Instagram still has pretty impressive US user growth

> This statistic shows the projected Instagram user growth in the United States from 2018 to 2023. In 2020, the social network's user figures grew by 6.2 percent compared to the previous year. In 2021, the development is estimated to slow to a 3.7 percent annual growth rate. [1]

The fact that revenue per user is much higher in the US and Canada ($53.56 per user) than Europe ($16.87) and much less in Asia ($4.05) [2] is an opportunity. They can get aim to bring these numbers up and continue revenue growth. They did exactly that. For instance revenue per user in Europe went from 10.64 to 16.87 from Q1 2020 to Q4 2020.

I couldn't find a single statistic that would even suggest that Facebook's growth is in trouble in the foreseeable future.

This points to a bigger issue with modern journalism. Their goal is to feed subscribers what they want to read. And their subscriber base is skeptical of facebook and wants to read about how their downfall is just around the corner. They've been doing this for years. But they don't bother to do basic sanity checks on their claims. You can hate Facebook all you want, but don't delude yourself in the process.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-will-experience-its...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/426533/instagram-us-user...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...

Simple active user count doesn't really reflect "the truth" either. Take myself - I count as an active user, but since the lockdowns started, I've gone from using FB daily to barely using it weekly. I ignore my feed completely and only check FB for photos from my parents and some niche marketplace groups. Anecdotally, I know quite a few people whose usage pattern has followed a similar path. I'm sure FB can still monetize me, but not nearly as well as 18 months ago.

Their revenue per user has gone up considerably over the years. US revenue per user went from 39.63 in Q3 2020 to 53.56 in Q4

https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...

Problem is ... Metric can be hacked and people knew it. MAU could be boosted if you spamming user with notification, and one misclick would make that user one MAU.

I think the worry is legit. TikTok is the young app. I can't see how Facebook could compete organically with it at its current scale. Maybe asking US government to ban it outright would be their most practical way to win the battle, but not the war.

Okay, look at operating profit.

2016 -> 2017: +62%

2017 -> 2018: +23%

2018 -> 2019: -4%

2019 -> 2020: +36%

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/facebook-statistics/

There are a number of metrics going down mentioned in the article. Those seems like the culturally relevant ones.

Yes, Facebook has issues that they need to address and strategize around, but there's still a lot of positive that Facebook brings to the table that I wouldn't overlook.

There are many Facebook Groups with thriving communities of good people helping one another. These communities are Facebook exclusive and stronger than ever.

Facebook Marketplace is also the safest place for me to buy second hand goods. I never turn to Craigslist anymore.

Messenger and WhatsApp are still reliable ways to group message.

Let's not forget Facebook includes IG which while TikTok is taking its marketshare of engagement, many users still have both and IG is not just "for old people". It's still heavily used by our youth.

I only use FB to connect to distant friends and relatives, everything else is turned off or blocked. I am not profitable to FB as best I can do. FB has peaked as a business for sure, unless they become the government somehow.

It's possible to have a Messenger account without an activated Facebook account. Perhaps you could move to Messenger group chats and keep up with relatives there, so Facebook doesn't even get to add you to their MAUs.

How is this done? I am not seeing instructions for this anywhere.

I use messenger.com or the app regularly as it's how large group of friends talk (sigh). I haven't personally viewed main FB UI in a few years now.

The last time I tried you could start fresh with just a phone number on messenger. That was 6 or 7 years ago so I'm not sure what has changed since then. Messenger always seemed very open to letting nonFB users in since they have a chance to be converted to full time users.

I knew this was possible but I still completely deleted my account. Didn't want to have anything to do with Facebook at all. Friends and family know my number/email if it's something that matters.

Plus, deactivating an account still leaves you the option of reactivating, and I didn't want to do that in a moment of information-starved weakness, so they must still have your data.

Of course, you then have to trust that they actually do delete your data when you delete your account.

Given that Facebook creates shadow profiles of people who don't have accounts, I'm sure they still have your data in some form.

But it's still worthwhile deleting your account, as it reduces your overall visibility to their all-seeing eye.

