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Comment by nickysielicki | Hacker News Reader

To play devils advocate, Facebook is more essential to my life than it ever was before.

* Marketplace was a huge success in terms of subsuming Craigslist. The quality of posts and the volume of postings makes me rarely even check Craigslist anymore.

* Small forums for various hobbies are almost entirely driven by Facebook groups now, instead of in the past where you’d find some custom bulletin board where the last post on most subforums was 3 years ago. It’s better than Reddit for certain things. Groups for communities (ie: your neighborhood or small town) are thriving, too.

* Messenger is the sole mechanism I have to keep in touch with friends from school that are now back overseas.

I think their general success is assured, even if the metaverse isn’t ready yet. They can afford to lose some money on a big bet.

On the other hand, I think that they missed the boat with the metaverse not being a big thing during covid lockdowns, because the cultural rebound of covid yields zero appetite for virtual existence. People want to make up for lost time.

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Each of these: Markeplace, Forums, Messenger are non sticky and with countless alternatives.

For example one could easily have two-three chat apps and use each with different people. I still use Craigslist, I think it works better and has better organization of categories.

The main Facebook app, now that is a unique product - yet frankly, from my perspective it feels completely marginalized, the content there is in worse shape than ever. I find the news feed absurdly bad, GAG videos and ads.

The degree to which the main FB product rotted during the last few years was extreme. Scrolling FB was still a daily activity for me until the medium was overtaken by outrage.

It seems like FB goosed conflict on the platform until everyone decided they’d had enough and left or stopped posting. There is nothing in the newsfeed from my contacts at this point, the feed is either entirely ads or bottom barrel MLM scams. Instagram is going the same direction with everyone growing exhausted from competition for likes. TikTok seems successful in part because the primary purpose isn't to engage with your friends.

So where does that leave social networking amongst your peers? SMS seems to be making a comeback.

have you considered that maybe facebook is giving you content based on other datapoints about you?

Aside from the occasional scam ad, I mostly get animal videos from facebook.

Possible, but what does that say about their algorithm that they only give me stuff I don't want? At this point I login to FB maybe once a month to check community groups for my neighborhood.

Animals could be a similar “no fill” response reflecting that your network doesn't have much going on.

>what does that say about their algorithm that they only give me stuff I don't want?

Do you engage with political content on facebook or other platforms where facebook has tracking agreements? they're maximizing engagement. facebook knows I'm way more likely to click on a "we rescued a dog" video than political stuff, so doesn't show me political stuff. Their data points don't just come from the facebook website.

Possible, but that wouldn't explain the lack of posts from anyone else. I checked once or twice, but at most I see folks organically posting once every 6 months or less - at this point I think I'd be surprised if anyone saw those posts.

They do this kind of profile targeting so aggressively it’s absurd. I also almost only get animal content and the occasional post from an ace group I joined, because I generally only post pics of my pup and peak at said group once in a while. Every so often I get lured into looking at something I find politically awful, and just instantly I get inundated with even more awful productized distillation of it. If I so much as slow my scroll for ADHD content, I’m smothered in ads for really horrifying scams trying to sell me miracle cures or shady guaranteed diagnosis. Yeah, FB serves content which it thinks targets your brain as audience. But it does so in a really astonishingly stupid and toxic way.

It is astonishing. I generally enjoy Facebook and while there are ads and click bait a lot of my feed is just my friends talking nicely, but it's a strange subset of friends.

I tried clicking on a few profiles I hadn't seen in a while and a lot of them had nice posts too. I saw everything from them for about a month then it disappeared again.

I am very worried about what will become of all the very private stuff in their database as they begin to decay.

Right now I assume it would take very sophisticated effort to steal all that messenger data, but what about if/when Facebook is a zombie company with a skeleton crew or an unloved subsidiary of a conglomerate?

It's such a shame. I would LOVE to keep in touch with news from friends and family with a simple chronological feed, but every social media company insists on shoveling trash down my throat with an algorithm.

A week or so ago a new tab appeared in my Facebook app that gives chronological timeline of people and groups I follow. I don't know if it's in Europe only: https://imgur.com/a/xMb2VWG

They did the same with Instagram. Click Instagram logo and select "Following" to get a chronological timeline. Possibly also only in Europe.

Back when I had Facebook, I had a contact who posted quite a lot. Often quite interesting stuff so I would read it when his stuff appeared in my newsfeed.

