~ 120 to 190 million daily active users
~ 800 million weekly active users
~ 450 million to over 800 million depending on the data source and methodology.
Get a grip. Hundreds of millions of people are using it, most of them for free. I would say "society" has benefited.
This has to be peak HN.
Create the fastest growing consumer product in history.
HN anon: yes, but who will benefit?
The question is, what are billions of people doing on Facebook if it's harmful? I don't know. My daycare sends me updates, my barbershop tells me when they're closing and I used it to sell my fridge.
This hole Facebook irrational hate is ridiculously overblown. It's an app, and compared to things like TikTok that is essentially a Chinese psy-op, it's really a great product.
This is extremely naive and akin to asking "why do people drink if it’s bad for you then??" Popular != healthy
Almost everyone would give you a response similar to mine. They use it because its easy way to plan events since so many people are on it, or a small business can easily create a website, sell something or just kill some time on the can.
Give it a rest.
Both are terrible for society but I use facebook tools so Chinese app bad, USA app good i guess? Is that what you’re trying to say?
Why do everyone get sick and eventually die if it's harmful?
Perhaps _you_ don’t know.
It’s quite notorious for being the place to organise the genocide over in Myanmar.
IMO, that should disqualify every executive or engineer who knew (and did nothing) from ever again being involved with widely-used infrastructure.
To consider the other side of this, read "The age of surveillance capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff (really read it though, not chatgpt the summary :).
All the benefits you mentioned are real. But, at what cost and could we have reaped the same benefits without surrendering all agency to those who can't be held accountable?
Everyone's talking vaguely about the costs but no one actually makes a concrete case, where I made a concrete case of the benefits.
Was modern web a benefit?
No, this is peak HN
Why? They are making money through all of it. It’s called rent extraction. You OWN something valuable. You no longer have to produce something of value. You can just charge people money for what you own. Rent. It’s various forms of rent. Sucking out money and souls into it. One of countless ways we’re leeched on by these companies and their billionaire owners.
Do the benefits outweigh the harms? Facebook and the VC playbook is boiling a frog and we are the frog.