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Comment by HWR_14 | Hacker News Reader

> What I really want to see is Meta getting irrelevant ON MERIT.

That's impossible. The network effects are too strong. Facebook may die, or even Instagram, but WhatsApp is so intermeshed with the majority of the world that it can only be taken out by a government.

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I uninstalled WhatsApp last year after I sent a message to my most important contacts that I'm switching to Signal. In the mean time, I convinced a grand total of 2 people to install Signal so we can talk. Also, I realized that actually not being part in some of the WhatsApp groups that I left behind has quite a lot of advantages!

Yes, the network effects are very strong, but each of us has the possibility of making a small sacrifice for this thing to change.

Social connections can be a large sacrifice.

You might have convinced 2 people to install Signal, but the real test is whether they will still be using it a year from now. My own experience from going Signal-first for a while was that it doesn't stick for most.

Facebook is filled with billions of people I have no reason to speak to, ergo its network effects for me are zero, and its value to me is zero. Other services have similar zero or negative value, and hence I don't use them either. As much as some around here would like to believe that network effects are a moat that effectively allow social media to be immortal, experience has shown that not to be the case. Facebook is dying a slow, lingering death. It is not the place you go to find trendsetters and people of import, but, at best, to go check up on grandma. Facebook will die when grandma finally kicks the bucket and there isn't anyone to replace her because they're all on Discord.

Facebook is still running strong on Marketplace and Groups. They have almost no competition on those.

....and I don't care because I don't use either of those. All the network effects in the world mean nothing if that network has no value to me.

Yes, but then it's about you. A significant portion of society is using Facebook marketplace and group so it won't die with "grandma"

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