So Facebook just made his posts my... uh entire newsfeed. Like my newsfeed would just be 5-10 posts from this guy, some political bullshit and then another 5-10 posts from the same guy.

Even if that were the stuff I was engaging with, surely it is obvious that I don't want it in that quantity.

I'd love to hear from Facebook newsfeed product managers as it really seems like no humans actually contributed to decisions.

Oh yeah you got the pornhub experience. “You liked one thing so this must be your kink and you must have no other interests.”

I think the strong disagreement in these threads are indicative of the new sub-culturing of social networks. I have friends who basically live in facebook, they are parents who spend most of their time looking for deals on marketplace. Meanwhile, most of my child-free friends have ditched facebook nearly a decade ago, and have either doubled down on reddit or have moved to tik tok.

Whether or not the metaverse is anything but marking would require me to look at a balance sheet, but facebook seems to be moving through the business life-cycle at a much more rapid pace than i expected it to. They are wringing the value out of the product for revenue growth at the expense of long term adoption. Always a mixed bag but I'm sure an MBA could explain it better.

Suffices to say. I have no idea whether or not their products have are long-run competitive, because I'm very much not the target demo.

>Scrolling FB was still a daily activity for me until the medium was overtaken by outrage.

i wonder if FB as result of all its A/B testing and engagement maximization has built a "faster horse".

Completely disagree. Those three things are all gated by intense network effects. Social media type products are generally as sticky as they come. Facebook will continue to be the platform that everyone uses, because who wants to be on a marketplace or messaging app that doesn't have the most people?

> one could easily have two-three chat apps and use each with different people

I guess theoretically, but in reality, no. People are going to use one app. Apple realized this with iMessage and it's become one of their biggest advantages in the U.S. market. Texting an iPhone user as an android user is legitimately a bad experience, because apple knows that their users aren't going to download a new chat app so they can go ahead and make the experience dogshit for the out group users.

> who wants to be on a marketplace or messaging app that doesn't have the most people?

But it doesn't have the most people. I have long lost that sense that FB is where everyone is. That feels so 2016

> Apple realized this with iMessage

In general iMessage is not a good example because it a product that leverages the unique position of Apple owning the hardware. No other company can play the same game. Apple don't want you to use iMessage on other systems, they deliberately make the experience worse for Android. But who else can afford that?

You definitely can seamlessly use Whatsapp, Viber, FB Messenger, Telegram and Signal all at the same time on all your devices.

Your anecdote is noted, and I have a similar experience with regard to Facebook usage in my circle. That doesn’t change the fact that Facebook has more users than any other platform in the world.

I think you misunderstand my point about iMessage. Apple users have a very good reason to use different chat apps. Most people probably text non iPhones every once in a while. Yet every iPhone user I know refuses to download other chat apps. It’s not like there’s a big barrier to getting WhatsApp, they just don’t want multiple chat apps. People who are already using WhatsApp feel the same way, and there’s much less reason for them to switch, since the product doesn’t purposefully knee cap users.

This is only true in the US though. Everywhere else in the world iMessage is a dead product, because Apple doesn’t have the market share to push it. If Apple’s market share in the US ever drops significantly then iMessage will promptly die there too.

> because who wants to be on a marketplace or messaging app that doesn't have the most people?

People who care about something, like, here? I think FB was a transitory medium for people who were not on the internet to discover what's out there. Most of them are going to end up in topical communities because the central market is too crazy

i don’t know. the past decade has been everyone shouting about network effects, yet i can’t count on either hand the number of matching-related apps i’ve both left and joined over that duration. on the other hand, i’m still using basically the same http networking protocol during that same duration. network effects are real (hence http still dominating), but the higher you crawl up the stack the “softer” the effect.

It’s harder to change things down the stack. I guess the more things are built on top of fb (like sign in w fb) the harder it’ll be to change it?

> Texting an iPhone user as an android user is legitimately a bad experience

What are the issues? I never use text except for spams at this point, all discussions I have with friends are on whatsapp/messenger.

There are a lot. The biggest for me is that texts take around 10 seconds to send, so having long conversations isn't really practical.

Ah, I guess iMessage sends it directly right? I’m still confused as to why people wouldn’t switch to whatsapp instead. For example, if your connection sucks iMessage will fallback to text and if you’re abroad or talking to a foreign number then you’ll get charged, that sounds like a massive issue to me.

