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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

#221

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 wrote a script: # ~/unfuckfacbook.sh #!/bin/bash sed -i '' s/'^127.0.0.1 facebook.com'/'#127.0.0.1 facebook.com'/ /etc/hosts sed -i '' s/'^127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com'/'#127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com'/ /etc/hosts sed -i '' s/'^127.0.0.1 m.facebook.com'/'#127.0.0.1 m.facebook.com'/ /etc/hosts sleep 30 say "Hey asshole, get off Facebook" sleep 30 ~/fuckfacbook.sh ~/fuckfacbook.sh just undoes the hosts file work It helppe…

This is brilliant! Thanks a lot. Are there more such scripts that you use for some other purposes?

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

#223
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You seem to be convinced that there is any way in hell an application that is a client for an existing web service that is little more than a glorified RESTful client needs to be more than 300MB. You’re either not aware how these kinds of applications are constructed, or you’re perhaps not familiar with just how simple putting an application together like this is. The other response to this comment says a very simila…

You obviously have the experience level to get a job at facebook. Go do that (or some other big tech co) and you will understand why their apps are so large.

Some other candidates: linked in, twitter, uber, lyft, youtube, snapchat, gmail. Binary size is a problem issue at all of them and they would appreciate an expert such as yourself to solve it. You could get a staff engineer position and make half a million a year!

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

#224
I have teenagers and college-age kids and I'm not surprised in the least. They openly consider Facebook to be a platform for old people.

They seem to have moved to more of a distributed social media system. That is, they don't seem to have a central place where they communicate with friends. They seem to move between texts, facetime, tumblr, instagram, phone calls (!), etc. in a fluid manner. Anything except for Facebook (which has a negative stigma these days). They don't seem to be tied down to any one platform anymore.

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

#225
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.

no effect for me, personally. my reasons for deleting the app and halting usage of facebook was entirely based on the plethora of toxic/useless content that just made me want to punch most of my friends in the face.

It's hard for some people to be a portrait of themselves. It's much easier to reflect the world around you.

When you're alone on Facebook it's easier to be yourself, and for some it's not a pretty picture.

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

#226
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they not use your conversations for targeted ads? This is news to me, and surprising.

While anything's possible, it would be pretty shocking 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. 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…

I was talking about the messenger texting app

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

#227

Facebook really has no draw to it anymore other than the convenience of messaging people that you don't have other lines of communication with. Going through my feed, it's 95% spam consisting of friends sharing stock pictures with spiritual quotes, self motivational quotes, etc. It's difficult to filter through that for some people you want to keep tabs on because they share annoying junk from 50 different sources, r…

My facebook feed is 95% pictures of my friends in their halloween costumes.

Facebook, just like Youtube and all behavior-based content platforms, gets stuck in local minimums where they try to always show you things you seem to like, both for you and GP. But what we like is not “more of the same thing”, but diversity and surprises...

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Honestly, I feel the same a bit. Like the company itself is cancerous - their complete lack of regard with the way they let hate spread on their platform is shameful. But...I've been on since the old days. I remember when it was actually a community platform and all your friends were there. That was pretty cool. Not sure where that's going to pop up next.

I've never been a huge Facebook app user but the company definitely has me hooked on Whatsapp. All my friends, family, business partners, seem to have gravitated to Whatsapp and WhatsApp groups. It feels like Facebook.app is dead, Long live Facebook (Inc)...

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

#229

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…

Sometimes I feel this way about the Internet in general.

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

#230
To be "successful" (be visible) on "classical" social media (vs. something like HN), it seems like you have to do certain things every day - that change depending on the current algorithm ("engagement"). So classical social media (for me, FB and IG) became sort of a job. In the end, doing the social media job instead of my other "jobs" (work, family, art, etc.) isn't that interesting anymore, so I've slowed down my active use.
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