I expect many young people have accounts and a native phone app which mines data (as I understand it) even if they don't log in.

Facebook is no stronger than Myspace, Friendster, Orkut, or any other social network. Everybody looks unassailable at first, but when social networks collapse, it happens overnight and you never see it coming.

Oh its happening. I have friends in FB who are sick of the daily scandals.

But they probably still use insta, messenger or WhatsApp.

The stigma associated with having Facebook on your resume is definitely increasing.

That's why Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp. Everybody I know who's 'quit Facebook' uses at least one of those two. Young people who shun Facebook as "for old people", happily sign up for Instagram. Once Instagram starts to collapse, they'll already have built/bought 3 other social networks to catch those people leaving

Didn't those collapse due to users flocking to FB? Is TikTok going to be an actual social network to compete with FB/Instagram or just a dopamine rush agent? Other competitors (Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat) seem to have merely carved out niches.

Notoriously anti-FB publication keeps writing doomsday articles in hopes of them becoming true.

Technology users who don't make up core users self-assured that their noble refrainment reflects broader sentiment.

Nothing new here . Both Facebook and Google’s business model thrives on addiction and almost all their revenue comes from ads. However much as the NYT and WSJ try to berate them these modern day tobacco companies are here to stay. Their revenue and profits are more than those of the next 10 companies combined . And no one is turning down a big paycheck and money .

Addiction to finding answers online?

He’s probably referring to YouTube, as I also don’t see searching for information as being addictive. I do find searching throughout the day to be totally necessary though.

It drives me nuts that NYT podcasts run Facebook ads about how Facebook “wants common sense regulation” or some nonsense. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t renew my subscription.

How do you figure that web search relies on addiction? This is quite a novel take to me.

The thing that convinces me there are issues at facebook is the general low quality of ads I'm seeing in my feed. This is a troubling sign for any company dependent on ad revenue when you're short on brand style advertising, and it seems like only remanent inventory.

Facebook has lost the moral battle. It can never regain that highground. With it, tech as a whole has lost it's darling status among media, politicians, and the general public. Maybe the first step was "The Social Network" by David Fincher in 2010.

I think this article has some good points. I also think that the author of this article seems to forget about products like Oculus.

I also think WhatsApp could potentially not fall into this decline. It's an edge-case, which means Facebook has enough ways to spin it.

If Facebook is dying because it is becoming irrelevant why are we all talking about?

This is part of Facebook's antitrust defense strategy. People under estimate the extent to which Microsoft's experience clued companies in to the importance of grand strategy in this area.

Everyone now knows upper management of FB (the company) are awful human beings. FB as a website / app is dead. Instagram is becoming much more widely known as a source of terrible online addiction problems for young people. It's really annoying how deeply ingrained Whatsapp has become into life (especially where I live), but they will have to squeeze a lot of money from it to make up from the decline of the first two platforms. Yes, I think the article is completely correct.

Its well publicized that Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids use iPad because the project is engineered to manipulate your brain and/or harm your brain.

Anyone who uses facebook or an iWatch or any of this garbage has all the information they need. They choose to be a victim. Its a cultural problem not a Zuckerburg problem.

> They choose to be a victim.

Did they choose to have decades of behavioral and psychological research weaponized against them in order to lash them to these systems? Did they all choose for their friends and family and huge swaths of their social life and day-to-day communications to be subsumed?

Frankly... yes. That has been the gambit with Apple products for decades: it's not a computer, it's consumer technology. Steve Jobs owned up to this outright, championing this idea that the computer needs to disappear altogether. Everything Apple has done over the past 20 years is about abstracting detailed, rich information away from a user, which indeed leaves a lot of developers scratching their head. If you've ever seen "how the sausage" is made, you're probably twice as skeptical. Putting that much faith in any company of that size is a good way to get all of data compromised.

So yes, I'd argue that they did choose that. Their complacency is their consent.

It's well known that Zuckerburg won't let his young kids use any FB products. Obviously - dealers don't get high off their supply, and definitely don't give it to their own kids.

>“Congresswoman, My daughters are five and three and they do not use our products. Actually that is not exactly true my eldest daughter, Max, I let use Messenger Kids sometimes to message her cousins,” said Mr Zuckerberg.

