Facebook misled investors about shrinking user base, ex-employee alleges | Hacker News Reader

Facebook misled investors about shrinking user base, ex-employee alleges

arstechnica.com

69 pointsalexrustic19 comments

> declining content production

Declining? Ten years ago all my Facebook friends were posting things, breakfast pictures, personal updates, trip pictures, commenting on each other posts. Nowadays my feed is Ads, suggested content by people I do not know and a guy that shares news links. In my experience declining is an understatement.

Before I talked to friends on Facebook, now I use it for events and the rental market places. Its found its place as a bulletin board.

In my experience, it replaced Craigslist. Now that Craigslist charges for listing items, why not use Facebook where listing items is free and you can at least vet the persons profile before going to meet up with them?

In my area at least, nextdoor.com is really good for posting and finding items as well. Plus you know they're nearby and you're not having to drive super far to get an item. I found some awesome free patio chairs through nextdoor.

A lot of small businesses seem to have most if not all of their online presence on Facebook.

The sort of businesses that are well known in a niche, but haven't figured out how to get https to work on their website.

On Facebook, they will have all sorts of pictures of their work, and information on what they are doing lately.

Even worse, if you Google my name, the first hit is an empty Facebook page. I don't want to have anything to do with Facebook and I never used any of their products. So somebody (or Facebook themselves) made an account in my name.

There is no way to get rid of it, there is a form where you have to fill in all your personal details and upload a photo ID, but it fails to submit, with "unknown error". Tried several browsers.

Facebook are very good at having convenient errors like this

The fact that their user base is shrinking, that an anonymous 11 year-old was quoted in the WSJ as saying, "Facebook is for old people" is the real story.

Yup, and also key:

>>"...The company has also hidden the extent to which content production per user has been in long-term decline"

IOW, they still count as "active users" people who have abandoned the platform except for occasionally checking on other contacts there. Which means that FB are at real risk of a vicious cycle tipping-point as users disengage, notice less activity in their circle, disengage, and pretty soon everyone either notices that nothing is happening, or doesn't notice and just stops checking in...

A 12-year-old told me that (to my surprise) in 2012. She said that her friends used Facebook the way my generation used e-mail -- as a means of formal communication, often with older relatives.

At the time, their generation's only social media were Instagram and Snapchat, which I suppose hasn't changed that much. I know people their age and younger are still pretty reliant on Instagram DMs and Snapchat as an alternative to SMS.

I believe parent's issue is that the WSJ quotes an anonymous 11-year old as a impactful source.

Ah, got it. I misunderstood. My anecdata suggests the 11 year old is correct and that it is important. Social media adoption is driven by children.

This pretty accurately reflects what I've seen among my friend group. Most rarely post. Of the few that do, most are solid left leaning folks who serve up a mixture of memes that are pretty similar to NPR. Aside from their posts which -- I kid you not-- occasionally add some anti-Trump memes for nostalgia, there's nothing else in my feed.

As much as I enjoy this, it's so sad because I miss the other friends.

For nostalgia? The good old days, when we had a clear focus for our hatred?

>As much as I enjoy this, it's so sad because I miss the other friends.

They're still posting, just on IG probably.

My friends have move to snap and tiktok. I'm not on either, but that is what they have been pestering me to join lately.

> Facebook CFO David Wehner seemed to contradict Zuckerberg in that same call, acknowledging that "the Facebook MAU number does count multiple accounts for a single user when such accounts exist, and we estimate those represent approximately 10 percent of our Facebook MAUs as previously disclosed in the limitation of key metrics section in our SEC filings."

What in the actual fuck?!? 10% of Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users have more than one account?

I’d be more inclined to believe there are 300m or more fake accounts, but I have to believe these are troll farms.

Either way, that is a huge number.

Some real people, I guess, have more than one account, or an account that isn't under their real name, because they want to interact with friends separately from family or something like that.

I vaguely thought that the TOS required your real name, but it doesn't appear that is enforced.

I wonder how many people of that number are people like me - I have a personal page and several business pages.

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