> I’m still confused as to why people wouldn’t switch to whatsapp instead.

Because all their friends use iMessage too. Switching isn't trivial when you have to convince your whole network tos witch with you.

I guess we live in different bubbles, I can count on one hand the number of people I know that don't use whatsapp. Even my 87 yo grand mother uses whatsapp

> Each of these: Markeplace, Forums, Messenger are non sticky and with countless alternatives

True, but they are harder to maintain because of the spam. Facebook has more data on genuine users than a bank and it’s easy for them to block low quality or fraud posts. That’s the true value of Facebook - they know more about of your life than you do.

> they know more about of your life than you do.

Not so sure that they do.

If they knew so much about me why is it that I dislike most that they show me?

Perhaps - and that is now the most worrisome thought - that crap is the "best" they can show and everything else is much worse.

Now that does not bode well for FB's future. Or Meta's, whatever, even their brand feels a lot dumber now.

> If they knew so much about me why is it that I dislike most that they show me?

Disliking what they show you doesn’t mean they know less about you than a bank. It just means they’re not yet perfect in utilizing said information.

> If they knew so much about me why is it that I dislike most that they show me?

If you engage with it, they'll keep showing it to you. Their goal is not to make you happy, it's to keep you engaged so there is an audience for their ads.

In fact, this is why the outrage engine everywhere on social media. People who are upset are going to need an outlet to blow off that steam.

No real alternatives if your parents, family, and friends only install one app.

Parents, family and friends being on Facebook seems like a reason not to have an account -- but maybe that's just me.

All that can circle down the drain really quickly.

Facebook was my go to place to find events around me. Now they've dumbed down the page and removed the ability to search by date and location, and made it useless.

The same can and will happen to their other properties.

WhatsApp is probably their best property.

Agreed.

Marketplace sucks compared to other alternatives out there (Craigslist has never been big in the European countries I've lived in so can't comment on that in particular).

Groups are a horrible alternative to forums. An algorithm decides which posts are "hot" and posts die over time. Forums can provide highly informative long-running threads (which FB groups and Reddit cannot). Sure, manually moderating a forum is hard work but the end result is so much better.

Messenger? There are so many better (and encrypted) alternatives to communication.

The only thing FB has going for it is that almost everyone is there. It's super easy to hook up with someone you just met the other day just by searching for them on FB, sending a friend requests and then you can be chatting within minutes. You don't even necessarily need to know their name, you can go through list of friends of a common friend and look for them by face. All other solutions practically involves having to remember asking someone for their phone number. This is also why marketplace/groups are "successful", due to the sheer number of people already on the platform.

As products they all pretty much suck.

> The quality of posts

On Marketplace?! This blows my mind that you think this. It's a chaotic nightmare. Sellers post everything as free and then separately negotiate a price. Buyers repeatedly ask you if something's still available. Both of these mean something's very wrong with how people understand to use the system.

Also, how does a buyer including the text "money order" not trigger automatic fraud enforcement?

craigslist also has this problem, and it does seem pretty easily fixable, to my naive eyes:

someone has said "your price is fair, my agent will be over to pick it up with a cashier's check" for every single thing I've sold on craigslist. I don't think filtering out scumbags like this is a terribly hard problem.

Is the cashier's check fake? What happens if you meet them at the listed bank and ask them to convert it to cash right there?

Why would any reputable person be dealing with a cashier’s cheque in this century?

Earlier in this century they were often required when signing an apartment lease in the NYC metro area.

I had to get one literally yesterday for my security deposit on a new apartment. This is in SF Bay Area.

The last few times I've bought cars I used a cashier's check on a local bank. Car dealers don't like credit cards because they don't want to pay a 3%-5% fee on a $35K purchase.

Yes, the cashier's check is fake. And they will never meet you at the originating bank. I've even had cashier's checks mailed to me from my Craigslist ads. Called the originating banks and they verified over the phone that the checks were fake.

When I sell something on Craigslist, it's cash-only and they have to meet me at a public place and pick up the item in person. And I verify the bills are not counterfeit before I hand over the item.

This is what it's come to. Probably because the police can't be bothered with minor fraud nowadays, and the criminals know it.

Our local police station has a parking lot next to it with a big sign that says “online purchase transaction point” or something to that effect. There are cameras monitoring the lot. Just suggesting meeting at said location is usually sufficient to clear out the scammers.

That's fantastic. I've never heard of that.