You should maybe rethink your attitude and tone, it's needlessly combative and your comments are both pointlessly reductive and unnecessarily critical.

Trouble for them is that even with WhatsApp Telegram is on their heels. My wife has a lot of her professional and academic groups in telegram and she loves things like bots and channels, not to mention their Mac desktop application

There are countries where whatsapp has pretty much become a utility and synonymous with „phone/sms“. Portugal is one of these countries.

Pretty much all of LATAM Whatsapp is more ubiquitous than anything else.

Phone calls still exist, but for most people Whatsapp seems to have overtaken SMS even here in Germany (From what I’ve heard, I’m not a WA user)

And India. Most businesses run their customer service off Whatsapp, including nation-wide telecom outfits.

Romania as well. Just to give an example, I recently needed some documents printed (WFH = no printer...) and found a corner shop where I just shared the docs over whatsapp with them.

Israel too.

Although doing my best to get as many people as possible to use signal.

Netherlands too. Some companies (KLM for example) offer WhatsApp as another channel for customer support over these days. And you can even contact the Dutch government over WhatsApp (plus Facebook, Twitter, email and phone).

Telegram has image issues though, in Germany it's most widely known as a safe haven for drug dealers, Islamist terrorists and especially the far-right and anti-vaxx faction since its reluctance to intervene against problematic content and its non-compliance with the German anti-hatespeech law NetzDG.

As a result, there are discussions about fines which can reach up to 55 million € and even a complete ban (https://www.br.de/nachrichten/netzwelt/telegram-droht-aerger...).

And here I am just using Telegram for Tech, Furry, and Kink servers. Most of the people I know only use it for that as well lol.

>FB as a website / app is dead

According to whom? Hacker news doomsday predictors? They have literally over a billion MAUs right? Just because the demographic skews older doesn't make those users less valid.

They're losing millions of users in the free world. Most of their gains are from places like South America and South Asia.

South America and South Asia are not "free world"? What does that mean?

Pretty sure they're still gaining, slowly, in the US

I live in South America and virtually everyone I know has moved to Instagram. People still keep their FB profiles around but they don't use it much. Also, I was not aware I don't live in the "free world". You learn something new every day...

I'm sure that number would drop quite a lot if you decouple MAU that are only using Messenger. I'd go as far as to say that there's a reason that it's still not completely separated from "Facebook proper" after a decade or so since Messenger became a separate app.

> They have literally over a billion MAUs right?

I wonder how accurate that number is though. FB is not really known for providing accurate statistics [0].

To clarify, I don't think they are dead and are humungous irrespective of how accurate the numbers are. But considering the history of the company, I don't think any of their metrics/statements can be trusted.

0 - https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17989712/facebook-inaccu...

It's always someone's opinion until confirmed. If it were facts the stock would reflect so.

There are browser plugins to filter out groups, pages and ads from your feed. That removed, it's basically a ghost town, at least for everyone I know that tried. It's become a glorified web portal/forum from the dot com boom at this point, and not a particularly good one at that. Within 5 years FB (the website, not the company) as it is will disappear or become irrelevant.

> If it were facts the stock would reflect so.

As an aside, I’m a little uneasy with this statement. We always get reminders of the disconnect between the stock market and reality.

Can't disagree. But even with a relative disconnect, there are always corrections, be it in form of crashes or booms, when people finally know or accept the facts.

I agree with this 100%. I hate FB and deleted my account 10 years ago.

However, I lived in the HN bubble for a few years and came to conclusion that FB is dead. Over a few months last year I realized how active FB is and was shocked to learn that lot of people use FB to form new relationships, sell things and discover new stuff.

I don’t plan to activate my FB account but the view that FB is dead is utter nonsense

As another person who left over 10 years ago, I haven't even seen much of a change other than that baby boomers took over (meaning that the wealthiest people in the world piled in.)

Not only have they never seemed in danger for a moment from the outside looking in, but all of the issues and controversy around facebook a decade ago that caused me to quit have been replaced by entirely different concerns every few years, increasingly based on political winds. The content of anti-facebook sentiment has been ephemeral, and the backlash always disorganized.

