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

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

#211

Post by rocky1138 »

mysterypie wrote: post #209
beamatronic wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Most folks I know address the colleague issue with a "no current coworkers" policy. (Not to imply you should immediately add newly-former coworkers).

> a "no current coworkers" policy So if someone asks, Can you add me on FB? Would you reply?: No, I have a no current coworkers policy. Is there a way to do this without hurting people's feelings?

What you wrote is pretty good. To wrap it up, you can offer an alternative, like "let's do LinkedIn instead" so they know it's not just them you say no to and that you are actually interested in connecting with them not just blowing them off.

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

#212

Post by stanleydrew »

oneshot908 wrote: post #117
jasode wrote: 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…

All true, but the Eternal September for me came when I lost control of my feed to arbitrary ML algorithms attempting to maximize shareholder value whilst alienating the fewest users. I think someone could recreate early FB on the blockchain and take a huge chunk of interesting people off of the two current awful choices. Because I do remember the time when it was fun to reconnect with people and follow their lives th…

    on the blockchain
Why? Everything else you wrote makes sense to me except for this.

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

#213

Post by xj9 »

askafriend wrote: post #203
xj9 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> invite them to join then? I'm sorry but I'm not going to spend my personal time convincing hundreds of my contacts to move over to a random service called Mastodon. I've got better things to do with my life. I'm going to use Facebook as a tool and move on - as I'm sure the less vocal majority are doing. There is a philosophical viewpoint and a practical one. I choose the practical one.

> hundreds

lmao ok like this is an all or nothing situation. my response should have been prefixed with if you care about promoting alternative networks you could... (which is what OP was asking for), mastodon is the largest one right now.

i think SSB has a brighter future, but it isn't production ready quite yet.

"practical" as in, what you think is best. it is practical for me to invite people to promote decentralized social networks because my community is competing with the facebooks of the world for attention. your "impractical approach" is my "guerilla marketing strategy".

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

#214

Post by kstrauser »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #65
f055 wrote: 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…

Similar experience, I think my problem with the algorithm is similar to slowing down to look at the car wreck on the side of the road. I have a few a"friends" that post horrible stuff. Conspiracy theories, rants, and other posts that are just symptoms of poor mental health. At first I stopped to read these in HORROR and disgust, because they stood out so much from the rest of my feed. Facebook takes that as a signal…

> Looking back, if I had understood what was happening, I could have used Facebook correctly and worked WITH the algorithm.

I wholly disagree. You used Facebook correctly. It's Facebook's fault for poorly interpreting how you used it. Anyone who's ever been stuck in traffic behind rubberneckers creeping past an accident should understand that bursts of attention don't at all mean that you have long term interest in something.

> Facebook eventually needs to introduce a self-curation tool, so that people can promote the things/people they want

A million times this. Facebook desperately needs matched like and dislike buttons, not for the purposes of voting content up or down, but so that it can learn what you actually want to see. Most music services grok this concept.

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

#216

Post by ceejayoz »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #202
ceejayoz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same will happen (and is happening!) to Instagram. They've recently changed Instagram to non-chronological "curated" feeds, and added a bunch of ads into the mix. What used to be a very pleasant social network has become way less enjoyable in recent months. They also just (after years of resisting) opened up the posting API to some partners.

> "and is happening!) to Instagram" That's not what the article suggests. If you have some stats to suggest the volume of Instagram users is already on the decline, by all means post it.

The same suckification cycle is happening (increasingly intrusive ads, algorithm tweaks, "here's a pic from someone you don't follow", etc.). The user decline happens later on in that cycle.

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

#217

Post by Chathamization »

zem wrote: post #69
Pigo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is one tiny use case, but it's one that's bothered me for some time. I can't change my profile picture without it becoming a huge news story for family and "friends" to comment on. I change a little picture of me, remove the event from my timeline, and I still get hokey comments or messages reminding me how bored and lonely everyone I know must be. I severely miss when it was just a place to chat up a cut…

I can't comment on a friend's public post without it being broadcast to my timeline! this is the one dark feature that has most affected any good feelings I might have had towards facebook and my usage thereof

Yep. I stopped using it when realized it was broadcasting comments I was making inside groups to everyone I was connected to. Even if they removed the feature, I wouldn't go back. The fact that they started doing it with absolutely no warning was a pretty good sign that I couldn't trust the company.

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

#218

Post by rowyourboat »

btown wrote: post #36
jasode wrote: 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…

Not to mention the erosion of the idea that it is default-safe to share your social experiences with your group of "friends." Adoption by colleagues and family shifts the tone considerably towards LinkedIn, where one's professional image is paramount - and all that does is make the platform more stressful to use. Facebook does provide tools to segment one's friends into groups to whom content can be privately posted,…

Exactly. Due to the ever-increasing friend list, I now consider posting to facebook effectively the same as posting something publicly and non-anonymously. Which I never do.

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

#219

Post by debaserab2 »

oneshot908 wrote: post #117
jasode wrote: 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…

All true, but the Eternal September for me came when I lost control of my feed to arbitrary ML algorithms attempting to maximize shareholder value whilst alienating the fewest users. I think someone could recreate early FB on the blockchain and take a huge chunk of interesting people off of the two current awful choices. Because I do remember the time when it was fun to reconnect with people and follow their lives th…

> I think someone could recreate early FB on the blockchain

wtf does this mean?

I'm asking only because this sounds exactly as loaded and buzzwordy as "I lost control of my feed to arbitrary ML algorithms attempting to maximize shareholder value whilst alienating the fewest users" you've just gone the opposite direction with the hyperbole.

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

#220

Post by taurath »

btilly wrote: post #99
jasode wrote: 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…

And the thing is that social networks are not nearly as sticky as they seem. As https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/metcalfes-law-i... makes clear, multiple lines of evidence suggests that the total possible value out of a social network scales like O(n log(n)). (Yes, I am biased as one of the authors. But what shocked me was how many independent lines of argument the other authors came up with for the same…

It’ll be a slow chip away and then a mass migration catalyzed by some event. The chip away is already well under way.
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