Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by ryandrake » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 7:23 PM UTC

dymk wrote: post #70

lostgame wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Code size is based on a thing called optimization. If your application is too big, and it's because you think that there's too many engineers because there's too much code because the final application is three times as large as it has any right to be, then you have a problem of too many cooks in the kitchen. If you're ignoring optimization in favour of hiring more people, you, as a software company, have your pr…

You seem to be convinced that you've solved the application size problem that literally thousands of engineers have been working on for years. Or that you've got more insight into the engineering tradeoffs made at the company. I can assure you that's not the case.

The key word there is trade offs, and it’s clear, if the client is 300+ MB, that the engineers there are trading off smaller size for something (faster development, code reuse, etc.)

You and parent are probably both right. They obviously could make the client 30MB or even 3MB, but choose not to because they find other things more important.

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

#182

Post by lostgame » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 7:24 PM UTC

Zelphyr wrote: post #148

_sdfo wrote: post #96

There's just no way I could keep myself up to date with local events without Facebook. I live in a post-soviet country so Snapchat and Instagram are considered pretty niche here so every social event is always documented on Facebook. I also hold a monthly gamedev meetup, which would be utterly impossible without Facebook. The attendance has grown from 5 to 30 people in a few months and is now helping jump start the g…

It is evil but it's really not as necessary as you think. I'm known to ALL of my friends and ALL of my family as someone who will not ever be on Facebook. You know what they do? They call me. Or text me. Or email me. And I never miss out on events. Even people I rarely interact with know how to, and do reach me outside of Facebook. People make such a big deal out of how impossible their social lives would be without…

I think groups/meetups/business owners/musicians, et cetera have a very different use case than yourself.

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

#183

Post by alkonaut » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 7:26 PM UTC

I don’t use the various pages and feeds, I only use the calendar feature. Pics of friends’ kids are better on Instagram and the feed is occupied by a tiny fraction of my friends with their crusade of choice. I just don’t read it. I suspect I’m not alone in this usage pattern - I have effectively stopped using the “traditional” Facebook but I’m still a regular visitor because of a few features such as the calendar.

It can’t be good for their bottom line that I don’t see many ads or any sponsored pages.

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

#184

Post by lostgame » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 7:26 PM UTC

wgerard wrote: 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’m curious as to whether it’s a rumour. I’m an iOS developer, and I know how difficult and seemingly implausible these rumours are, but the causal evidence to the contrary I’ve experienced is too ‘Black Mirror’ for my liking, or others.

I have troubles convincing myself it’s not true because it just happens on an almost bi-daily basis - it’s too accurate and it regularly involves things either my friends or I have definitively not typed but only spoken about.

It’s creepy as hell.

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

#185

Post by Animats » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 7:27 PM UTC

Wow, that's tough for Facebook.

But Facebook did it to themselves. I just opened up Facebook on desktop. Above the fold, I have "People you may know" whom I've never heard of. Nothing above the fold is very relevant. Some of my horse-owning friends have posted some things, but I have to dig to find them.

Two years ago, I was shown what my friends were doing. Now Facebook puts all the crap up top. Facebook's ideas of what to show me are strange. Burning Man infrastructure groups? A double-wide house trailer in Fremont? Huh? No wonder people are fed up.

They're down at Myspace level now.

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

#186

Post by DoreenMichele » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 7:28 PM UTC

taurath wrote: post #177

DoreenMichele wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly don't read these articles, but some random observations: Facebook never clicked for me. I deleted it, went back, still couldn't make it work, deleted it again, started a new account and was banned. Whatevs. It seems to not click for a lot of folks inclined to hang in spaces like HN. Some folks who never really got it and perhaps felt left out that "everyone else was on it" may take glee in watching it fall a…

For the developing countries I know about (SE Asia in particular) it’s definitely still very much in the positive range - it’s adding real value. The downside has yet to hit I think.

Reality on the ground doesn't prevent folks who spend time on HN from having such negative impressions based on The News.

(A thing I say a lot: It's not news unless it's bad news. We just don't trumpet quiet positives the way we do the click-baity negative events.)

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

#187

Post by wgerard » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 7:28 PM UTC

lostgame wrote: post #184

wgerard wrote: 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’m curious as to whether it’s a rumour. I’m an iOS developer, and I know how difficult and seemingly implausible these rumours are, but the causal evidence to the contrary I’ve experienced is too ‘Black Mirror’ for my liking, or others. I have troubles convincing myself it’s not true because it just happens on an almost bi-daily basis - it’s too accurate and it regularly involves things either my friends or I have d…

Posted this below, but:

While anything's possible, it would be pretty shocking and a big blow to Apple if Facebook figured out how to, on iOS (I can't speak for Android):

* Record audio if the app's killed completely

* Record audio with microphone permission disabled

* etc.

All of which have been claimed and seem unlikely.

The far more likely scenario is that we're much more predictable than we think. Remember the target controversy when they figured out a teenage girl was pregnant before she had told her parents [1]? That happened in 2012. Imagine how much more advanced things have become since then.

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

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

#188

Post by ahallock » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 7:29 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #42

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'm on step 4. Already feeling liberated. On Twitter, I unfollowed any political accounts or accounts which were overly toxic. My mood is better and I feel far less distracted.

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

#189

Post by parthdesai » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 7:30 PM UTC

tomphoolery wrote: post #141

phreeza wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, you can deactivate your account and still use messenger?

You can indeed! You can even reactivate your account _only_ for messenger. I kinda wish you could do that for events...

Yup, i exclusively use FB for group chats and events. Have uninstalled Fb app and messenger app and my phone's battery and ram thank me.

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

#190

Post by barbecue_sauce » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 7:31 PM UTC

I have reduced my usage of facebook considerably. I keep the app on my phone, but only check it once or so a day. I can't use it on my desktop, as I have blocked all of its domains (including tracking domains) in my hosts file. As soon as I blocked tracking and reduced my usage, I noticed that I started to get push notifications about things that I wasn't directly related to, but facebook thought I would be interested in (previously I only got notifications about comments to my own posts and replies). This also corresponded with around the timing of Zuckerberg's congressional testimony, so I'm not sure if this more aggressive notification strategy has happened for everybody, or just those of us that have actively disengaged from the platform.