Meta in Free Fall: Users Leaving, Revenue Down, Stock Keeps Falling
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In fact, the only truly useful thing it provides is Whatsapp (which it acquired primarily to gain users); and there are good alternatives to Whatsapp, so it's an "also".
The actual human connection features of Facebook turned out to be a novelty as humans discovered that they don't really do enough interesting things often; so keeping up with one's friends doesn't require a live feed, but rather a weekly or monthly note will do.
So once the friend status stuff became so blasé, and users were spending less attention on FB, FB amped up the suggested content. Now, as has been illustrated on some HN posts, the vast majority of what one sees on FB is just suggested content.
Instagram is the same. People just aren't interesting enough to keep an entire platform alive. Sure, the influencers and posers will provide a lot of content, but within any given category there are hundreds of similar (and quickly boring) options.
The grand business model of attracting people to a platform and then showing them lots of ads just cannot survive long term without real content; and there's less and less real content each year.
Meta is so large and has so much marketshare already that no pivot could save them. Their only chance is to merge with a content company like Netflix (where the content machine is arguably already oversaturating the channels and leaving viewers bored despite many new series each year).
In 10 years, Meta is likely to be just another AOL.
The irony (for me, at least) is that it was Meta's attempts to drive more engagement that pushed me away from both platforms. When Facebook was just the actual activity of my friends, I enjoyed it. Once they started messing with things and it became more about "suggested content" than a useful way to keep in touch with my friends, I realized how much of a time waste it was and deleted my account. I haven't deleted my Instagram account yet, but it seems to be inevitable as Instagram turns more and more into a low-rent TikTok where the feed has been taken over by content suggested by the algorithm rather than just the photos posted by my contacts (and FWIW, I don't follow any "influencers", only people that I actually know or artists whose work I enjoy).
I may be an outlier, but to me every "improvement" that they've made to try to increase the amount of content and engagement has made it less attractive because it feels less genuine and more generic. On the other side of it, it also makes me less likely to bother posting content because I know that the algorithm won't be showing it to anyone or will be prioritizing it lower than the stuff that's been carefully constructed to be "engaging".
This is a really interesting point, and probably mostly true.
I'd add onto it, that even for people who are doing lots of interesting things, that Instagram soon becomes awkward to use for fear of "showing off" and that it's fundamentally set up as more of a broadcast-to-audience system rather than any sort of interact-with-friends system, which makes it worse.
The parasocial influencer thing works, because it's supposed to be a hollow one-direction "watch me have fun doing X", but real friendships aren't a series of watching each other have fun, they're about actually doing things together and/or having deeper conversations about the experiences, and Instagram fundamentally pushes interactions into "Publisher-Subscriber" model rather than the "Peer-to-Peer" relationship of natural human friendship.
At a high level, perhaps this was a necessary phase for human society to transition through in order to come to terms with these new technologies. Our relationship with them was always likely be chaotic at first, then settle into a more healthy and sustainable one. I'm personally looking forward to it. The past 10-15 years of this stuff has been tiring, to say the least.
I don't agree. FB play(ed) an important role for me: helping me keep my extended family across the goings on in my child's life (they all live elsewhere). It was quite good at making grandparents/aunts/uncles feel connected etc.
But that utility is largely buried beneath a growing list of 'features' with little appeal - I don't need prompts to add people I know. I don't need yet another marketplace. I don't need short-form videos from complete strangers.
Today, 80%+ of my newsfeed feels like irrelevant content - and that's what's killing FB.
On the other hand, we have an Oculus and I'm quite enjoying some of the "metaverse" worlds in Horizons. I think I'm firmly in the minority there.
Oh gosh no. This is not what society has learned at all. See Instagram, Tik Tok. Not being interesting enough is not a barrier to posting incessantly.
- Got distracted by launching a crypto currency
- Overhired in 2021, thinking pandemic media consumption would continue. I blame this on Bay Area bias.
- Overinvested in the Oculus side project.
- Got distracted by the "Meta" rebrand. It's telling how they fell so shortly after the rebrand.
- Sandburg left. She's someone who could stand up to Mark.
