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Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

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Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#81
post #41

Why is HN so eager to document the downfall of facebook? First, realize that for a large part of its demographics, facebook is the internet , and when they quit they 'll leave the internet altogether (provided that there 's not another new platform that absorbs them). Second, other social media are having far bigger leakages (snapchat) but that doesn't seem to concern anyone.

Because Facebook has a particular history of just...being evil, for lack of a better word. I heard about the SnapChat leak, but I seem to hear about privacy invasions from Facebook on a weekly, if not bi-daily basis.

Also, it's not necessarily just Facebook HN likes to shit all over. From what I've seen it's Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. They all kind of get their time in HN's 'hate spotlight'. (Oh, and it's not as big of a company, but Magic Leap is up there, too. :P )

There is, if anything, a bias towards favouring Apple products, but it's not nearly as fanboy/fangirl-ish as it is on the rest of the 'net. It seems at least HN'ers, even those who favour Apple, are, for the most part, also willing to admit it's bad practices.

And that's a pretty strong claim that Facebook is the internet for a lot of folks. What about YouTube? Google? Wikipedia? (Especially for students?) :/

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#82
post #6

Anecdotal obviously, but I'm surprised at how pervasive the "Facebook listens to your conversations through the app" rumors are, even among the more technically literate. I'm curious how much of an effect that rumor had on this finding.

I wouldn't particularly discourage the rumor. The app has enough permissions that when coupled with Facebook's data analytics it amounts to a similar invasion of privacy.

> I wouldn't particularly discourage the rumor.

You might as well just admit to encouraging disinformation campaigns against things you don't personally like.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#83

I realized I was checking facebook a lot each day whenever I had a spare moment, but didn't have anything really interesting happening, and I wanted to engage more with those around me and have more time for down-time thinking. So I deleted the app, knowing that making the threshold higher for checking it would reduce my usage, now I might check facebook once a month on my desktop, and still nothing happening, so it…

Slightly different scenario on my side -- I want to use it, but the timeline has gotten so limited it doesn't draw me in as much. (No, i'm not on blocked lists. But strange things happen, e.g., Facebook has decided that despite my brother and I being friends and being marked "close" and not blocking each other, we dont see many of each others' posts.)

I'll confess I actually like using Facebook because it allows me to keep engaged and in touch with family with much less effort than before -- but whatever timeline changes they keep doing, I now see the same stories on my scroll. If I log in five times during the day, i see the same set of stories each of the five times.

Result: I don't check it as much, dont want to check it as much. So much for ranking functions.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anytime I speak with someone on Messenger, I mention my cellphone # and email. Gotta prime that OOB comms pump, otherwise you'll never break free. If only there was a Messenger API to setup an autoresponder with alternate contact info...

Are not there some messenger bot which could do this?

You can't set up a bot or an automated message for personnal accounts, only for pages.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#85
That's why Facebook's quarterly number of daily users has dropped precipitously from 181 million daily users to ... 181 million daily users.

Facebook's daily user numbers havn't dropped at all. So either they're moving to IG, or people say a lot of things in surveys.

EDIT: Meant to specify, the numbers in this comment are US only.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#87

Deleted the app but still using the browser to view my feed. Nobody likes the aggressive notifications and bad battery usage that comes with the app.

This is the exact reason I deleted the app about 3 years ago, haven't looked back since.

When they made their super aggressive push for the messenger app and disabled message support on the regular FB app, there was no reason to keep the FB app around. I never installed the FB messenger app though, it required access to just about everything on my phone so I never dared installing it.

Then they disabled the messenger feature on the mobile version of their website, and everybody stopped using FB messenger altogether. Problem solved.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#88

I did this. In the following sequence, over a few years, and am now to step 5: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally 5. Log out of Facebook on your desktop. It took me…

I successfully did this ~2 years ago, but I'm still having trouble breaking the same habit with Reddit (and even Hacker News to a lesser extent)

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#89
The real question is what this really means for their bottom line. Young people not joining / leaving Facebook was predicted a decade ago. (“Who wants to join a social network with your mom?”, was the question.) But they also own what appears to be the biggest alternative platform, Instagram. On top of this, they’re still growing in APAC and other regions where they haven’t yet reached saturation (ie NA and Europe)

Sure FB is morphing, but it’s not clear that Facebook Corp hasn’t set itself up a tidy bulwark against the decline of Facebook.com in NA & Europe. They might have. If they have, then they’ll continue to make money just fine.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are not there some messenger bot which could do this?

Sounds like it's time for Trillian to have a reboot just like Winamp did recently :-)

Oh man that brings back fond memories of creating Trillian 0.73-0.74 skins! I was just thinking the other day that I should make an app for Mac that lets you skin it via XML in the same way. Away with the conformity of Aqua and Aqua Dark, let creativity reign free!
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