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Comment by raydev | Hacker News Reader

I'm shocked that FB has so many votes here.

FB may be getting slaughtered by the media, hated by both the left and the right, but the truth is no one is actually leaving FB. It's still the #1 place to find restaurants, buy/sell used items, neighborhood groups, etc etc etc. And if FB Proper were to ever fall behind, IG still has a lot of stamina left.

I don't think it will happen any time soon, but I would like to see Apple decline. Their ideals and design and software quality from the previous decades are nowhere to be seen. Their software and UX especially have suffered from mismanagement, and I wonder how bad it will need to get before people start switching away. The alternatives are still behind, but the gap is closing in a bad way.

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Your experience of Facebook is very different to mine. In my bubble Facebook is basically a graveyard; I see posts from friends every now and then and use it to chat with people I don't have contact with on other platforms and that's it.

I tried marketplace but it's empty in my area. Restaurants don't use it, nor do neighbourhoods.

I'm not saying you're wrong but we'd need to see numbers to say which of our experiences is the more average one.

Facebook's other properties are successful for now though. WhatsApp is prolific around me in a way Messenger is very much not and Instagram has some level of popularity, though TikTok is the new shiny thing.

And have you checked out their VR offering? It's technology witchcraft I tell you.

The question was which is the most likely to decline, not to disappear.

I don't think Facebook (or Meta) will disappear, but I do think it is the mostly likely to decline.

The only one I think may disappear is Netflix - this is because Facebook benefits from the network effect which helps slow any sudden decline as all your family are still on it etc. whereas Netflix just needs a bad run of poor quality content and it could lose a lot of subscribers to competing services.

Netflix is also less diversified (even though now it's adding Netflix Games for some reason.. we'll see how popular that is..) which further weakens its position.

Plus Netflix keeps increasing pricing.

With companies the size of the FAANGs they appear to struggle with change and being dynamic. A lot of the time they purchase existing companies/tech in the direction they want to steer towards.

I would argue that while Facebook/Meta has been more of a gradual evolution Netflix has shown that it can transition to a whole new way of working within its domain. They revolutionised DVD rentals by combining a web UI with efficient warehousing and logistics. When they saw that infrastructure was getting close to making streaming viable they pivoted to digital delivery and not only did it allow them to keep their existing customer base who would have eventually moved away from DVD rentals on their own, but it also brought in other international markets where DVD rentals never would have worked.

I think I agree that Facebook/Meta will decline without disappearing in much the same way that IBM has. They will acquire new businesses and sell off old ones without really being seen as particularly innovative. Netflix on the other hand I think will stick around but will likely change into more of a content producer rather than a distributor like it has been. Beyond that, who knows?

Facebook is for old people now. I organized an event for new students at the university and we had a discussion in the team whether we should advertize on FB or whether it would even be a hindrance because FB is not cool. We then agreed to post it there after all because people expect "serious" information such as dates of university events on Facebook.

I don't post regularly on Facebook, because my old FB friends are not very active. I'm in the age (late 30s) where you don't meet so many new people, and if you do it is no longer appropriate to add them on FB. So it is effectively dead for me. I communicate with one person via FB messenger and post uni events there. On Whatsapp, I communicate with my family and some coworkers. Everyone else is on Signal, Telegram, Instagram, maybe Twitter. TikTok is terrifying.

I don't think it's inappropriate to add people you meet on Facebook in your late 30's. Don't miss out on a chance to become friends with someone just because you think FB adding is a faux pas!

Also, where else would you post an event details page aside from Facebook? Meetup? That's even more dead..

It's more like, when you are in university it's fine to add other students you barely know. But now with a job, I don't want to add my colleagues or business associates to social media. Also real friends != FB friends, I'm not going to miss out on making personal connections because of this.

I dunno, I guess for events FB is still the place to go.

> Facebook is for old people now.

Sure. Still millions of eyes for ads, and those eyes have money to spend after they rage out in the comments of a targeted news post about wokeism or vaccine mandates.

TBF, when I looked at this list, I didn't think any of these companies would decline.

Although, I didn't pick FB, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the votes were just people that picked the company they thought might grow the least. Or the company they hate the most - which no one should be surprised is FB by a large margin. It's been the tech punching bag for like almost a decade now.