You can find stories about this. I don't have the link, but we have Google for that.

Basically, the bank will cash it, and days later, discover it's fake and demand that YOU give them the money back. There's a time delay which the scumbags are exploiting.

Cops put "financial crimes" way down their priority list.

If the cashier's bank is from Wells Fargo and you meet them at Wells Fargo, surely WF is able to check the authenticity of their own checks immediately?

Why would you go through this ceremony rather than just making a bank transfer?

If you receive a wire transfer to a burner checking account that only accepts deposits and not withdrawals, that would be fine.

I think the only risk there would be identity theft leading to payment with stolen money, but they're almost certain to get caught so it's fine.

If that's a concern: If you make sure the transfer comes from a business checking account, they only have 24 hours to report the fraud before the business is on the hook for the stolen money and not you(I think). I'm not sure if personal vs. business are externally-distinguishable in an automated way, however.

Plus the scams. There are tonnes and tonnes of them that get reported to us every day. I'm not sure what Facebook are doing to combat it, but it's clearly not working.

Plus the obviously stolen goods.

I've never used Facebook Marketplace but whenever I see some preview in my Facebook it's just bikini shots (apparently the skinny attractive women are selling the bikinis that they're wearing).

I think they are dealing with the inherited culture of Craigslist. Craigslist was such a clusterfuck for so many years, and had such a monopoly, that it has essentially defined what it is to do individual-to-individual noncommercial online commerce. The low balling and the attitude of some posters stems from there, because everyone thinks “that’s just how you are supposed to act when you sell something online.”

For every seller doing things the old way, there’s a handful of people doing things the cordial and respectful way, putting an effort into it. It’s getting better. You do have to learn how to read the page, but I don’t see how they could fix that.

This must be cohort-dependent.

For me, Marketplace buyers have flaked out more than Craigslist ones. Forums are less useful/dynamic than anonymous Reddit. And I don't even touch Messenger vs. numerous other chat apps.

And yet, I do those same tasks and don’t use Facebook for any of them. None of those are special and people could switch to one of the alternatives with barely a hiccup.

From where I'm from (Southeast Asia), Facebook is very essential too. From catching up with family, friends and most of the businesses here prefers transacting on Messenger.

We don't really care about Metaverse or anything of the same nature. I think that is just an American thing.

>I think that is just an American thing.

While that the line I normally use, I will give them some benefits of doubt, it is the Silicon Valley / US Tech / US Mainstream media thing.

The role Facebook plays in SE Asia cannot be understated.

They are still taking money and being used to manipulate the outcome of elections, the most recent example being with Marcos in the Philippines.

Foreign Correspondent covered this well:

https://iview.abc.net.au/show/foreign-correspondent/series/2...

I am aware of this. This is rampant in every country regardless.

Opposite experience for me. I barely know anyone who uses FB marketplace, FB groups, or messenger. The only use case for Messenger is keeping in touch with "old people" who used it with me 10-15 years ago. That's like 2-3 people who are left and haven't moved off yet

In my experience, the FB ecosystem, other than Instagram and WhatsApp, is totally irrelevant to the younger generation.

If FB didn't own Instagram and WhatsApp I think it'd be dying in the next few years. These acquisitions are IMO what's keeping it relevant.

I used FB only for events before the pandemic, so I didn't use it much in the last years.

I like Instagram and WhatsApp, but Meta's "core" business is non of my interests.

To play devil’s advocate to the devil’s advocate: I’m not on Facebook for anything. Been this way for so many years I can’t remember when I had an account. It feels like I’m missing exactly nothing. Spent some time recently going out of my way to see people in person. To me, it feels like that’s where it’s at: IRL.

We probably live in different universes.

I quit FB for good about 5 years ago. At that point it was all trash.

> Marketplace was a huge success

Whoa they have a marketplace?! Since when?

> Small forums for various hobbies

For my hobbies there are still bulletin boards! Of course, Reddit's very useful as well.

It's likely that there's good conversations I'm missing out on because I'm not on FB, but I'm not aware of what I'm missing out. Don't really care.

> Messenger is the sole mechanism I have to keep in touch

WhatsApp (owned by FB) is ubiquitous. Nobody uses Messenger, even if both parties are on it.

Where I'm at (I'm not in USA), FB was all the rage about 12 years ago. But now none of my friends — people who I actually know — use it. However, I think a lot of people use Instagram (again, under FB), which I've never tried.

