Live data from Hacker News

Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

recode.net

101–110 of 365 posts

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#101
Funny timing, I am deleting my account now. Decided on messaging, cropped friends, posted notice, and am messaging and unfriending individuals after short convo. It's been kinda fun. Own-domain email setup, and page with my name in meta tags for search engines. I'm 33 and "immature" fwiw

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#102
post #10

I'm 34 and Facebook lost me as well. I can't remove my account as I need to use as a developer, but I unfollowed everyone and my newsfeed is empty. It's a bliss. Funny thing is, it's all Facebook's fault. Back in the days, the service was simply brilliant to see what's going on at your friends, at home and abroad. But when Facebook introduced the algorithmic newsfeed, the usefulness ended. I could no longer see all t…

Add to that the fact that the people who are most likely to think that they're shaping world opinions by arguing with their crazy aunt about Donald Trump on Facebook are also the most active... and therefore the highest-ranking elements of the feed algorithm.

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#103
Regardless of user age, I have no idea what FB is 'for' anymore.

The whole egosphere thing of celebrating your latest life success with posts is only ok for a small social circle. The idea of a captive user being fed 'feeds' has killed off that intimacy amongst friends in an already elderly and visually sterile environment.

I have a FB account and around 1400 'friends'. I rarely post on the account except to post articles about FB's shortcomings and in private groups about old cars I own, which is a sort of useless unsearchable lightweight forum use, a bit like the old AOL groups.

Why post comments about yourself to people you have only ever met online? The only reason I can think of is for the self congratulatory ego boost...and under 25's clearly don't get a hit off doing this on their grandpa's online channel...

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#105

Anybody know a worthwhile open source social network alternative?

A viable alternative requires your friends and family to be on it. So there is no viable alternative for most people - decentralized or otherwise.

invite them to join then? mastodon has some great apps. if you have the skills you could even set up an instance or two for your friends/family to meet up on.

it won't work for 100% of the people you know, but it isn't that difficult to get a few friends to try a new app/service.

even if you can't/don't know how to set up an instance, there are hundreds of public servers that you can join. honestly, the only excuse is that you don't want to put yourself out on a limb.

https://joinmastodon.org

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#106
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better alternative should be, a de-centralized distributed open source social network.

Like Mastodon? https://mastodon.social/about

How is this different from twitter aside from decentralized part?

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#107
post #15

Facebook suffered from 2 waves of "Eternal September" [0]: wave 1: the addition of everybody outside your immediate friends and close family. You get the goofy uncle, the distant high school acquaintances, and all the work acquaintances from every previous job that submitted a "friend request" that you didn't reject out of politeness. The newsfeed gets polluted by nonsense such as forwarded memes, politics, and other…

I like this. If I may propose one more… wave 3: bots[1] [1] https://mashable.com/2017/11/02/facebook-phony-accounts-admi...

I don't encounter bots on Facebook that much, but they're definitely ruining Instagram.

Years ago, I'd be more open to making "Instagram friends". However nowadays when I get a few likes, I go to the user's profile and see that their followers/following ratio is skewed, I know they're fishing for followers with a bot.

Ultimately all interactions on social media will be scripted by bots.

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#108
post #15

Facebook suffered from 2 waves of "Eternal September" [0]: wave 1: the addition of everybody outside your immediate friends and close family. You get the goofy uncle, the distant high school acquaintances, and all the work acquaintances from every previous job that submitted a "friend request" that you didn't reject out of politeness. The newsfeed gets polluted by nonsense such as forwarded memes, politics, and other…

I think a significant portion of the issue is just that people have started to see and experience the downsides of projecting a running tab of their life for all to see, for all time. As people become more technologically literate, the appeal of selling your personal info for the dubious privelage of nothing much has to pale. I imagine the revelations that governments (US especially) are warehousing every scrap of data they can find on us hurts too.

Mostly though, FB is boring and depressing, and eventually even the easily swayed figure that out.

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#110

How many of these users simply aged out of the demographic? I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a combination of people aging out and not too many new users signing up.

That was my first thought, too.

How many of the "users under 25" simply turned 26?

It's like an old article I saw somewhere about teen pregnancy dropping heavily once they reach 20 years old...

Post reply on HN