The largest reason I DON'T see a decline from FB is that everyone has been talking about how much they hate FB for years. And despite that, it's still been growing like a weed.

> I would like to see Apple decline. Their ideals and design and software quality from the previous decades are nowhere to be seen

I wish it was true but I feel like their quality is great where it matters. One of the biggest threats to technology is that Apple successfully captures a large slice of the computing world into a proprietary architecture with Apple extensions. Having spent a decade plus with Intel as a lingua franca we may not appreciate yet how this has kept parts of Apple's ecosystem open and the computing world interoperable.

> It's still the #1 place to find restaurants,

Yelp

> buy/sell used items,

Craigslist or Patch

> neighborhood groups

Nextdoor

I've been an FB user for ages, and don't use it for any of the things you list. Mostly just staying in touch with distant relatives, school chums and professional colleagues that I know socially, and a few special interest groups. I only log in to FB maybe 2-4 times per week, for less than an hour at a time.

Yes, I'm aware and many others are aware those alternatives exist. People seem confused how people are spending time on FB if not through their news feeds, and I'm telling you. A bajillion people continue to use FB outside of your circle.

Also Yelp is practically nonexistent in my suburban area. And restaurants often have more updates/activity on their FB pages than their own standalone websites.

And older people seem to think Nextdoor is a scam since they keep using real people's names on paper mail when they weren't aware that they consented to it after signing up.

Facebook is just shy of 3 billion monthly active users. More than one third the planet's population. If ever there was a company that anecdotal evidence doesn't work, it'd be this one.

>I'm shocked that FB has so many votes here.

Nearly all pro-Facebook ( or more accurately described as non Facebook hostile ) opinion has been downvoted in the past five years. And they were less than 5% of the comments. They are so rare I could nearly count them with my fingers.

>It's still the #1 place to find restaurants, buy/sell used items, neighborhood groups, etc etc etc.

The demographics within HN tends to not use Facebook for those functions. At least there are very little evidence any comments, opinion or votes has shown they do. Not to mention it tends to be US and EUR specific.

> the truth is no one is actually leaving FB.

So long as I’m keeping my account as a calendar of friends’ events but never (ever) actually use or interact with the platform in other ways, it would seem I’m just an expensive freeloader.

People know there isn’t much point “leaving” Facebook for integrity reasons. They know who I am anyway.

I’m guessing I’m not alone in using their service this way.

I'm not sure how facebook fares in big cities, but back where I'm from - a small rural town, facebook has pretty much replaced everything. It's the de facto digital community place.

Want to get regular updates from local businesses, local government, hobby groups, sports and cultural events? You'll find it on FB. Sure, most of those also have their own dedicated websites or similar, 90% of the most recent info comes to FB first.

Same goes for community groups, public announcements, and what not. Older people (50 and up) are well-established on FB, and have no plans to move anywhere else. So it might be true that FB has become a "boomer platform", but at least those users are very active and very loyal. Many of these older users get all their news and updates via FB.

I'd imagine that this would be the case in similar towns and places.

> I'm not sure how facebook fares in big cities, but back where I'm from - a small rural town, facebook has pretty much replaced everything. It's the de facto digital community place.

I don't think this is a good thing. It means change won't be easy to implement because their customer base relies on it for a certain function, if that function changes too much or goes away, they loose what's left.

Yes, it's bad to get completely locked-in. One ban, and you're essentially left out in the cold.

But, then again, I think that's just the result of people casually trading their data for convenience. For most people, it's apparently no big deal.

As if Facebook is the #1 place to find restaurants, it's Google for sure.

My mistake, I didn’t mean it’s the place to discover new restaurants, but it’s the best way to get the latest menu, latest hours, and speak directly with the owners through Messenger. Quite often the FB page is more up-to-date than the websites they own.

I still lean on Google maps for hours and busy times...as much as I hate Google.

Ever since the pandemic I found the hours listed on Google maps for restaurants/business to be often (understandably) incorrect or out of date, and now I usually double check on Instagram or Facebook if there's a page run by the restaurant.

FB is declining in America, but only technically and in terms of user count. It's more than made up for by increasing user monetization and growth in the rest of the world.

I disagree that no one is leaving, however the more pertinent question is about who is not joining.

They are getting their lunch eaten amongst young people by TikTok.

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