- Apple and tracking. This was always a risk. It's ok to take the money while you can, but it feels like there wasn't a plan for later.
- Got distracted and didn't take TikTok seriously.
The poll of 1,254 adults aged 18 and older found that 27 percent of millennials have no close friends, 25 percent have no “acquaintances” and 22 percent — or 1 in 5 — have no buddies at all.
Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported On the 12th, citing the results of the survey, 31.3 percent of Japanese surveyed said they had no close friends, far higher than the United States, Germany and Sweden.
"Every empire contains the seeds of its own destruction" -G.W.F. Hege
I actually view the moral downside with TikTok as at least as bad as Meta. The PRC isn’t exactly some bastion of freedom and excellence. Neither is the US, but you’re fooling yourself if you think a highly influential company headquartered in China isn’t being manipulated by the CCP.
At least Facebook and Instagram can genuinely claim to be built on the idea of helping people build relationships.
As far as I understand it, TikTok completely eliminates the friend and family network. It's simply providing mind numbing bite size entertainment. It's genius is removing everything that might distract someone from scrolling mindlessly.
Yes, the target candidates who buy into this are fooling themselves but only because Meta's recruiting techniques no longer work in the current climate.
We can say this is true about youtube, twitter and probably someday tiktok, but at least for now Facebook / Meta is absolutely the worst as they not only sold/leaked the PII but they've also been actively encouraging all of this.
The media really have new ways of spinning the cauldron and have an extremely short attention span on what is going on with TikTok, don't they?
[1] https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2022/09/28/meta-ordered-t...
There is no real moderation, raids are commonplace and while trolls are able to bypass the moderation algorithm to write their post, real users regularly get banned for responding to them harshly.
Public groups are simply a chore, anyone can raid with laughing reactions and, depending on the setting, leave comments. The moderation and pending membership queue of a public group that has one or two controversial viral posts becomes immediately unusable.
Fake accounts are rampant and users you ban as a community moderator always come back with a similar name accompanied by "II", "III", "IV"... when you report them as fake accounts, the algorithm responds that there is no problem. When you report oblivious trolls and hate speech (with only one letter changed, think n-word but with a w, etc.), the algorithm responds that there is no problem with the message.
These days, Facebook is simply not safe for most organic uses other than corporate pages and maybe the occasional meme pages. But please, don't read the comments if you value your wellbeing.
I tried to create a Twitter account, but was either instantly banned the moment I completed the sign-up form (using an incognito window) or was blocked from completing the form due to mandatory phone number. It's even worse if you try to use a VPN, TOR or any other privacy-protecting browser plugins to block tracking.
Somehow we've gotten the worst of both worlds, where real users are blocked but spammers can get in.
He was previously on Firefox on Win10.
At least Musk starts up other companies since 10 medium sized companies are potentially more sustainable and useful than one enormous one.
As soon as you are that rich, you can afford to waste unimaginable amounts of money on concepts or ideas - even terrible ones, when smaller companies would be forced to prove the market before they spent their much smaller budgets.
What I get is, well - of the top ten items in my feed right now: 5 are actual updates from friends 3 are ads 2 are "Have you considered adding these people? Or using this functionality?".
I find it off-putting and makes me less likely to actually use the app.
I found out that this bend my view on people that I know. I prefer to curiously ask in real life about what they are doing instead to start coversion with knowing of what they want to be known about them online. Which is mostly saturated with "filters" and not real.
So I disabled feed completely by plugins in browser 4 years ago. Nowadays I use FB only for marketplace and sharing links of my works from portfolio.
Watching him rent out the UFC event on Saturday night and cheering while his wife sat by him horrified just looked like he’s slowly starting to burst the bubble he’s been living in.
Not judging the move at all, as I think many people change in their middle age adult lives. But just looked to me like a departure from the early days of Zuck.
In the 90's videos he looks like a typical nerd (video can be seen on 90 minutes america). Right now, he looks like a mafia boss with his bald/shaved head and the gang member jacket (from the photos I have seen).
They already get hit with constant legal battles and fines regularly when on their "best behavior".