> For my hobbies there are still bulletin boards! Of course, Reddit's very useful as well.

Find me a forum with 10k members and hundreds of active users that’s dedicated almost entirely to the North American use of the BMW M57. Because that’s the sort of thing Facebook has.

You might think that you’re getting along fine without these forums but I promise you, if you’re not on the site you’re missing conversations.

Ah, happy to see a fellow car enthusiast :)

Well, I'm not from North America. I'm from India.

But I do know a forum here with 100k+ car enthusiasts:

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/team-bhp-reviews/

In case you were wondering, 6 cylinder diesel BMWs are infact very popular in India. All powered by the N57 engine. Couldn't find too much with the older M57, but to be fair BMW sales really picked up in India only after the F10 5-series was launched at around 2010, and I'm not sure if they ever had the M57 engine.

Among car enthusiasts in India, the 530d is perhaps the most coveted sedans. (535d and 540d were never sold here. North America gets plenty of cool cars which aren't sold here).

Here are a couple of great reviews of the 525d and 530d with that engine on the aforementioned forum:

(530d) https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/official-new-car-reviews/1074...

(525d) https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/official-new-car-reviews/8261...

Other owner reviews that I could find:

(530d; I personally felt this was especially well written) https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/long-term-ownership-reviews/1...

(530d) https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/test-drives-initial-ownership...

(X3 30d) https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/long-term-ownership-reviews/1...

(X3 30d) https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/test-drives-initial-ownership...

But there are all sorts of little secrets to these cars beyond a review. NABDOG (North American BMW Diesel Owners Group, on Facebook) has 3 independent mechanics between Michigan, Colorado, and Georgia that make a living just servicing members cars. We have guys 3D printing aftermarket air intakes and coolant plugs, and another guy who had connector caps injection molded. We have a big FAQ with all the information on what sort of oil TBNs and detergents are good for the engine. We have a list of common failures, like the fact that on the E70 the plastic rain trays at the bottom of the windshield have a poor design and will drip water down directly onto injector six if they crack, rusting it onto the head and potentially ruining the engine, or a tutorial on how to clean the sunroof drains. e90post/etc has some of this, but it’s not as good. NABDOG has a personality with its own memes and such, it genuinely feels like a community relative to a forum.

Probably the most useful part of NABDOG is that I can think of a question while I’m out in my garage, snap a picture and make a post, and have a handful of answers before I shut my hood. The real-time aspect of Facebook groups is underrated.

The other group that comes to mind is dedicated to disc golf in my city. People will post, “hey, I’m going solo to X course at 4:30, anyones welcome” and people will connect that way and become friends. I don’t think there’s a real replacement for these.

> all sorts of little secrets to these cars beyond a review.

Go deeper into the threads and you'll discover the secrets.

Since I neither drive a BMW nor live in USA to take advantage of the 3 independent mechanics between MI, CO, and GA, I suppose I'm not missing out on that :)

(Why'd you specially mention MI, CO, and GA?)

However, from your words I gather that NABDOG has plenty of useful information.

Hence, it's all the more important for them to have an independent website instead of living inside FB. Apart from being much more useful to a wider audience, at the very least, you'll still have the content when FB sinks ;)

> disc golf in my city

TIL that a sport called "disc golf" exists. Thanks. Like I mentioned in ancestor post, we both live in different universes.

Drive safe.

I haven't logged into Facebook in the past 4 years and I don't know why I should. Most people I deal with (a decade younger) never had an account at all.

Same for me. Just a few days ago I realized that my hotel in Milan was next door to a hostel where an old friend was staying. I went out and walked there to say hi. The “nearby friends” feature let us realize this. How insanely awesome is that? It was like 30min before my train so he walked me to the station and we managed to get coffee and croissant before I departed.

Counter point: Outside of the US I don't know anyone using any of this except Messenger for keeping in contact with some people. And the last point is generally seen as a necessary evil, i.e. something they would love to change asap if they could.

EDIT: Correction, anyone below the age of 60.

To add to this, Facebook Events have been (and continue to be) almost exclusively how sports teams and societies organise events in UK universities. I don't think there really is even a viable competitor to this... Meetup charges organisers to use it.

What I think is interesting though is that they aren't too dominant in the gaming space. Apple has Apple Arcade and Microsoft recently bought Activision. What game companies does Facebook own?

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