And above all, nothing has stopped people from at least logging in once a day, checking their messages, checking their groups, organizing events and responding to event invitations, and angrily responding to right/left wing comments from friends-of-friends. People continue to do thie like a chore, even if they get their all day dopamine hits from somewhere else like reddit/twitter, facebook's own instagram, or even the google news feed. Meanwhile, the suburban white-wingers who get their dopamine hits from facebook spend all day generating the content that pisses off the "barely use facebook anymore" people, extending their single or twice-daily visit, and also providing the cultural strife that they're reacting to on reddit/twitter/instagram/google news.

> Just because the demographic skews older doesn't make those users less valid.

Observing younger people in my family I think there has been a shift in recent years. When I was growing up being able to connect with friends outside of school, etc was a real privilege and something we had not had before services like MSN and MySpace.

These days kids are connected primary via online interactions from what I've seen. The young guys in my family spend hours chatting to friends on XBox while the girls play games like Roblox together and message on apps like TikTok / Snap. They don't need a Facebook because they're already connected through their other online activities. In fact when I've asked them about Facebook they don't even get why it's a thing and have told me flat out that it's a site for old people.

Even among people my age there is no long the desire to share things publicly and instead to connect via private messaging services which as OP suggested isn't going to be as easily monetisable.

Yeah, in my city (Baltimore, MD) Facebook has basically eaten

1. Craigslist (via Marketplace) 2. meetup.com (via Groups) 3. NextDoor (also via Groups - this is probably a local thing because in Baltimore there is a perception that NextDoor and its userbase are racist) 3. The Yellow Pages (via Pages for Local Businesses)

Maybe it's dead as a social platform for cool young people, but ... if we're thinking of doing work on our house, my wife asks for contractor recommendations on the Facebook groups for our neighborhood and HOA. I bought a bike on Marketplace, I'm constantly driving around to get free / cheap kid stuff my wife found on Marketplace.

My wife and I were never "Facebook people" (we met on Reddit), but now we use it a lot just because it seems like Facebook completely owns the social-local space, for young-/middle-aged adults, especially those with kids.

I had to babysit a classroom of 8-10 year olds recently and asked how many used smartphones everyday. All of them raised their hand. What do you guys do on the phone? Games and Whatsapp. WTF are you guys doing on Whatsapp? Oh we chat with each other.

>FB as a website / app is dead

Literally doesn't matter, it's time to realize that FB, Whatsapp, IG are all the same data bucket. Doesn't matter which you use, which you boycott if you touch any of these you're a FB user and if a single person who knows you IRL uses any of these and allows contacts access you are at least a shadow profile in their system.

Saying that I do believe both FB and IG will be surpassed by other networks within 10 years. The only thing up in the air is if those networks accept FBs offer of not.

> But Facebook’s research tells a clear story, and it’s not a happy one. Its younger users are flocking to Snapchat and TikTok, and its older users are posting anti-vaccine memes and arguing about politics.

I'm not sure what was the last straw for me: Either seeing anti-vax posts in my feed, or my fear of seeing "Trump really won" posts.

Yes. When Trump started claiming he won the 2020 election, I was too afraid to open Facebook.

Remove section 230 !!! If you're in the US, call your representative!

The death of 230 would bring chaos and destruction. As much as I like chaos I'm not sure blowing up the internet as we know it is worth it at this time.

How accountability is chaos ?

As far as the US is concerned the web we know exists due to 230. The death of 230 is the death of every online gathering place that can't afford the levels of moderation no 230 would bring. I'm not sure it would fix anything.

I'll let Mike explain it better than I ever could.[1]

[1]https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

use this one next time : https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/fact-checking-criti...

I'm 43 and I avoid Facebook because of the old people. Literally. The people around my age are posting the familiar tripe around COVID and whatever political topic dejour...often followed by a post announcing the death of their life partner from complications brought on by COVID-19.

I used to participate in groups and marketplace but the negative aspects of the platform readily spill over into those corners as well. Icky time-suck.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com