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Comment by bryanrasmussen | Hacker News Reader

What I find interesting here is it reminds me of MS at the height of anti-MS sentiment where they would release statements that sounded like, frankly, they don't understand how much they are hated or they wouldn't be giving everyone such easy ammunition to load.

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For the record - I don't have and never have had a FB account, but - do "ordinary people" (who are a vast majority of users) really hate Facebook? I feel like it's bit of a echo chamber and most people don't really care.

From my experience most people in the EU absolutely do hate Facebook and Instagram, but keep using them because that's what their friends are using for messaging and social media. Quite a catch-22.

I believe yes, they really do. From what I can tell they may have even before us nerds even realised what was going on, because they understood intuitively that their emotions and attention were being gamed

Exactly, the Cambridge Analytica scandal really did irreversible damage to Facebook's brand amongst non-techie people.

I got an account back when Facebook was OK. More recently when I posted that I was deleting my account a relative said they would miss me. I hadn't even used Facebook for 5 years!

I think the whole community thing is a mirage.

I created a FB account a while ago because I needed to reproduce a bug in Firefox (which I was never able to reproduce). Anyways, I haven't used that account other than that... until covid times made me nostalgic amd made look for people from my childhood in southern France. I found a lot of accounts, but none of them appeared active. I didn't engage, but if these people are using Facebook, it's not in way visible to the public (Edit: IOW, either they are privacy-conscious, or they stopped using FB altogether). Put here a disclaimer about anecdata...

I'm not sure I'm not an ordinary person, despite being on HN, I live in a well to do suburban area, with 2 kids and a wife.

If I were Europe and this were a poker game, I would call Meta's bluff.

And hope they weren't bluffing (not from the slightest worry over the absence of these services, which would be a boon, rather their continuance despite being called and need to waste time regulating them.)

If your annoying in-law threatens to move out of the house, bet that he won't.

In either case it's a win.

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